Germans now know how Poles call Poland. We speak English of course. My German is limited to only a couple of random phrases remaining from my university course. Something about one calling one’s dog. Not enough for even a limited conversation. The Germans are coming back from vacations in US. ‘Boston’ – they say slowly – ‘is an expensive city’. Which it is. Even if you allow for a nice boost related to spending Euros and not dollars.
We talk on the plane to Amsterdam. They ask for white wine like someone who never ordered wine before. I still remember the feeling: free booze and the suspicion that there is a trick somewhere. They are asked if they are twenty one. To which they say yes. Not very convinced flight attendant gives them wine. After all we probably left by then the airspace of the most puritan country on the globe.
Besides, those are really cute Germans: blue eyes and sandy sandy hair type. They remind me of Patrick: one of the first Germans I met in person. We were all seating on the beach near Gdansk many, many, many years ago. Some kind of future leaders conference that started popping out and gave poor students an opportunity to make some money working as hosts and translators. It felt strange then. We were a group of people from various countries, not all of us spoke English well and we still managed to have tons of fun. The guy from the States was imitating our English accents. That is what people from the States do to make up for not actually knowing any other language. We were playing stupid word games. Telling stories from the world suddenly and unexpectedly not divided any more into clean us vs. them categories. It was a nice, warm, short June night that followed really hot day. We were sitting by the fire and I probably was saying something about how unusual it was. Just because I always say something like that. And then Patrick said suddenly: ‘I do not really look like a typical German’.
International crowd politely did not say anything. Patrick could not look more German if he tried. There were shameful times in the history of the old continent, when his face could be featured on the worst propaganda posters. People whose names I don’t care to mention here, would have been proud of the way he looked. But Patrick visibly hated those people. And we did not care that he was handsome in an Aryan way. So after a moment of awkward silence we weakly agreed. We agreed – defying reality of his blond hair and impossibly blue eyes. He had more wine and then, as if suspecting that something was amiss, he insisted on speaking French. We let him.
Back to modern cute Germans. They share impressions from their American vacations. Standard trip. Toronto, Chicago, Niagara falls - mispronouncing the falls name the way entire non-english speaking world does that so I do not even think about correcting them. I know several native speaker who spell it Naiagra so why bother…
Then they ask about me. ‘Poland’, I say, ‘Gdansk’, ‘Danzig’, I add. Since I call both Lviv and Vilnius using their Polish names I want to let them know it’s cool with me no matter which name they use. Patrick, by the way, would not be caught dead calling Danzig anything but Gdansk. But Patrick called his home city Köln – Cologne.
‘Yes’, my Germans say. ‘Polen’, they say. ‘Polska’, they say.
Which sounds strange in the middle of an English sentence spoken with a German accent. I should not be surprised. They have seen it on TV during football match during world cup or Euro cup. They have heard it yelled by people with faces painted red and white. Why wouldn’t they know how to pronounce it. Polen. Polska.
They do not remember the Wall, they were never in their life stopped on a French-German border and asked for a passport. They have younger siblings who will never understand that how one can be stopped on Polish-German border either. They would be surprised to hear about Patrick. And Patrick probably does not give the damn about how German he looks any more either. Not even when drunk on the beach. By now he is probably worried about the fact that he’s balding instead.
We land in Amsterdam. The line is long and my compatriots who are suddenly numerous are – as always – masters at jumping it. Germans form the most perfect line of course. We joke about it. I am hiding my barely looked at passport deeply in my bag. No need to take it out until I get on the plane back to US. I manage to forget that my bottled water bought in Boston after crossing security line is no good here. I need European water to get on European plane apparently.
It’s time to say goodbye to cute Germans. They go to Bremen. ‘Brema’, I repeat in my head silently as if it was a name of a cool and exotic place. And then I say it aloud in the middle of English sentence.
‘Brema’, is how my people call it.
The damn Germans, as if they were bent on defying stereotypes, never stop smiling.
