Friday, December 25, 2009

A Christmas Tea

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to an 'Adventstee' by a new acquaintance, my so-called Tandem partner who helps me with my German while I help her with her English only we never end up speaking English and it's beginning to dawn on me how little I understand of her help with my German. As Hannah says, Birgit doesn't dumb it down for me. But she's fun and I have enjoyed the couple of outings we have had together. She has three grown daughters and was excited to have me to tea at her home. For my part, I am always intrigued, especially in Europe, to see the insides of others' apartments and what they serve for food.

The tea was set for a Sunday afternoon at 3:30, the day Hannah flew back to Seattle for her 3-week Christmas trip, and a good day for me to have an entertainment planned. It required a tram ride and probably about 20 minutes by subway, so I allowed an hour travel time. First misstep was leaving my apartment 10 minutes late, probably looking for my lipstick. This caused me to just miss the tram and have to wait another 10 minutes for the next one. Got to the subway station, a conglomeration of two separate lines, the S-Bahn and U-Bahn, which don't necessarily go in the same directions, and just missed the U-Bahn train I wanted. I had to wait another 10 minutes for the next one. Once on the train, I realized it had been an S-Bahn train I needed. Fortunately there was another stop coming up where the two lines again converged; however, I managed to miss that S-Bahn train by about 5 seconds while trying to determine if this was the one headed in my direction. Waited another 10 minutes for the next one and THEN had my 20-minute subway ride. I decided that tears really wouldn't help.

By now, of course, I was trying to reach my friend by phone to tell her I was running late but I couldn't connect. At 4:00 I emerged from the subway into the dark, unable to see any street signs. A passer-by kindly directed me to the street I wanted, which was at the intersection with another street of exactly the same name which somewhat confounded me as to which way to turn. At this point my phone rang and it was Birgit wondering what had happened to me. She hadn't had my phone number at home (she usually meets me after work) and had to call her daughter in Frankfurt to get it. My cell couldn't connect with her landline because you have to have an additional prefix for that here, which she had forgotten to give me, and her cell phone was off. The phone system here can be more than a little annoying. And so I arrived.

I was assuming that a daughter or two (English speakers) would be joining us, but nope. It was just Birgit, her introverted husband, and me. I don't think he was too happy that I was a half hour late and I had a hard time explaining what had happened. We spent quite a bit of time examining all the pottery their daughters had made in grade school before Birgit brought out the coffee, which I can't drink at that time of day. I had orange juice instead. Their English isn't much better than my German so conversation was a little jerky, at best, and neither of them seemed inclined to eat which was, oh, just a little awkward, given the poppyseed cake and platter of cookies they kept passing my way. I stayed for what seemed like a polite length of time and then bolted. One more merit badge earned.

I was really glad that I had had the foresight to remember a hostess gift, especially under the circumstances; not that Birgit needed mollifying, but it would have added a layer of boorishness to the all-too-obvious other incompetencies in language and use of train schedules.

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