Member-only story
“That American Family”
Vignettes from four years in Germany.
Stadtberger Straße 2e was a doppelhaus, or “double-house,” sharing a wall with our neighbors but making up for its slenderness in its four levels. It was smaller than a lot of places I’ve lived, but to me, each floor was its own castle. And despite this shared divider, we never felt cramped or heard the people next door. In fact, we were pretty isolated from the community, even though we were surrounded by a dozen or so other double-houses nestled together in a sort of semi-circle.
My family and I were just “the Americans,” doing nothing to dispel commonly-held stereotypes with our sloppy-looking shorts and sweatpants, or our regular trips to the nearby McDonald’s as well as the pizza place that knew us by name and sold Ben & Jerry’s pints. Dissatisfied with the grocery store’s unexciting selection of vanilla and chocolate or something in between, we bought far more containers than one would guess when considering that just about every other marked-up pint was subject to freezer burn. My family and I used to joke that without us, the American-style pizzeria would go out of business. When we returned to the town as visitors a few years after moving away, we indeed did find our regular pizza joint replaced with a more upscale restaurant. A coincidence no doubt, but the Vokoleks saw it as our mark on Stadtbergen, no…
