I found these photographs that I took in the late 80's of a German exchange I did in Dillingen, a beautiful little city on the border of Bayern and Baden.
Cles went with me that year. It was the first time I took someone in my family besides my Annie. He had just finished the sixth grade, so I wondered at the time if it was a stretch on my part taking him while he was so young.
Like everyone who experiences a new culture, Cles did some things that were sometimes funny, sometimes interesting. He would smell his food, not just on his own plate and not just a quiet sniff. When I passed plates of food to him, he would put his face inches from the food and smell so loudly that he would wrinkle his nose.
I had talked to him about it. But he continued to do it every meal. Finally Erika talked to me about it. One evening at the main meal, Cles takes the main course plate in this hands, and he puts the plate in his face and snorts. I felt the need to be dad, so I took the plate told Cles to take whatever he wanted, reminded him about smelling the food, and gave him a little swat--more like a tap--on the top of his head. It was like what you would do to yourself if you forgot something important.
Tears well up in his eyes and his dimpled chin quivered like it did when he was young. "Ohhhhh!" Erica said while giving me a dark look. Willi chuckled a bit. Erika came around the table immediately and began doting on Cles. It was cute, but I was the one most embarrassed at that point.
The pictures are from the window in the guest room on the top floor. It was not only very comfortable, but it also had a beautiful view of the entire neighborhood. I only wish I had taken more pictures and actually labeled them. I am sure I have some pictures of Dillingen, but after 20 years, I am not able to identify some of the buildings I photographed.
Each day Cles and I would teach Cles German, and every day when we walked together to school, I would drill verbs with him. Cles would use the language too, more than some of my students who had had five years of German in the classroom who refused to try to speak.
The summer of 1988 was the last year that I taught in Malad. This exchange was one that was truly magical--it was in Southern Germany where I always wanted to be, and it was in a small city where I always wanted to visit. The people were so nice and the area was so beautiful. The summer days were full of endless blue skies, and Willi and Erica's house was in a spot that had a "rural" feeling. It was far enough outside the city that you didn't hear traffic.
During that final exchange I did in Malad, I decided that it would be my best one for the students there. We had a beautiful city. We developed many friendships there. And we traveled to fantastic places.
We spent five to seven days in Italy, and we spent another nine days in Austria. I knew I was leaving for Idaho Falls, and Ann was already trying to sell our house in Malad while Cles and I were in Germany.
Three weeks before leaving on the trip with my students, my slimy principle I worked for in Malad for almost nine years told me that I would be teaching only English there in the future, since he hired a Home Economics teacher from Soda Springs who would begin teaching Spanish classes. He told me that they did not want anything competing with this new program. I had a job in Idaho Falls two days after that conversation.
I did everything to make the trip memorable for Malad students, since I knew it would be the last one I would do for them, and from what the principle told me, I assumed it would be the last one anyone could do for them, since he told me the program would no longer exist at the high school.
Cles and I were sitting at a table in a restaurant during one of our long trips. The students sat separately and were whispering and laughing at me. When I asked them what was so funny, one girl said, "We know something you don't know."
I don't remember what else she said, but she implied that she knew about my no longer teaching German in Malad. They knew how hard I had worked in Malad to create the program I had developed there, and they knew how sensitive I was to hearing anything that threatened to weaken what I had done. All of them knew how angry something like that would make me.
My reaction was shocking to them. "I know something you don't know," I said grinning from ear to ear. I then told them that I would be teaching German the next year, just not in Malad. Their reaction was interesting. I was anger, shock, amazement.
Ann began getting calls in Malad from people who were upset about our leaving. And then Ann called me. That year I took Joe and Louise Davis with me, a husband and wife team I worked with in Malad both as a teacher and formerly as a student at the high school when I was young. The plan was to have them take the students home while I went to a seminar in the German Democratic Republic. Only 25 teachers from the U.S. were able to participate in that program, and it was both an honor to be selected and an opportunity to visit a university in former East Germany.
Once the word was out in Malad that we were leaving, the time was prime to sell the house. Ann called and told me that either I would come home with the rest of the group or she would tell the superintendent that I would return to Malad School District. I changed my ticket the next day.
Cles wanted to attend a Judo class that afternoon, so Willi and Erica and I told him to stay at the school until we returned. We expected to be back by 5:00 p.m. It was 10:00 p.m. when we returned, and we could not find Cles anywhere. We looked everywhere near the school, but Cles was not there.
We drove home and found Cles sitting in a chair in the garden area sipping a soda and eating a candy bar. I gave Cles a 5 DM coin to use, and I made sure that he had one in his pocket every day, so he did not have to ask his "dad" for money when we went somewhere. Cles did not insist on that, but I could see that it was nice to do that, and a couple of the students had teased Cles about asking me for money. He would step up to a counter in a store and say perfectly to anyone what he wanted in German. It made me proud, because my students who could have done that and more refused to speak anything but English. The next week, Erika told me how one shopkeeper had smiled as he told her about the little American who spoke German.
The garden area at Willi and Erica's house was beautiful. They had a little pond with plants, and they originally had purchased frogs for it, but they never stayed in the pond.
Cles walking home alone and stopping at a store along the way to buy a soda and candy might not be significant for some, but for me, it was amazing. Dillingen was a small town for German standards, but it had 20,000 people living there.
One field trip we did while there was a visit to Blautopf, the site of this beautiful spring that feeds into the Blau--a river that eventually feeds into the Danube, or the Donau as it is known in German speaking countries.
I found this picture online which shows the spring in late fall or early winter. It is in my opinion one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.
On weekends during the exchange when Erika had a lot of papers to read, Willi would take me on little trips. These lengthy afternoon rides would take us through beautiful country, occasionally across the border into Austria.
I would have been content to walk about the streets in Dillingen, but my friends there were incredible hosts. It is a regret I have about not being able to travel like I once could. It would be so nice to see Dillingen and my friends there again, but I do have the pictures and the memories.
When I was in Dillingen on the second trip with a group from Idaho Falls, I traveled to Stuttgart to see Pink Floyd in concert at Neckar Stadion. I remember telling Willi and Erica how difficult it was to understand the German dialect in Stuttgart. Years later when I did an exchange in Stuttgart, I remember how easy it was to understand the German there. While in Dillingen, I never realized that their dialect was the one I had become accustomed to hearing: a mixture of Schwabisch and Bayerisch that is like music to my ear.
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