Monika

Note: This is an excerpt from a larger work: a memoir about my three years in the Army. In it, I have just been transferred to Ulm, Germany.

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In order to help soldiers adjust to living in Germany, the Army ran a program called German Head Start. Locals came on base to teach a week-long class that included some basic German phrases, some cultural differences between America and Germany and at the end of the week, the class went out to get familiar with the town.  My friends Dan and Nate took the class with me.

Our teacher was Gabrielle, a tall, fit blonde woman in her early 40’s. When I was 22, anyone over 30 qualified for geezer status, but Gabi made me re-think that opinion. She was friendly and intelligent and spoke with an adorable British-tinged German accent. All of the guys were crazy about her.

She taught us useful phrases such as “Wo ist der Bahnhofff?” or “Where is the train station?" She taught us how to say please and thank you, how to order a beer and other very important things. She educated us on various menu items we might encounter, and  not to sit at tables marked “Stammtisch”, which are reserved for regular customers, who would surely be impolite should they find a group of young Americans occupying their particular piece of their country.

Best of all, she told us how to ask girls to dance (but not HOW to dance, unfortunately), what girls did and didn’t like about certain American behavior and what is expected and acceptable on a date with a German girl. Gabi was great, and we all were having a wonderful time in her class. It sure beat spending all day in the motor pool pretending to work on our vehicles or picking up cigarette butts around the base. 

In fact we were having such a good time that on Thursday night, Dan, Nate and I decided to take advantage of the carnival/beer fest that had sprung up across the street from our small post. On Friday we were scheduled to have a half-day of class followed by a walking tour of Ulm, so a hangover was no problem.

The carnival was no different than any carnival in the US – the same rides, games and stuffed-animal prizes. But the beer tent - that was different. Inside the tent was like something we'd never seen, except as a  Benny Hill skit: There were rows and rows of picnic benches with dirndle-clad beer maids carrying three or four huge, overflowing beer steins in each hand. The crowd was singing, clapping, pounding their steins on the table tops and generally having a rowdy time. Along the sides of the tents were vendors selling whole roasted chickens, popcorn, bratwurst and even half a steer turning on a spit.

There was a stage with a lederhosen-wearing oom-pah-pah band that played and sang with gusto. The band was having a good time and hoisting a few, right along with the crowd. It was a spectacle and a deliriously happy scene. We could not help but join in, so we took a seat four rows in front of the band and proceeded to drink way too much. We’d been warned about the strength of German beer, but we decided to find out the hard way.

Sure enough, the morning after the beer fest, we were all hung over and not feeling very well. We had discovered the main drawback to weizen (wheat beer): Stomach problems. We all had varying degrees of diarrhea and gas, but I had it by far the worst. By the time class started, the diarrhea had mercifully passed, but the gas had not. 

Our instructor, Gabi, had an emergency, so another of the Head Start instructors filled in for her. Monika was around 30, small and trim with shoulder-length wavy dark hair. She wore a camel hair jacket and a burgundy turtleneck.Monika turned out to be as much a pill as Gabi was a delight. She took offense when people made small comments to each other and admonished them to pay attention as if she were teaching a third-grade class. Soon, the students began to react to her brittleness. Someone snickered at her pronunciation of cacao, which sounded close to ca-ca. This would not have elicited any reaction if Gabi were at the head of the class, but Monika’s personality begged to be punctured.

“What’s so funny?” she demanded.

No one responded, so after a searching pause, she continued. Her task that morning was to give a brief history of Germany in general and Ulm in particular. She told us about Albrecht Berblinger, ‘The Tailor of Ulm’ who in 1810, sewed together a pair of wings and attempted to fly across the Danube. Instead of flying, he face-planted into the river. A few titters filtered among the crowd. Again, no one would have laughed if Monika hadn't seemed so proud of what was essentially a failed inventor. After a brief stare at the titterers, she continued to regale us with the life and times of another famous Ulmer, who invented the German baby buggy. 

Nate spoke up and asked, ”So, he invented the baby buggy?” just to clarify.

“No, he invented the German baby buggy,” She replied, her cheeks reddening.

More titters.

She went on to tell the story of the Ulmer Spatze, the Ulm Sparrow. It seems that two men of Ulm, while working on the construction of the huge cathedral at the center of town, the Munster, were carrying a long board through one of the city gates. But they couldn’t get through because the ends of the board kept hitting the doorway. Dan and I looked at each other, a little confused. Meanwhile, I could feel some gas building up inside me. I had let a few farts earlier in the morning that were none too pleasant. I knew that when this one escaped, the people around me were going to know it. Therefore, I wanted to make sure this one slipped out quietly. 

“So they decided to cut the board in half so they could fit it through the door,” Monika continued.

“How stupid were these people?” Dan whispered. I tried not to laugh, as that would surely open the gas valve.

“Just before they started sawing, they noticed a sparrow fly up to its nest in a hole in the city wall. It had a long piece of straw in its beak, which it turned length-ways to fit through the hole. ‘Ach so!’ the two men said, and turned the board and proceeded through the gate.” 

As Monika said "Ach so!" she slapped herself in the forehead, which sent the room through the roof with laughter. The story was a cute piece of folklore in which Ulm poked fun at itself and the simple medieval townsfolk who built the Munster, but Monika’s sober delivery made it hilarious. I couldn’t control myself. Each spasm of laughter caused me to let out an audible fart, which just sent Nate, Dan and me into further hysterics. The smell was even more diabolical than I had expected and the stench quickly dispersed through the class. The disgusted exclamations of the other students just added to the situation. 

Monika was now in full paranoid freak-out, thinking that we were laughing at her. True, we were laughing at her to begin with, but now it was all about the farts.

  

“What’s so funny? What are you laughing about? I demand you stop laugh immediately!”

We laughed even harder, if that was possible. I had tears running down my face and I couldn’t catch my breath. A female soldier from the back of the room got up and opened the window, setting the class off once again. We regained our composure, but the Monika show was just starting. After we quieted down, Monika talked about Ulm’s history during WWII. When she referred to the war as “when the world ganged up on Germany.” Nate shot me a “What’s wrong with this chick?” look.She walked over to a map of the town and pointed out the various neighborhoods we would be touring later in the day. She pointed to an area called the Jewish Quarter. “We don’t have any Jews here now, but this is where they lived before we drove them out.”

Dan looked over to me and whispered, “Did she really just say what I thought she said?” She said it in such a matter-of-fact manner that I was stunned. She went on to describe various other town landmarks and then pointed to the Fisher’s Quarter, which was so called because there used to be a thriving community that fished the Danube. 

“You mean before you drove them out?” Dan asked. 

The look on Monika’s face showed that she didn’t understand the question. “Why would we drive out the Fishermen?” she asked.

After lunch, we walked down to the town square to meet Monika for the tour. She took us through the Jewish Quarter and the Fisher’s Quarter and pointed out various buildings, fountains and landmarks along the way. Eventually, we made our way to Ulm’s beautiful 17^th Century City Hall. It was covered in frescoes depicting significant events in the city’s history. Painted on a back wall of the building were were a dozen or so family crests with names written in Gothic script. Monika explained that these were Ulm’s most famous sons. She pointed out the Tailor of Ulm and the baby buggy guy and then started to walk away.

Before she got far, Dan stopped her. “Wait! Doesn’t that say Johannes Kepler?” he asked.

Monika replied flatly “Yes. He was from here, too,” and turned to continue walking.

I had not heard of Kepler at the time, but Dan, being a former engineering student, explained to the group that he was an enormously important physicist, mathematician and astronomer. His most important work was his discovery that the orbits of planets are elliptical rather than circular.We started to walk away, but Dan continued to study the wall.

“Wait!” He called to Monika, who was already a distance down the alley. Everyone stopped. Dan pointed up at another crest. “Doesn’t that say Albert Einstein?” he asked. 

“Yes. He was from here, too.” She turned on her heel and walked off.