Travels with Mickey: Germany

In 1994 I quit my job at Microsoft and moved to Germany. Let's say it was a romantic endeavor.

I had worked in Germany the previous year doing sales training. At that time our boss was dividing up the assignments and someone commented that I was the right person to handle the Germans. I still don't know what they meant. I didn't even know where the handle was on a German.

Anyway, since the German subsidiary didn't have a position I could fill, I decided to become an independent contractor. I knew people who worked independently and made good money. Of course I didn't speak German, and I'd have to go out and find work. No benefits, no security, no water cooler exchanges. I was 45 years old and changing everything. A new country, new language, new customs, new work environment, new friends, new monitary unit, etc. I was leaving everything that was familiar for a world I knew very little about.

In truth, my romantic endeavor would be of immeasurable help as I adjusted to German life.

One day early on I realized that I needed some hangers for my clothes. The German word for clothes hanger is Kleiderbügel. Kind of rolls off the tongue, doesn'tit? Now we lived in a small town about 30 km north of Munich called Unterschleißheim (Another tongue roller). Forgive the "eszett". It is a letter in the German alphabet that is sometimes represented as a double "s" (ss). Somewhere between s and z.

At any rate, going out on my own to shop and find things was an important part of understanding the language, the people and the way things work. I had taken some German lessons but I was woefully lacking in any conversational ability. 

So, I had wandered the streets a bit and knew some of the stores and shops in town. Logically, coat/clothes hangers might be found in a laundry. I knew where a laundromat was. I was half way home. I had the potential location of the Kleiderbügel and I could sort of say Kleiderbügel.

Upon entering said laundromat, I noticed a lady folding sheets. I sheepishly approached and said the magic word. She understood what I wanted but shook her head to indicate there were no hangers available. Well, I gave it a shot. I had tried. Not every encounter would end in success. 

And then, almost comically, I saw her raise one of the sheets above her head, spread it out and point in a vague direction away from our location. Not a lot to go on. Yet she was trying to communicate. But what exactly? Sign language and pantomime existed long before spoken language and there seems to be a facility that still exists in our brains. Think about all the pointing and gestures we use everyday to enhance and tailor our verbal descriptions.

Suddenly it hit me. In my travels about the town over the previous days I had run across one of those big tents they set up for temporary sales events. Could this be what she was referring to? If I hadn't seen that tent I wouldn't have made the connection, but it worked. 

Here was this total stranger holding this sheet up like a tent giving me the information I needed to find what I was looking for. She could have sent me away with a simple shake of her head, but she went the extra kilometer to help me. I could have hugged her, but a simple vielen dank ( Many thanks) would do.

Sure enough, I found my way back to the location where they had a huge clothing sale and out front of the tent were some barrels where people put the Kleiderbügel they didn't need and I did.

Now perhaps this seems like a rather lengthy account of a seemingly ordinary human event, but it has stayed with me for over 30 years. And it is the theme that runs through nearly all the experiences I wanted to share. 

Just to reinforce the impact these sort of encounters had on me, it was only a few days later that I was in a hardware store on the same street looking for something. I can't remember what I needed but I vividly recall that the clerk or possibly owner went out of his way to direct me where I needed to go. When it was clear that my German was nearly nonexistent, he raised his hand in the air and made a choo choo sound while moving his hand up and down and pointing in the opposite direction. Once again, I was familiar enough with the town to realize he was telling me I needed to go to the railroad crossing several blocks away. 

Again, no hugs, just a heartfelt danke schon.

I'm positive neither of those people remember helping me that day. It was a small, in some ways insignificant, gesture. But here I am telling you about it 30 years later. The impact we have on others, no matter how minor, is seldom realized in the moment, but can leave an impression that lasts a lifetime. There's our true legacy my friends.