written by Rio Denali
I was talking to a friend in Europe earlier today, and was reminded of a funny story...
In the mid 1990's (during a previous life and a previous marriage) I lived in beautiful Gelnhausen, Germany.
Background information:- To receive mail in Germany, you must first register at a government office. (Similar to a city hall.)
- My German is bad. I liken my ability to that of a 2-year old; generally I can get my point across but rarely is it grammatically correct.
Now that you have the basic background information, let the story begin....
As I entered the town office to register for mail, I found myself in the presence of a friendly older gentleman. He was the only one in the office, and apparently things were slow that day...so he stopped to chat with me for a while.
He did not speak English, and I speak very little German, but with some patience we managed to strike up a long conversation. As I filled out the paperwork and paid the registration fee, he told me about his only daughter's upcoming wedding and showed me her photographs.
We talked of many things that afternoon, of family and traveling, of food and the local area. And, we talked about what it is like to be far from home.
He asked about my German last name, if my family was from Germany... Smiling, I told him he was correct. My father's grandfather was born there.
He asked if I knew which city? I told him it was Chemnitz (in eastern Germany, near Dresden and just west of the Czech border.)
He smiled and told me he suspected as much... and serenaded me with an old German song about the prettiest girls coming from the east...
Then he asked if I knew my great-grandfather's name and the year he emigrated to America?" I knew both.
We talked for a short time longer, before I had to go.
A few weeks later, I received my first German letter. It was official correspondence from the German government, and far beyond my reading level.
I took the letter to my German neighbor, asking her to translate. As she read, she burst into laughter.... asking me just what I said when I registered for my mail?
It turns out the letter was an official invitation to turn in my American passport. I was to bring it to a specific office to make the trade for a German one, and reclaim my German birthright. Apparently Germany has a repatriation law that allows people who can prove German heritage to return to the homeland.
It would seem that my German is worse than I thought: the man from that government office had filled out the paperwork on my behalf after our conversation. To this day I have always wondered if he was just trying to be nice, or if it was something I said?
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- This article was originally featured on RioDancesOnTheSand.com, a blog for the thinking person... Written by Rio Denali, a 30-something with peculiar curiosities, who makes the observations that many of us avoid. Full of useful links and entertaining articles, it is a fun favorite for the intelligent reader. For more great articles like this, please visit RioDancesOnTheSand.com.
