The Day it Smelled Like Broccoli

I always hate writing stories about people who may realize the story is about them (unless they're in my family; then I think they have to just expect and accept it), but sometimes it's hard to pass up a really good anecdote. That being said, names have been changed to protect the (not so) innocent (and if the subject/culprit does ever stumble upon and read this and recognize that the story is about them, no hard feelings - like always, this is just my personal recollection of events; who knows how accurate it really is?)

The summer after my freshman year of high school, I went on one of those everything-has-been-arranged-for-you-including-your-meals group tours of German-speaking Europe. Overall, it was an awesome trip filled with visiting lots of amazing places that I had never heard of and thus did not recognize the significance of our visits to them until years later, at which point I grew frustrated with 15-year old me and my lack of historical knowledge and appreciation. And my drastically limited experience with cinematic artistry, specifically in the form of "The Sound of Music." Salzburg (and a tour of places from the movie) is not overly interesting when you are only vaguely aware that said movie exists. For that one I blame my parents, who never really let us watch any movies (my older brother had ONE nightmare from an episode of Scooby Doo when he was three - consequently, 99% of all television and movies were banned in our house, much to the chagrin of poor Husband, who is left facing the incredibly daunting up-hill battle of making me watch all the "classics" - Ghostbusters, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, among hundreds of others).

I don't know how these kinds of tours are arranged, but I suspect certain companies (specifically a German version of a fast food chain, called Wienerwald) are slipping money under the table to the tour organization in return for a huge commitment to eating at their restaurants. I think we ate Wienerwald for at least 75% of our meals during the 2.5 week tour. It was not especially good food, and in all the time I've lived in Germany since, I've yet to encounter another Wienerwald. Almost as if the pre-arranged tour was to an alternate German-speaking Europe universe in which all the McDonald's are replaced by Wienerwalds.

Regardless, we were not only contractually obligated to consume Wienerwald slop, we were only allowed to eat what they had pre-arranged to serve us. They claimed that, in order to have"that many meals" ready at one time (our group was about 15 people, total), they had to limit our options to "vegetarian" or "generic German meal," but, as defined in our contract, one had to choose whether or not they were vegetarian before embarking on the tour, so our numbers (1 vegetarian, 14 generic German) were sent to all the restaurants weeks in advance of our actually eating there. I suspect they began preparing the food that far in advance, as well. As I learned through my other experiences living in Germany, many Germans are not necessarily opposed to leaving food out for uncomfortably long periods of time, subjecting it to various contaminants we Americans tend to shy away from consuming.

One of our first stops on the tour was Berlin. Shortly after arriving in the city, we were shipped to a large youth hostel-style lodging facility. There we were divided into groups of three to share rooms. Fortunately, I was placed with one of my closest friends at the time (Kay) and another girl from our school. The rooms were minimalistic, though likely not as an attempt at art, and the bathroom was one of the strangest things I'd yet encountered in my life (if you've never been fortunate enough to have utilized a German toilet, you truly don't know what you're missing out on). Not only was the toilet a classic German "shit shelf" toilet, but the tank was high above it on the wall, made of wood, and had a long pull cord hanging from it to flush, which, when pulled, released a torrent of water (necessary to clean the shelf, most likely) that would literally spray the entire room if the lid weren't held down tightly.

After a few minutes exploring the room and the most bizarre bathroom I'd yet encountered in my short, sheltered, sanitized American childhood, we were off to eat our first meal at Wienerwald (whose mascot was a fat golden chicken, if I recall correctly. Most likely because of the abundance of free-range, obese chickens in the vast forests of Vienna. Everything about that statement is accurate.)

After we were seated around a long table, the wait staff gruffly brought out our pre-arranged meals (no need for a menu!). The third girl staying in our room (let's call her Sarah) informed our teacher that she had ordered the vegetarian meal, but the restaurant had evidently made a slight oversight. After a brief scuffle with the staff, a revolting mash of over-steamed, soggy vegetables in some weird yellow-ish sauce was dropped in front of the girl. The smell was powerful, which is not an attribute that readily goes with well-prepared food. But Sarah dove right in, pronouncing the food as "great." After fighting to cut off and choke down several bites of my own dry wienerschnitzel, the smell of the vegetarian dish became too much for me, and I forfeited any further attempt at eating. Sarah cleared her plate in record time, however.

Our teacher took us on a brief walk around the city following our meal, but since most of us were suffering from our first case of jet leg, she let us go back to the hostel with the warning that we should try our best to stay up until nighttime, in an attempt to adjust our internal clocks to German time. Off we went, to struggle through the next several hours of exhaustion.

Back in our room, Sarah asked if either of us had to use the bathroom. She said she wanted to shower and would be in there for a while. In retrospect, I feel she lied to us.

After about 20 minutes, a smell started to escape under the door of the bathroom and fill our small hostel room. It was a familiar, powerful smell. Kay and I exchanged looks and laughed. But after another 10 minutes, and it was no longer funny. The smell became all-invasive. It was one of those thick smells; the kind you can feel in the back of your throat.

Kay and I went over to the giant window in the room and attempted to figure it out. Like German toilets, if you've never encountered a German window, you don't know what you're missing. They have weird, detachable hinges on all sides, and, depending on the direction of the handle, you can change which hinges stay attached and which ones release, enabling the window to open at the top or the side. We managed to figure this out after minimal confusion, and swung the window open wide.

It was cold outside, as evenings in June in Berlin so often are (they are typically either way too cold or way too hot - and the lack of air conditioners in the majority of German buildings makes "too cold" the preferred option). The cold air fought a valiant battle with the smell and won. But the room was soon freezing cold.

After another 30 minutes in the bathroom, Sarah emerged (with the last of the smell), and remarked at how cold it was in the room. Kay and I, through chattering teeth and blue lips, explained that we were attempting to stay awake until bedtime, and the cold was helping us. We might have also implied we were warm. We hadn't thought through our excuses, but neither of us wanted to make Sarah feel bad about the horrific odor. With the smell finally dissipated, we closed the window and passed blissfully to sleep, giving in to the exhaustion of jet lag.

The next morning, we were herded onto our pre-arranged tour bus and shipped (literally, by ferry) to Potsdam for a pre-arranged tour of Sanssouci (the Hohenzollern's summer palaces) and Cecilienhof (the palace that hosted the Potsdam Conference after WWII). While walking through the gorgeous gardens and paths that lead around the Sanssouci complex, Kay and I found ourselves walking a few paces behind the majority of the group, including Sarah. We were admiring the lavish palaces when, out of nowhere, our noses were again affronted with the same mind-bogglingly offensive smell from the previous night. But this time, we weren't the only ones who noticed it.

Sarah turned around to us and absent-mindedly remarked, "hmm, that smells just like my broccoli from last night!!"

Also, for anyone interested, Wienerwald is slowly disappearing due to bankruptcy in the 80's, which would explain why I saw many more of them in 1998 than in 2004-6.

The Day I Flew Air France

After the harrowing experience of flying Air India, I'm fairly sure the only way I convinced myself to ever step foot on a plane again was the simple fact that I needed to, eventually, go home. Countless very drunken nights in Berlin over the course of nearly a year of living and "studying" there probably didn't hurt to numb my memories of how awful cramped plane cabins can be when full of the scent of Indian airplane food, disgruntled Chinese stewardesses in saris, and gigantic Nigerian princes. But regardless, the time had come for me to once again brave air travel to return to my homeland.

Because this was the second half of our round-trip flight for the study abroad year, it was also booked through Air France. After saying many tearful good-byes to my absolutely wonderful German family (the ones who lived in the communist block housing), and the German guy I was dating at the time, I sadly made my way to the boarding area, only to discover that one of my classmates from the study abroad program would be flying home with me. Not just with me, but in the seat next to me. We hadn't exactly gotten along; he was part of the group of students who thought studying and learning German was for nerds, and I was most certainly the teacher's adoring pet (it's not like it was my fault I spent most nights out getting drunk with Germans and practicing my language so I could speak it significantly better than other people in our group). We gave each other courteous nods, and I sat down on the other side of the waiting area, trying to pretend like I wasn't crying.

After what seemed like an agonizingly long time, we finally got to board the plane. My classmate (whose name I've honestly forgotten - let's call him Nick, because I'm fairly sure it was some variant of a generic male nickname) boarded a few minutes after me and slowly made his way to his seat, immediately next to mine. Courteous nods again as I stifled back more tears. We both put on our headphones and continued to ignore each other while the cabin slowly filled with other passengers and the plane took to the air.

About an hour and a half into the flight, after they had started whatever in-flight movie we were effectively forced to watch in the small screens in the back of every seat, the flight dramatically left the realm of "standard, boring over-seas flight" and decided to try a different angle for our in-flight experience: terror.

The seat-belt signs had been turned off, and flight attendants and various passengers were "free to walk around the cabin," but, like the obedient passengers we'd all be trained to be, the majority of us were still in our seats with our belts fastened.

Out of no where, we hear an incredibly loud boom, then deafening quiet, and the plane seemed to fall. It didn't start to nose-dive, like one would expect if it were going to crash, but instead, it felt as if it suddenly dropped about 100 ft straight down. And then it just simply kept flying.

Then the "fasten seat-belt" light dinged back on.

To this day, I'm still fairly impressed at how well the passengers reacted. Most of us stayed frozen, clutching our arm rests and gazing around wide-eyed at each other. A few people let out startled screams when the plane dropped, but, overall, no one, at least no one near me, panicked.

Except the flight attendants.

They were all prim and extremely proper, perfectly skinny, meticulously manicured French women and gay French men. And suddenly, after the plane stabilized, they seemed to turn into bolts of white shirt, navy pants, and styled hair, zipping up and down the aisles, rapidly shooting out bursts of urgent sounding French to each other. They looked like a panicked flock of odd, yet proper birds - like doves with a crocodile thrown into their nest.

The sight of the clearly distressed stewardesses began to unnerve the majority of the passengers (over half of whom were American, and, based on future events, didn't speak a word of French, like me), but the fear didn't really set in until the pilot spoke to us over the loud speaker:

"Uhhhh.... jemapanesajumouisxtjeaux. Uhhhh.... letimejioux. Uhhh... siseauis."

Those of us who didn't speak French held our breath, waiting for the translation.

The seconds ticked by. Then, the audible 'click' of the speaker turning off.

Nothing else.

I turned to Nick, who had also turned off his ipod and taken off his headphones, and I simply said, "what the hell was that?"

He shrugged, looking about as terrified as I felt, and daringly stuck his hand into the aisle to stop one of the stewardess-doves in might squawk. He asked her what the pilot just said, and what that loud explosion was. She fluttered his hand away with her wing, trilled something in French, and flew away, down the aisle.

Looking around, I noticed other passengers trying to catch the stewardess-doves, also to no avail. Evidently, in a crisis situation, Air France had trained its employees to revert to only speaking French, to sprout wings, and to flitter about, so as to ensure any non-French speaking passengers will be the first to die, from lack of instruction or situational understanding.

After what seemed like an agonizing eternity of confusion, trapped in a small, possibly unstable plane cabin with a bunch of worthless, panicking birds, someone finally managed to gain control of the loud-speaker and explain what had happened in English. It was not, however, the pilot (who had previously used the loud-speaker to greet the passengers in English at the beginning of the flight).

The voice told us simply that, "one of the engines has exploded," and we would be returning to Paris.

Our in-flight movie had been stopped, and instead, the flight map, with the little airplane and red line showing the completed route, had taken its place. Based on the map, we were somewhere over the UK - we could have easily landed in Glasgow or London and been safely on the ground and out of this potential death-trap in a matter of no more than 30 minutes.

But instead, we watched in confusion as the plane flew past all of these possible savior airports, and made its way back toward the English Channel. Where it continued to fly in circles for approximately an hour and a half. If we hadn't been so terrified, the red line showing the path of our plane on the flight map would have been rather comical - it tracked all the circles we were making in a big squiggle, right over the water.

The stewardess-birds continued to ignore our pleas to speak English, and they refused people's pleas for beverages - even water. If someone tried to get up to go to the bathroom, they would swarm the poor passenger, squawking wildly and flapping their wings until the passenger gave up and retreated back to his seat.

Finally, we heard through other passengers that the plane had to waste fuel before it could land. Being a large airplane on the beginning of an over-seas flight, the tanks were still very full of fuel, and, evidently, it was risky to try and land the plane with that much flammable gas and only three engines. So we remained trapped in plane, making slow squiggles over the English Channel, for nearly two hours before we could safely land back in Paris.

Once we landed (with no further incident), we were ushered into a waiting area of the Charles De Gaulle and told a new plane was being prepared for us, and we would be able to re-board soon. Nearly four hours later, the plane was finally ready. This one managed to fly us all the way to Cincinnati without incident.

Along the way, through this whole ordeal, Nick and I actually began to talk and discovered that we didn't actually hate each other. At least not enough to not be able to put our differences aside and both entertain and joke with each other through the terror of getting on another plane.

By the time we landed in Cincinnati, it was well after 1am. The second leg of our flight, from Cincinnati to Omaha, had left around 8pm. Together, Nick and I made our way through Customs and to the desk the airport had set up specifically for our flight - because the delay was mechanical, Air France was footing the bill to put every single passenger up in a hotel overnight. Nick and I took a shuttle to the hotel we were assigned and planned to meet each other in the lobby to get some food together, after checking in to our rooms. However, the hotel restaurant had long since closed, and the only thing open was the hotel bar and dance club (don't all hotels have a bar and dance club? In northern Kentucky, they do).

Since we had both turned 21 in Germany, this was our first time to legally buy alcohol in the States. We decided to make a celebration of it, and used all our meal vouchers on alcohol. We had to ask the bartender to ID us. Other patrons of the bar (surprisingly, not people staying in the hotel - this bar was so "popular," the locals actually frequented it) soon caught on to our "delayed 21st birthday party," and several of them bought us drinks. Nick and I even tore up the classy dance floor a little.

Early the next morning (after having retired to our separate quarters - no "hanky panky" was involved, despite what Husband may think), we met in the lobby again, took the shuttle to the airport, and caught our flight to Omaha, laughing and joking with each other the entire time. We landed in Omaha and walked off the plane together. Nothing like a near-death experience to bond two people together.

That is, until we walked past the security check point and saw our friends and family again. We both turned our own ways and never spoke another word to each other.

But no matter what happens in this life, we'll always have Air France, Nick. Or John. Or Tom. Or whatever your name was...

The Day I Flew Air India

On January 3, 2004, a plane flying from Cairo, Egypt to Paris, France had a mechanical malfunction and crashed into the Red Sea, killing everyone on board (mostly French tourists). However, because of the general world-atmosphere, until the cause of the crash became known, everyone immediately assumed it was an act of terrorism. In response, Air France cancelled all of their flights around the world for at least 24 hours.

I was in the Chicago O'Hare airport when I learned all of this. I was in the middle of making a connecting flight (to an Air France flight) that would take me from Chicago to Paris, where I would take another flight for the last leg of my journey into Berlin, where I would be living and studying for the next semester-turned-year-ish (and living in Communist Block Housing). I also had a terrible flu-like cold and was fairly heavily doped up on Nyquil.

Our study-abroad program was through University of Nebraska-Lincoln (not where I attended college - but our university didn't have the numbers or program support to do study-abroad for German students, so we were effectively out-sourced), and there were only around nine of us in the group. I have a vague memory of there being someone in charge, but in my Nyquil-haze, I can't recall the exact details. The airport was excessively crowded due to the number of flights that had been cancelled in the aftermath of the plane crash, so our small group huddled together while we waited for someone to give us some sort of direction.

Again, because of my flu-like state and excessive intake of sleep-inducing medications, the specifics of the next few hours are somewhat unclear in my memory. But I do recall that someone (possibly the person who may or may not have been in charge of us?) told us we had to run as fast as we could to the other side of the airport. At the time, I recall having no idea whatsoever as to the reason why. Perhaps they thought we needed to burn off some of that excess holiday weight we'd surely all gained? Or maybe they were merely trying to keep us entertained. Regardless, we obeyed like confused, obedient sheep being nipped at by a herding dog.

If you've never run through the O'Hare airport in a drug-induced haze, I strongly suggest giving it a try. There's a long section of the airport connecting two terminals that has moving sidewalks and a plethora of color-changing neon lights lining the ceiling and mirrors on all the walls. The rest of the tunnel is somewhat dark, so the overall effect (especially while doped up on medications) is somewhat trippy, to put it mildly. Walking quickly on the moving sidewalks gives you the impression of having super-human speed, the vivid colors are reminiscent of a light-speed journey through space (a la 2001: A Space Odyssey), the endless mirrors duplicate your being infinitely, and all the while a constant cautionary voice (God? Is that you??) booms overhead to pay attention to the end of the moving sidewalk. I no longer have any curiosity to try LSD.

When we got through the Tunnel of Drugs, our possible-leader took us into a giant room separated with huge glass walls. For some reason, we were still in a hurry. He/She told us in a panic to get our passports ready and wait in a line that magically appeared around where we were standing. I couldn't see where the line led to, but I could see select chosen people walking through turnstiles into the mysterious glass-enclosed room, which was filled with rows of chairs. Again, this entire area was packed full of people, all wearing heavy winter coats and looks of confusion and forlorn desperation. While most of this time is dreamy fog in my mind, I have an incredibly vivid memory of a boy about 12 years old, sitting on the other side of the glass wall, staring at us with an endless look that seemed to suggest all hope was gone from the world.

After what seemed like several hours (good thing we ran), it was finally our turn to approach the desk (the apparent goal of everyone in our make-shift line). The concept of a help-desk was skewed by the number of uniformed people running back and forth on the "help" side. They seemed just as desperate and helpless as the mass of us on the customer side. We were obediently herded to the desk as a group. A harried young female airline worker took all our passports without once looking at any of us. She turned to her computer and began typing at an alarming rate, then turned to one of the other uniformed workers smashed in behind the desk next to her, mumbled something, and turned back to the computer, seemingly with tears in her eyes. She sighed as she handed our passports back to us (again without once looking at any of us) along with a stack of papers that turned out to be boarding passes.

We were next ushered to a line that was evidently going through the turnstiles into the magical glass room. It was then that we noticed the guardian of the room. A massive black man (who was not wearing a uniform, in my memory) was directing all the peasants through the gates. And evidently, not everyone was doing it right. Every few seconds, his voice would boom out that someone had to "go back to the end of the line." In defeat, the coat-clad individual (or family) would dejectedly walk back to end of the room and rejoin the line on the outside of the glass room. I still have no idea why this was happening.

We got through the turnstile-gates without issue, though he did study our boarding passes with an incredibly discerning eye. Luckily, ours were not declared fakes. And with very little ceremony, we graduated to the glass room.

After several more hours (or possibly just a handful of minutes), it was time to board a plane. It was at this point that it came to my attention that the plane we were boarding was part of the Air India fleet. I have no idea how we ended up on this flight, but I now have a fairly good idea as to why there were so many available seats.

As soon as I stepped in the plane, I was struck with an instant nagging feeling that something was off. The plane just didn't feel right. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was because the plane appeared to be a Frankenstein of various other, most likely deceased, planes. The seat cushions didn't match the ones next to them, let alone the seat backs. The overhead compartment and ceiling panels were all varying shades of airplane-beige. The aisles were lined in worn strips of carpet, as if someone had just laid down carpet squares side-by-side. The stewardesses were all short, chubby Chinese women - but they were wearing Indian-style saris and bindis.

On our original flight, the small group of us students had seats close together, and we were planning on practicing our German on the long flight overseas. Of course, as we were now flying stand-by on another airline, our seats were scattered throughout the plane. The patchwork cabin had the most dreaded 3-5-3 seating configuration. Fortunately, I was on a side, but I was still the middle seat of a set of 3. The person with the window seat was already there, and I was pleased to see that he was a small, nondescript Indian man. I got what I needed for the 8+ hour flight out of my overhead bag (including more Nyquil), sat down, and buckled up. I took another Nyquil, then leaned back and closed my eyes, hoping I could just sleep my way through the entire flight.

When I awoke, we were already up in the air. Groggily, I opened my eyes to the unpleasant sight of broken ceiling panels and various burned out lights above me. As I came to a greater state of consciousness, I became aware of the person in the seat to my right. First I noticed his hand. I've never seen a hand that big before or again in my life. It was practically the size of the tray table. On his massive bratwurst fingers, he had several gold rings that were easily the size of golf balls. The presence of his obscenely huge body in that tiny coach-sized seat seemed to defy the basic laws of physics. He literally could not put down his tray table, because his presence engulfed the entire area between the back of his seat and the seat in front of him.

Seeing that I was waking up, he turned his head (no easy feat, considering it was practically smashed into the ceiling above us), smiled at me, revealing several gold teeth, and introduced himself as so-and-so. From Nigeria. He went on to tell me that he was a Nigerian prince. So here he was. The fabled Nigerian Prince of email-scam lore. In the (massive) flesh. And if he'd asked me to give him my bank account information so he could transfer his fortunes to it in return for many gracious riches of my own, I probably would have done it. His mind-boggling physical existence screamed of the truth of the classic scheme.

Soon after meeting my partial-seat-mate, the fake-Indian Chinese stewardesses (who spoke neither English nor Hindi, as far as I could tell), passed out our in-flight dinner. As it turns out, Air India flies complete with authentic Indian airplane food. I kindly refused, as even the thought of the meal turned my already queasy stomach. The cramped cabin soon filled with the most pungent airplane food smell imaginable.

Refusing the food turned out to be quite a mistake. The small, quiet Indian man to my left suddenly let out an exasperated sigh. I tried to ignore it. Another sigh. This one sharper and louder. I shifted awkwardly in my seat. A third sigh, this one clearly directed toward me.

I cautiously turned toward him, and he unleashed a fury of comically Indian-accented rage on me.

"You could have gotten the food and given it to me. I would have eaten it. At the very least, you could have just gotten it. It wouldn't have hurt you to just get the food and not eat it. I would have eaten the food."

"I... I'm sorry?" I squeaked.

Another sigh of disgust as he turned back to his own meal, which, evidently, was not only appetizing to him, but also not enough to satisfy his tiny stomach.

In an attempt to make some space between my disgruntled neighbor and me, I shifted my shoulders in the direction of the Nigerian prince. He took this as a sign of my interest.

"You know," he told me in his booming, rich, princely voice. "You are very pretty. You could come with me to Nigeria. You could be my princess. Would you like that? You could be very rich. They would like you in Nigeria. You could be my wife."

"I... um... I'm going to Berlin. To study German."

"Forget about that. You will come with me. In Paris, you will come with me on the flight to Nigeria. You won't go to Berlin. I will make you very rich. You will be my princess."

"Um... I don't think I want to, " I said, staring at the massive rings on his hand. They must have weighed several pounds each - they were clearly solid gold.

"Fine," he barked and turned away from me to finish his meal of airplane meat and curry, which was precariously balanced on top of the seat in front of him. He refused to acknowledge me for the rest of the flight.

I turned and faced the old, stained seat fabric of the chair in front of me as I took another Nyquil. "Please just let me go to sleep and wake up in France," I whispered to the magic green pill. "Maybe this is all just a sleep-deprived, drug-induced dream, anyway."

The next six sleepless hours of nighttime, trapped between the small, angry man who slept in his seat with his body twisted into a pretzel of Indian yoga and the enormous mass of disgruntled, rejected, snoring Nigerian prince proved to me that it was all too real.

The Night I Met a Nocturnal Squirrel

I lived in Berlin, Germany for a year-ish when I was in college. It was probably the most fun year of my life, and I not only learned fluent German (which had evaded me for the previous 6 years of German classes), but I made some amazing, life-long friends, and learned that I could handle living in a massive city by myself, including navigating any sort of public transportation. I feel like I had a huge advantage in life by learning how to use public transportation in Berlin. I'm sure other cities have much bigger systems, but I doubt many are too much more complicated, as Berlin was divided between two countries for 46 years - during the major development and planning of much of their public transportation system. When the country was reunited, the two conflicting systems merged together in a confusing, overlapping, spiderweb of German efficiency.

There are two different types of city trains - the actual S-Bahn (or city train) and the U-Bahn (subway), but both go under and above ground, seemingly without regard for the other system. There are Strassenbahns (street cars) in the East only. Then they have the most confusing bus system that runs sporadically throughout the entire city. I once had a native Berliner tell me not to use the bus system unless you were comfortable getting out and walking from anywhere in the city after the driver passed the last stop on the regular route and drove miles out of the way "due to construction," only to kick everyone off at some arbitrary location - because, more than likely, you were going to end up having to do just that.

During my amazing year in Berlin, I lived in the far, far east of the city, in a suburb called Wiessensee (or White Lake), with an absolutely wonderful family that I still keep in touch with and hopefully will for the rest of my life. If you know anything about German history, you know that East = Communist. We lived in honest-to-goodness Communist Block Housing. Our apartment building looked identical to the one next to it. And the one behind it. And every other apartment building, three rows deep, down both sides of a five mile stretch of road. Grey, concrete, block housing. The actual apartment was probably not much more than 600 square feet - and there were five of us living there (sometimes more with guests) - my German parents (Roland and Sigrun), their daughters (Louisa, 9, and Josi, 11 years old), me, the cat Mickey, a turtle, and some fish in a 20 gallon aquarium. We all shared one bathroom (with no shower - Germans typically shower with a hand-held nozzle while seated in the tub), and the kitchen could only fit two people standing side-to-side. But this apartment was an amazing marvel of Communist creativity.

Every single part of the apartment seemed to contain hidden storage places. The bench-seats at the table (in the one living area of the house) lifted - and that's where they kept the girls' underwear. The couch seats lifted - and that's where they kept the sheets and towels. There were compartments above the closet doorway - where they kept the dishes. All the beds had hidden compartments where the rest of the family's clothes were kept. I was always fascinated to see what would open next - and what incredibly common household good would be stored inside it.

The family themselves were fascinating and wonderful people. The father, Roland, suffered from a sever case of what the Germans call "Ostalgie," or nostalgia for the East - he was 65 years old, and had lived his entire life in East Berlin (he was only 6 at the end of WWII). He was retired when I lived with them, and he was convinced that Communist East Bloc German had been the height of civilization. He had a good-paying job (he was an armored truck driver who got paid as much as the best surgeon in the country - who wouldn't think that was a good deal?), he had a car (who cares if it was a Trabant and he had to be on a waiting list for 15 years before he got one?), and it was just a simpler time. His gorgeous, young wife (she was 16 years younger than him), Sigrun, worked for the East German police. As far as I know (she didn't talk about it), she JUST worked for the police - and not the Stasi police. When I lived with them, she was a checker at the local grocery store. She liked her job (and made extra money by organizing housing for foreign exchange students - and housing students herself, just like me), but it didn't make nearly as much as she (and everyone else) had made during Communism. Of course, as we know now, Communism is only so perfect in principal - it falls apart when actually implemented. Roland explained this to me in the clearest way I've ever heard (in spite of it being in German).

"In Communism, everyone gets paid the same amount for their job. Say you go to the store to buy a loaf of bread. You pay 76 cents for that loaf of bread. But think of all the people who have to be paid just to supply that one loaf of bread! The farmer who grows the wheat. The truck driver who takes the harvested wheat to the factory. The workers who process the wheat into flour. The truck driver who delivers the flour to the baker. And finally, the baker who turns the flour into the loaf of bread. All of those people have to be paid the same amount for their work - for which you only paid 76 cents. And THAT is why Communism didn't work."

Roland used to frustrate me to no end with his outright dislike for all things "Western." We'd be walking around our area of town together, and he'd mumble disgustedly, "look at all this graffiti! We didn't HAVE graffiti in the DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republic - East Germany)!!" "Well, Roland," I'd say as innocently as I could muster, "they didn't have spray paint in the DDR." Another day, we drove past this old, worn down factory. "That used to be the radio factory. Now they let the whole building go to waste. And they made the best quality radios there - not like this cheap western crap they sell now! We used our radio for 25 years, and it never broke once!" "Yes, Roland, but how long did you have to wait on a waiting list to GET one of those radios?" One day, at home, he was in charge of dinner, so he made spaghetti noodles, put them in a bowl on the table, and put a bottle of ketchup next to it. The girls eagerly and hungrily drenched their noodles in ketchup (while I sat mildly horrified by this "spaghetti"). Roland looked disgusted (by the dinner he himself had prepared), and said, "you Westerners and your ketchup!! You eat it on everything! I wish you'd never invented it!" "Actually, Roland, the Chinese invented ketchup... not the Americans (or so I'd just learned on the awesome German show "Galileo," earlier that day)." But the Ostalgie aside, Roland was a wonderful surrogate dad to me for the year, and it was a fascinating perspective that I'd never been able to consider before I met him.

Because we lived so far in the deep east of Berlin, Strassenbahns were the only form of public transportation I could take to and from the city center. On average, it took about 45 minutes one way from our house to the Humboldt University in downtown Berlin. There were several lines that ran our route out to the house during the day, but at night, there was only one, and it only came every 30 minutes. I had to take an U-Bahn to the train station at Hackescher Markt, then go downstairs, outside, and around back to my Strassenbahn station. I had a terrible habit of missing the Strassenbahn by about 30 seconds. I'd see it pulling away from the station as my U-Bahn rolled slowly in. That always resulted in a cold me, sitting alone at the station for another 30 minutes until the next one came along. On really cold nights, I would start walking across the city to stations further along my route, just to keep from freezing.

One pleasant night, around 2am, after missing my street car by the standard 30 seconds (racing down the train station stairs as fast as I could, dodging innocently disgruntled Germans on the way down, just to turn the corner and see the Strassenbahn pulling away from the station - too late!), I sat at the station and decided I didn't need to pull out my book (I actually took books out to the bars and clubs to entertain myself on these regular 30 minute waits and the 45 minute ride home), but could instead just enjoy this glorious, Berlin night.

The train station at Hackescher Markt was an above-ground station (for both the U-Bahn, the subway, and the S-Bahn, the city train), renovated to it's original 20's ambiance. The entire station was finished in a yellowish-orange subway tile, and it had huge arches over the windows, walk-throughs, and restaurants that were located on the lower floor of the station. I really loved one restaurant in the station because they kept the original tile, even on the ceiling inside the restaurant - the massive, stretching arches made for the perfect atmosphere for traditional German dining, accompanied by the regular squeals and chuffings of the various trains over head.

The Strassenbahn station (an outdoor, 3-walled shelter, much like a normal bus station in America (bus stations in Berlin are marked only by a sign - and that's if you're lucky)), was on the back side of the train station. There was an entrance to a night club on the backside, as well, and all the dumpsters for the various restaurants located on the main level, but otherwise, it was a fairly isolated place - just across the train station from a usually crowded city square, it was surprisingly quiet and relaxed on the back there. Except for the faint thumping of the dance music that emanated from the disco.

This particular night, while I was enjoying a slight Berlin breeze in the perfectly beautiful, warm night air, as I watched the occasional club-goers stumble drunkenly in and out of the disco, I noticed a big tree next to the train station, alongside several of the massive dumpsters used by the restaurants. To my surprise, there were about 3-4 squirrels running around the base of the tree! I'd never seen nocturnal squirrels before, but then again, for that matter, I'd never seen the adorable red-haired, pointy-eared squirrels of Germany before coming to Germany, either. I watched them for a few minutes as they frolicked happily about.

I decided, since I was one of only a handful of people waiting for a Strassenbahn, and knew I could easily get my seat back, to go and investigate these nocturnal squirrels a little closer. As I walked over to them, I noticed they were chirping happily to each other. As if red-haired, pointy-eared German squirrels were not cute enough already, here it turns out, they're nocturnal, AND they like to run around and chirp at night! How heartbreakingly adorable!

Smiling to myself, I crept even closer to these adorable German squirrels. I was about 5 feet away, watching them dance and play, when I suddenly realized one of them must have been injured - his tail didn't look quite right! Instead of the normal, big, fluffy tail, his was skinny, and seemed to be hairless! What could have happened to his poor, adorable squirrel tail?!

Then I noticed - the other squirrel's tails were the same way! How could this be possible? I'd seen German squirrels before, and they most definitely have big, fluffy, adorable tails. As I stood there, filling with concern for these poor, clearly abused squirrels, watching them scamper around, in spite of the trails they'd obviously faced in their short little crittery lives, it slowly dawned on me.

These weren't squirrels. These were, instead, the biggest rats I'd ever seen in my life. Scavenging from the dumpsters, running around the base of the tree, and squeaking wildly with the success of the night - clearly, they had gotten so big because of the constant influx of delicious food from the over-flowing dumpsters. These things were easily over a foot long, not including their tails. I'm sure they weighed twice as much as my miniature dachshund (who rounds out at a healthy 13 lbs).

Horrified, I made my way the short distance back to the station, but their squeaks followed me. I was convinced they were going come after me, and, most likely, eat my toes (or my entire leg - they were that big). I crawled onto one of the little metal seats (with holes in the bottom - how well with THAT protect me from their little ratty fingers and teeth??), and pulled my legs up (as if I could keep myself away from one of them - clearly, just one could overpower me, if it so desired). I stared in horror at them for the remaining 20 minutes of my wait - willing them to stay by the dumpsters and leave me in peace. But I knew they were watching me, laughing at my naiveté. Laughing their ratty squeak-laughs at how they ALMOST fooled me into being lured into their rat-lair.

Fortunately, in all the many subsequent nights that I waited for 29.5 minutes at that Strassenbahn station, I never again noticed the small-dog-sized rats. I did learn, however, that wild boars live among the streets of Berlin, coming out at night to scavenge from the various dumpsters and terrify innocent people as they walk across the various city squares. With that in mind, I consider myself fairly lucky that I only encountered these giant rats. Even a monster rat is no where as terrifying as a real life wild boar. Oh, Berlin, you fascinating city; a part of my heart will always long for you.