Frauke, our former German exchange student, came to visit us in Magstadt just after Christmas. She was on holiday from her college classes and she and her boyfriend, Stefan, took a train down from Osnabruck to Stuttgart. She wanted to see our rental house, neighborhood, town and the US Military base where Cory was working. It was a lovely visit even though they were only able to stay for a few days.
Stefan and Frauke wanted to go sitesee around Stuttgart. So, early one morning they walked to a bus stop down the street and then rode to the train station. From there they took a train into downtown Stuttgart. After lunch, the two older kids and I joined them. It was a windy, bitter-cold, winter day and by the time we got downtown on the train, walked several blocks and stood waiting to meet them for a few more minutes our toes and fingers were numb. So we proceeded to go into the Württemberg state museum to warm up.
The museum is a former castle and king’s residence that now displays a vast and diverse amount of artifacts from all over Swabia (southern German province) from the Stone Age to present. We rented audio headsets and meandered through all the many rooms for a couple of hours looking at artifacts, paintings, ornamental church sculptures, and the king’s possessions including the crown jewels. We were actually lost most of the time as rooms and directions were not clearly marked even in German. Thus, we mostly looked at things in random order and sometimes backtracked. We learned to look around and try and open small, almost undetectable dark wooden doors that would take us through narrow, windy passages before opening up into another large brightly lit room displaying something completely different from the previous one. Sometimes these side doors would be locked but much more often when we had come to an apparent dead end, we would began to look around and retrace our steps until we found another small unmarked but unlocked wooden door. It was a great way to spend a cold winter afternoon.
Our washing machine broke while Frauke and Stefan were staying with us, so they helped us find a local electronics shop in Magstadt and translated for us during the repair process. We were also able to introduce them to some of our next door neighbors. After they had interacted with a few local people in town and on the trains, Frauke turned to me with a bewildered expression and quite seriously said, “These people here are so nice and friendly, but they are not speaking German.”
When I had recovered my composure, I probed, “What do you mean they are not speaking German?”
I mean they are not speaking High German.” Frauke replied.
Stefan joined in, “They could if they wanted to, but instead they are speaking a dialect.”
“That nice girl on the train said, ‘Oi,’ what is that? That’s not German,” exclaimed Frauke. Stefan nodded in agreement.
“Ah, you mean they have a southern accent?” I asked smiling.
Stefan answered, “Yes.”
“It just never occurred to me that you might live someplace in Germany where the people would speak a dialect of German,” Frauke said with a surprised expression.
The next few days after their departure, Cory and I repeatedly shook our heads laughing over our southern German neighbors who “didn’t speak German!”
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