By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
sallies@juno.com

The joke was on Dave.

“Anyone who goes to Germany in March is out of their mind,” was his oft-repeated explanation of why he was not planning to accompany me on a culture-intensive visit with our daughter.

“Besides, this is boating season. You go to Germany and freeze. I'm going back to the St. John's River.”

Well, if you were anywhere around Jacksonville in March, you know who froze. It's the first time I can remember that the man simply gave up and tied the boat to a dock to wait out the weather. It was cold, it was windy, and several times, he said, waves broke over the front of the trawler.

Once the boat bounced so hard a small hammock that swings from the ceiling jumped off its hook and spilled its contents — apples, grapefruit, potatoes, chips, cookies — to the floor. Dave couldn't leave the helm to retrieve them, so the fruit just rolled fore and aft as the boat plowed through the heavy seas.

Now it would give my plot an ironic twist to say that, meanwhile, 4,000 miles away and at a considerably more northerly latitude, I was enjoying balmy days and sunshine. I'd love to be able to report Germany's window flower boxes cascading color into the lanes of K–ln's old city, and that I quaffed cold K–lsch beer in the biergartens overlooking the Rhein.

Not exactly. There's a reason air fares to northern Europe are cheap in March. The weather was chilly-to-flat-out-cold, with occasional drizzle, mostly cloudy. Now and then the sun broke through, apparently out of curiosity, since it's such an infrequent visitor. There were maybe two days that I could go without a jacket, and then wearing a long-sleeved shirt.

Mary works for the opera company in K–ln, and has a small flat there above a bakery. That's less tempting than it may sound, because she is gone most of the day and gets home long after Nick's closes.

But the shop opens early, so it became my habit to dress and run downstairs to buy a couple of fresh rolls for our breakfast. Mary explained to the pleasant lady behind the counter who I was, and I quickly forged bonds with her. Or tried to.

For all K–ln's being a major rail hub which, with huge conventions and retail shows, probably sees more foreigners than most other German cities, it seems to me that English is not widely understood there, especially in neighborhoods like the one in which Mary lives. But like most Germans confronted with a foreigner's ignorance about language and coins, Frau Nick was patient.

It didn't take her long to figure out that her daily customer was going to spend only a couple of Marks at a time and engage in conversation that sounded like a first grader's weather report: “Good morning. It's raining. It's cold. Thank you. Bye.”

Maybe Mary should also have explained about the keys. I'm nearly as incompetent in the use of keys as in the use of German. (Believe it. I once called the police to get me into my own house in Peachtree City. All he had to do was take the key out of my hand and turn it in the lock.)

To get to the bakery, I'd step out into the street, pass the shop window, and enter the bakery's propped-open door. The door to the apartment stairs locks behind me. To return, of course, I have to use a key. Two keys, if Mary is in the shower when I reach the top of the stairs.

Uh oh. With two keys, and locks which may require toothed edge up or down, chances are three-to-one that I'll try it wrong way first.

Clutching fresh br–tchen to my unjacketed bosom, I'd poke and turn and poke and turn before finally getting that key in right, only to repeat the process at the apartment door. You'd think I could cut the odds in half by keeping the two keys separated for the 10 seconds it takes to climb the steps, but no-o-o-o.

Frau Nick must have wondered.

Incidentally, all this automatic locking of doors does not imply a bad neighborhood. Au contraire, I have never felt unsafe in any German neighborhood at any hour of day or night, not ever. It's just that this is how Germans do things. Doors are meant to be locked. Period.

I also spent time at Mary and Rainer's fifth-floor apartment in Gelsenkirchen. It takes three more keys to get in there — for the street door, then outer and inner doors. You do the math — I can't — and you'll see how the options compound when all five keys are in my hand.

Naturally, the right key is always the last one tried, and then wrong side up.

Trust me, if these were risky neighborhoods, I'd have propped the doors open so I could get back in quickly.

Dave was smart. He escaped the cold of Florida and came home after two weeks. I wasn't about to pay to change my Lufthansa ticket, so I stayed in Germany the whole month.

And — shivering — was unlocking doors just as slowly at the end of the month as at the beginning.

Back to the Top of the PageBack to the Weekend Home Page