the naked spa
I arrived for my semester abroad and made my way with two enormous suitcases from the train station to the dorm on foot. It was winter, and the cheapest fare I could find routed me through three countries, two additional train stations, and a 20 minute walk which took 45 minutes because I had no idea where I was going and I had brought too much luggage. The wheels on the suitcase were too small for the weight and they had already broken, so I dragged them through the snow. I finally arrived, sleep-deprived and in tears.
The other exchange students were sympathetic; they had been there for several months already and I suppose had had similar experiences. In welcome, someone made me a rare delicacy in that part of the world - macaroni and cheese from a box which their mother had put in a care package that took two weeks to arrive.
We had time to bond during ski week, which counted for course credit, and for which I was wholly unprepared. I told the instructor that I had skiied before, which was not untrue. However, the midwest ski slope I was familiar with had a vertical slope of 100m, versus the 1000m drop in the mountains where the chairlift ended up. Somehow I managed not to break my neck on that first descent, and I overcame my terror of admitting my ski weaknesses so that I could continue on the gentle bunny slopes.
On our return, there was no room in the dorm for me to live, so I stayed with a friend in her studio in the beginning. She had an Austrian boyfriend and was frequently away. We hosted dinner parties where we finished off a bottle of wine before anyone had even arrived, and we celebrated Fasching in the streets with retirees in blackface (them, not us!) who insisted we try the local specialty, which I later discovered to my horror was tripe.
The director of the exchange program, Herr W., was a power hungry man who was the king of his little fiefdom far from the dean of his department. He organized the ski week, language orientation classes, and a trip to the local concentration camp. Shortly before I arrived, he even invited all the students to a “cultural” sauna weekend at which men and women had the unforgettable experience of seeing Herr W. wearing nothing but his cheesy little moustache and a smirk.
No doubt he had to deal with all kinds of ridiculous situations involving the young people for whom he was responsible - language issues, extreme homesickness, and public drunkenness. I was on my own, however; in the first week of classes, one of my professors died, so I had to scramble to find another course to replace it. Apparently he was also not responsible for picking up students from the train station.
So from my personal perspective, Herr W. was absolutely useless. He sent my mother a menacing letter to inform me that I had a week to find a “permanent” room or I would be kicked out of the program. I scoured the message boards to find a flat, but it was not straightforward. Under this time pressure, I ended up sharing a one bedroom with a Kurdish grad student. He slept in the living room when he was not demonstrating in front of the Iraqi Embassy. It was an awkward setup, as the toilet was in the hallway and was shared with 3 other families who either had no cleaning products or did not know how to use them. The shower was in the kitchen, three feet from the front door, with a moldy curtain that was barely wide enough to cover the opening. More than once, he had a friend over while I stood there dripping until the coast was clear.
Herr W. was apparently satisfied with this living arrangement, and I was able to finish up the semester without further drama. I am forever grateful to him for one thing - that he organized the sauna weekend before I arrived. The things you see can never be unseen.