I got up the next day, threw down some breakfast, then headed off to the Hauptbahnhof, the main train station in Ulm. Destination? Blaubeuren, where I would begin a ten-week intensive language course at the famed Goethe Institut, named after Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Here’s what our good friends at Wikipedia have to say about our guy Johann:
“German writer, artist, natural scientist and politician (1749–1832). Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on literary, political, and philosophical thought in the Western world from the late 18th century to the present.
A poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre-director, and critic, Goethe wrote a wide range of works, including plays, poetry and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour.
Goethe took up residence in Weimar in 1775 following the success of his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, and joined a thriving intellectual and cultural environment under the patronage of Duchess Anna Amalia that formed the basis of Weimar Classicism.”
The Sorrows of Young Werther, I had read that less than a year before during my senior year at Georgetown University. I had taken a two-semester German history course. I ate it up. Couldn’t get enough of it.
Anyway, the plan was to improve my German. It was only very basic when I arrived in Germany. Four semesters. Not much. Der. Die. Das. Mir geht es gut and not Ich bin gut. Oh, and the sei-form, aka indirekte Rede. I loved that. I remember today how Father Ron Murphy, my German professor, a Jesuit priest with a Harvard Ph.D., explained that to us.
I found the sei-form so cool, mysterious, concise, precise, clever. It’s how you communicate what someone else said or what is printed somewhere, but in a way that makes clear that it is not your statement. You are simply stating what was said or printed. Many years — seven, to be exact — later I would encounter the sei-form on a daily basis when being able to read Germany’s top newspapers.
Back to the train station in Ulm. It was another beautiful day. Sun shining. Skies blue. Some more of those puffy, unobtrusive, reticent clouds passing by slowly, patiently, gently, as if reminding us that the sun sometimes needs a mediator.
I hopped on a D-Zug. I’m not sure what the D stood for. Zug mean train. The D-Züge (plural) make all the stops, plodding along from station to station. Years ago they were replaced by modern trains. Those D-Züge remain in my mind, and in a strange way in my heart, however.
Depending on the station and its platform you had to step up high to get your foot on the first step, then grab onto a bar in order pull yourself up. The doors kind of flapped out from each other when opening. And they closed automatically making quite a loud noise as if to say: “Alright, Folks, did you get your fat butts on the train? I certainly hope so, ’cause we’re about to bolt this shabby, smelly, little one-horse town.”
So, there’s John Magee, twenty-two years of age, less than two days in the country, all excited, and with far too much stuff, included that dumb-ass bike of his. The Schaffner came to collect my ticket. The conductor. Why do we call them conductors if they were conducting something?
Anyway, I had my ticket. But wait. He asked for 5 Deutschmarks extra because of the dumbass bike. I should have given him the bike and kept the Deutschmarks. I paid instead. It irritated me. I thought he was pulling a fast one on me. Because I was a foreigner. Seriously. For a while I actually thought that. “He took advantage of me. I should not have paid.”
I’ve caught myself thinking those kinds of thoughts since then. Let’s do the math. That was back at the end of September 1981. Today is January 13, 2026. Forty-five years. Is that right? Math was never my strength. Thinking those kinds of thoughts since then. How many times since then? Well, how about several times a week? That would be — let me pull out my iPhone to use the calculator — 45 years times 52 weeks times three. More than 7,000 times.
7,000 times what?
Making a ridiculous accusation. Attributing motives to another person in a ridiculous way. Do you know how MerriamWebster defines ridiculous? Extremely silly or unreasonable. Absurd. Preposterous. Yup, that’s me, easily 7,000 times over the last four decades.
5 Deutschmarks. As if the Schaffner really cared about an extra 5 Deutschmarks. On a sunny September day. Back in 1981. On a D-Zug from Ulm to Blaubeuren. But wait, that’s the perspective of the Schaffner. What about my perspective, of the accuser?
Young man. First time in Germany. Foreign language. Dumbass bike. Five Deutschmarks. Nervous. Excited. And perhaps surprised that I had to pay extra for anything. Why not harbor the accusation? Why not attribute the motive? People take advantage of other people all the time. Right?
Anyway, we arrived in Blaubeuren, a sleepy little town nestled in the hills of Swabia, eighteen kilometers west of Ulm, eighty-some kilometers southeast from Stuttgart. I headed up the main street into town, asked for directions most likely five different times, to arrive at my Studentenwohnheim, student dormitory.
Gotta love those German compound-nouns: Studentenwohnheim — Studenten (students) + wohn (from wohnen, to live) + heim (home, but also asylum).
If my memory serves me correctly, out front in of the building was a man in his mid-forties. Short. Slight. Pale. Receding hairline. With a rake in his hand. A few sad piles of leaves here and there. Very unassuming. Shy. Perhaps even fearful.
I can’t remember if we spoke. Later I would find out that he was an American, ex-US Army, married to the German woman who ran the Studentenwohnheim. And they had two small children, girl and a boy, ages something like nine and seven or eight and six.
Cute kids. I would joke around with them saying Ich bin Johann der Grosse, I am John the Great. The girl would invariably giggle and respond with: Johann der Grosse macht in seine Hose! Let’s do the translation. Macht is singular for machen: to do, to make. seine is possessive for his. And Hose? Pants or trousers. Yes, you got it: John the Great pees in his pants, with Grosse and Hose ryhming.
Can you believe it? Barely got to a bathroom (Toilette) in time less that 48 hours before at Frankfurt Airport, and then I get verbally abused by a half-pint about me “going to the bathroom in my pants” (as in wetting my pants)!
She was a sweet little girl. Her little brother, too.