About six months out

 Reckon I'd better get back to this. Since the last post we've had a Delta wave and an Omicron wave of the virus. I know for sure people back during the Spanish influenza epidemic weren't sitting around talking about virus mutations. They weren't even sure that influenza was a virus. Anyway.

I have been pricing tickets to Germany for the 2nd half of June. No great deals yet in regular coach. I hate flying 'basic economy'. As if regular economy flights weren't lousy enough. Nothing with good connections cost much under $1k. Guess there's no rush. We're ponding the possibility of adding a stop to the first part of the trip. I've priced Oslo, Warsaw, and Copenhagen. Any of those would be great. The one thing that would be nice to avoid would be to skip taking the train to Berlin all the way from Mainz before we fly out again. 

I guess I'd better hold up looking forward so I can look back for the blog.

We arrived in early June, which is a great time to be in northern Europe. Germans like to hang their bedding out their screenless windows during the summer. The weather is beautiful and the days are very long and no bugs. Hell, it's January here and I still have some kind of bug buzzing around my monitor as I write this. Early on we met our families, visited the school, and oriented ourselves to how our day to day would be for the next few weeks. Herr Arno and Frau Rita Besch were fairly typical, middle class Germans. Arno worked somewhere nearby - some sort of industry or manufacturing. He might have been an engineer? Other people's jobs are generally hard to understand and his German was very hard to grasp. Rita was a stay at home Hausfrau. They lived on the first two floors of a three story building. I'm not sure who rented the other space. Now that I think of it, it's very fuzzy in my mind, although I seem to recall that they didn't occupy the entire house. If I'm not mistaken, another family lived on the middle floor. The place was on a quiet street in Bretzenheim, a close bedroom community beside Mainz, just to the south and west. The bus took about fifteen minutes from downtown and it was even closer to the University of Mainz. 

Some of my classmates stayed with families in the city, generally in more close quarters. Others lived a bit further out. I recall being jealous of those who had access to the city on foot, but looking back, I had a very good situation. I shared a large bedroom with Rudiger and his slightly younger brother Jurgen. The three of us also shared a small bath. Rudiger had a nice stereo system in his room, which was an especially big deal at that age. 

Rudiger at his desk in the large bedroom we shared.

Turns out that the school part of our trip was rather minimal. Often we would begin our day there before heading out on a day trip elsewhere. I recall visiting a class of mostly Turkish students (Germany long had a guestworker program) studying math with a very exasperated German woman. The students found my presence a welcome diversion. 

One thing that was unusual about our exchange was the fact that most American high schools pair with German Gymnasium schools, which are considered college-preparatory. Instead, Bergren matched us with a 'middle-level' school, which worked out better because, for one, we could related better to these students and, two, they had time to show us around. They weren't under the pressure that most gymnasium students endure. Of course, some of the students were got to know also went on to gymnasium, including Rudiger. In fact, when I visited him five years later, he was studying at the University of Mainz. 

Well, it's late. More on daytrips next time.