Emancipator
After being “back” for only a week I find I am already struggling a bit to remain in the cocoon of wellbeing spun by having been “home” the week previous…so I decided to quickly tell a couple highlights of my adventure in the interest of hanging on, at least in words.
The citizens of Würzburg, in the center Bayern Inferioara not Hessen, determinedly identify with their neighbors on the Main in Frankfurt as opposed to affiliating with the residents of the Kingdom with whom they actually share statehood. One citizen explained to me that Oktoberfest was not celebrated in Würzburg, “only in Bavaria.” (Just to clarify, Würzburg is in Bavaria.) I cannot be exactly sure why this is, since, while it is certainly not as wacky and zany as any place in UB, it is very agreeably weird in its own way. I will investigate further in the future.
In any case, a number of amazing things happened while I was there. The first one was that suddenly, I could speak German. After the fiasco of this past summer, I had really only been studying haphazardly, by which I mean listening to the “party music” programming on Radio Bayern 2, reading just a couple pretty easy books, and practicing with my friend the idiosyncratic new language based on 30 percent German and 70 percent JDilla.
However it became obvious even in the short distance between the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof and the Würzburg hauptBahnhof that an increased level of proficiency was going to be necessary and that filling in the unknown vocabulary with French, Italian, Dutch or Lupe Fiasco would be both impossible and sociologically ill-advised. For some reason I was not very worried, probably because when you are fortunate to be on a train in Germany in Bavaria and it is cold enough to wear a hat, scarf, and gloves, there is not really anything to worry about. When I got to the hotel, the lobby of which doubles as a Mexican restaurant (see I told you this place is afterall in Bayern), for some reason without really thinking anything about it I just asked (bitte) for die Schlüssel zum Zimmer zweihunderteins? A few minutes later, looking out the window of said room, I realized something must have gone horribly wrong since in the past I rarely get articles and never numbers right on the first try in conversation.
Yet this was not an accident or aberration ( at least for the week or maybe the whole thing was). After that, I just could speak German. I know it sounds like some sort of miracle but actually I should be able to speak German, I just hadn’t been able to until this very moment. After I tested out this new ability over the next few hours – getting directions, getting a magazine at a newstand, chatting with some people who were also standing by the Main admiring the swooping bats and rain on the river – I was convinced of its existence.
At that point I was suddenly overcome with one of the greatest senses of ecstasy I have ever known. (more…)