Aren't Those Free Trips With Students Fun?

Ann and I stayed in Berlin on our first exchange. The host was Freddy, and his wife Gidda--although I can not remember how to spell her name. I think you spell it B I T C H.

They did nothing for our group while we stayed there--at least not in the way other Germans did for us on subsequent exchanges when I asked about the possibility of taking my students on field trips, like riding a train to Austria to visit Vienna or Salzburg. I didn't expect them to do any extra work and I certainly did not expect them to pay for our trip. We just needed to know where to go to get tickets and information.

Whenever we arrived home from attending school and supervising exchange activities, we would eat with the family before going to bed about 10:00 p.m. or later. On one night at the beginning of our stay there, Gidda had left the windows open in the basement room we were in, letting in masses of mosquitoes.

The next morning I looked like the elephant man, bites over my arms, face and anywhere else not covered by the traditional German down comforter. My Annie's face was swollen with bites. I asked Gidda about it at the breakfast table. She smiled. And I asked her not to open the window.

On the following evening, we found the same thing. When we turned off the lights, you could hear the little angels buzzing about in the room. Gidda smiled again the next morning at breakfast. She even asked us how we slept. The third day was different. After Abendbrot--the traditional evening meal of open-faced sandwiches, Annie and I went to the mosquito den for another night's sleep. The windows were open. I went up stairs and asked Gidda for a magazine. I chose what I hoped was Freddy's favorite and returned to our basement room. She came downstairs almost immediately to see what the noise was. Already fifty or sixty squashed bugs were on the walls, some still weighted down from the previous night's meal. They were especially fun to swat, leaving little splotches of red. Her hands were on her hips. She wasn't smiling any more. I killed every bug I could find. It was my turn to smile, and I did it well and enjoyed it.

The windows stayed closed after that. I will always regret not asking her, while she stood angry in the doorway, if she liked apple pie. I would loved to have said to her, "How do you like them apples!"

The picture at the top was one taken by Freddy while we were at the German/American Friendship Festival. Can you smell the irony? He boasted about what a crack shot he was while standing at a shooting gallery at the festival. He tried first but did very poorly, only hitting a few targets, but he was not satisfied until he saw me do it. He probably thought that I would be unable to hit anything. He was wrong, not only did I hit all the targets, but I also won prizes for his two children. I was never in the army like Freddy was, but I knew how to shoot a gun, and I was a very good shot. Freddy did not like that at all. And the more excited his children were about the stuffed animals and about how well I shot at the gallery, the grouchier he seemed to become with everything and everybody. I kind of enjoyed it. The picture at the top is one that Freddy took with my camera while all of us were at that festival. You can tell two things by the way we reacted in the picture: it was the end of a miserable couple of weeks staying with Freddy and Gidda, and we had had all the fun with them we could stand.

One day Freddy told me he wanted to have me taste some "apple juice." He filled one extremely large glass. I drank it. He filled it again. And then he filled it again.

Then, while smiling at me and watching closely, he asked me to go with him out into their "garden," the small area behind a German's house where they plant flowers and other ornamental plants. I fell to the floor, dizzy from drinking his "special apple juice." He really thought it was funny, but it did not amuse my Annie.

The "apple juice" not only had alcohol in it, but it was a very high content of alcohol, even though I could not taste anything strange about it.

Over the years I tried to keep in contact with the Schelds, while I exchanged with Gustav Heinemann Gesammt Schule, another school in the southern part of the city. One time Gidda brought in strawberry desserts and placed them before each guest, and with me she took a spoon, and in front of all of the dinner guests, took out three large Strawberries and put them in another person's serving. Mine was already noticeably smaller.

I did not return for a long time.

Freddy once did a Fulbright Exchange in Malad, and his daughter came to visit one spring. She went to school for three or four weeks, and since she was there during the same time as my Berlin Exchange group from a different school and part of the city, I invited her participate in all of the activities, like going to California and Yellowstone Park.

Before the girl left to return to Berlin, Ann and I invited her to our home for a meal. We put on an incredible dinner, and then we spent the evening driving her around Malad Valley, seeing places she saw as a child and even visiting with a teacher the girl had had for a year, while she was in Malad as an elementary student when her father did his Fulbright Exchange there.

On my next trip to Berlin, I called Freddy and Gidda, and when they asked me to visit, I went although I was not thrilled to go there.

They were completely different that last time, and they mentioned numerous times how thankful they were for what we did for their daughter while she was staying in Malad for those four weeks. It was a nice way to say goodbye, and that is how I remember them now.