After perhaps 6 years of fantasizing, 2 years of planning and 8 hours of flying, I find myself in Europe. To be more specific, in the city of Darmstadt, in the State of Hessen, in the country of Germany. As I write the draft of this blog post I am sitting at a table in the Schlossgarten (palace garden) café. I have decided to name this blog after this café because this is where the majority of the writing for it will probably occur. Only a few hundred feet from where I am currently living, it is already one of my favorite places here in my new home. The day I arrived, a little over two weeks ago, I came across this café while deep in the manic exhaustion produced when sleep is held at bay by excitement and uncertainty. I sat down here with my giant rolling suitcase to rest a bit while waiting to meet my temporary landlord. It may have been a coincidence, but something there strongly pulled at my memory. Of all things this corner café on a quiet street in Germany reminded me of Aspen, Colorado in late summer. The temperature, the light breeze, somehow even the smell reminded me of the place. Aspen is one of the best examples of what Colorado has to offer, and for as long as I can remember my family has always spent a few days in early August there. It is a special place for me, deep in the mountains; in the cool air and hot sun of late summer at 8,000 ft. Since arriving here I have stopped by the Schlossgarten almost every morning. It’s to the point that today I didn’t even have to order for my espresso.
But back to the beginning: My flight was scheduled to leave at 7 AM, Mountain Standard Time. To be sure of having plenty of time, this meant leaving for the airport at 4. Which in turn meant rolling out of bed by 3:30 if I wanted a shower. It shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me, but this being my last night in the United States of America for quite some time, I didn’t sleep. Instead I meticulously finished packing while listening to my standard, unending diet of news programs. I justified this by declaring it was part of my plan: an ‘all in one go’ attempt to use sleep deprivation to adjust my internal clock by the required 8-hours. But I knew, just as well as my parents surely did, that it was nothing more than excitement. My personal way of champing at the bit. Everything running on schedule, I arrived at DIA and said my last in a long and strung out string of goodbyes.
5 minutes later came a small scare, when the check-in attendant didn’t seem to realize that American citizens don’t require a return flight or a visa to be admitted to Germany. I, in triage mode, was taking my best guess at when I would want to return to the US, approximately 350 days later, when luckily someone more informed stepped in and sent me on my way. Past this first gauntlet, the flights themselves were uneventful. I have flown many times, and truth be told I can’t remember the first one from Denver to Philadelphia. The second flight was a Red-Eye from Philadelphia international to Frankfurt am Main. I remember the flight, but mainly getting to sit next to a young family and their 2 year old daughter. This little girl switched back and forth between speaking German with her mother, and English with her father with thoughtless ease. As well as with a complete ignorance of the awe that is felt by any student of a foreign language at such a sight. Truly, any honest person has to be astounded by the ease with which children absorb language. I must also say; any of my American friends who can’t help but think of Inglorious Basterds when they hear German need only listen to a German toddler play with her mother for a few hours.
We arrived in Frankfurt at 5:40 AM local time. It had now been been approximately 38 hours since I last slept, and I was entering the wide eyed, clenched Jaw stage of sleep dep. After needing numerous requests for direction, I eventually found my way to the bus from Frankfurt to Darmstadt. First sunrise in Germany on this bus. A clear, pale, early morning; a crisp dawn just like anywhere else in the world. But on a different continent. Under a different sky. If there’s anything to be said in favor of Red Eye flights, it would have to be symbolism. To step onto a plane at dusk, under one sky, and be slowly teleported in a long humming box with black windows, finally exiting again at dawn, under another sky; it feels exactly like a passage between worlds should.
When the first wonder wears of, the underlying uncertainty sets in just a bit. It was manifested, among other things, in my first, abortive, attempts to use a cell phone, and then a payphone in order to contact my landlord to tell him I had arrived. It’s always the little things, like working out how to dial a phone number, that are by far the most demoralizing. But, between my German, everyone else’s English, and general goodwill towards a foreign traveler, I was able to get by just fine. I made it to Haus martin, where I will be staying for my first month, met with my landlord, gratefully accepted his offer to conduct business in English, and finalized my living arrangements. It was now approximately noon, and 44+ hours of sleep dep.
Next came the “Einstufungstest”; the obligatory language placement test. Once again, it’s the little things. This time, finding an office. The information I had: S1|03 / 309. I had done my research and felt that I already knew a few things about how the campus was laid out. I knew that the S was for Stadtmitte, the campus next door to where I was living, and that the 1 and the 03 somehow designated the building or building section. Confidently, I set out 20 minutes early, naively reasoning that this would be more than enough time to zero in on where I needed to be. In fact I was nearly 10 minutes late by the time I arrived. I had spent the preceding 30 minutes wandering, quite literally in circles, around the three largest buildings on the central campus, which happen to be quite conveniently and confusingly connected. Finally I arrived at my destination and took the half hour long test. At this time, I was fully in the brown out stage of sleep deprivation, characterized by long blank stares. This is where cognitive service fades out from time to time until something, like a lolling head, causes it to hiccup back into place. Miraculously, I managed to perform as well on this test as I had hoped, and have been placed in the German course I hoped for. Next and last was a meeting with the exchange coordinator and subsequent due diligence, after which I was free; my only obligation to try to stay up a bit longer if I could manage. At this point it was 5:30 PM, and about 50 Hours since I last slept.
I was starving at this point and figured I would grab something to eat on the way back to my bed. However; some quirk of my sleep starved judgment caused me to act in the most ridiculous and humorous way: though I walked past restaurant, after café, after fast food stand, I absolutely refused to stop and get something to eat. Every single time, some absurd reason or anti-reason would present itself and keep me trudging on. In this manner I wandered through a sizeable portion of northern Darmstadt until nearly an hour later I managed to settle on a small Italian restaurant. Here I entered, sat down, ordered, and then promptly fell asleep in my chair until my waiter brought my food and had to wake me. Afterwards, deep in the rolling blackout territory of sleeplessness, where your chest is a hollowed out cavity, and consciousness is slippery in the absence of strenuous activity, I made my way back to my bed, the second most tired that I have ever been. As a side note: I have observed with great consternation, and from long experience, that while your body can’t save up sleep, no matter how much you get, it remembers, with unforgiving accuracy, just how much you owe it. And so, with clockwork precision, my two first nights in Germany lasted more than twelve hours each, to make up for the 8 or so I had forgone. With this, the first day was over.
