Four months after I had gotten married during spring break, I graduated with a bachelor's degree and a handful of minors. I told everyone that I was either moving to Germany or Georgia to live with my husband. He was stationed in Germany at the time, in a damp and depressing south-western city. Living abroad seemed exotic though, and I thought that I'd ride the train to countries all over Europe and publish a best-selling novel or world-changing tour-de-four of nonfiction so that I'd never have to work another day in retail. Things don't always work out as we plan them.
After he received orders to transfer to Georgia, I decided I would visit him in Germany to get a glimpse of what I'd be missing out on. He would be moving back to the states the first week in July so the only time I could go would be the end of June. That June, the college I had just graduated from would host my then-favorite author--Tim O'Brien-- and poet--Carolyn Forche-- at a writing program open to all. I was torn between taking a trip to Germany and enrolling in the writing program. I chose Germany, reasoning that the writing program would probably happen the following summer. Although the writing program did continue, the two writers never returned as guest faculty. I always wonder what work I would have produced had I been in the presence of such literary greats. Perhaps I would have written a best-selling book after all. Maybe the program would have been enough to keep me writing for a while, even if I didn't publish anything.
Out of school and having quit my job, I spent weeks researching places to see in Germany. I had mapped out a list of must-visit churches, landmarks, monuments, cities. As I walked past the airport partition to where my husband was waiting for me, the spinning, unsteady feeling of motion sickness washed over me and everything came through my blocked ears in muffled whispers. When my husband asked me if I wanted to take a train north or stay in Frankfurt all I could think of was finding a place to sleep off what felt worse than a hangover. Had I known he was only on a two-day pass from post I might have dragged myself toward the nearest train instead.
We spent the night in Frankfurt, then set out to Trier, a place my husband had visited with friends but not one I'd outlined pre-trip. We missed the connecting bus and when my husband asked a local in heavily-accented German where we should go, the blonde-haired blue-eyed twenty-something-year-old smirked at my husband's over-packed military backpack and worn wool blanket and said he didn't know. Most of the Germans we interacted with on our travels were as cold and unwelcoming as the perpetually overcast skies. It rained the entire two weeks I was in Germany and an all-pervading heaviness hung in the air.
After the first three days of exploring, I spent the remainder of my time in Germany on the military base. I had to climb in through the first floor window so that I could spend the night in the barracks. The city surrounding the base was the most depressing place I've ever been. The only thing that existed in abundance was bars and so we spent most of our time drinking. We'd run up hundreds of dollars worth of bar tabs every day, then stumble back to the base and sleep through the morning. By the end of the trip I was thankful I'd be living in Georgia even if all it had to offer was peaches.
We began our journey back home together. Our flights left Germany and stopped over in Georgia before I went back to Massachusetts. He would spend a few weeks getting settled before I moved down with him. I had a long layover in the Atlanta airport and we walked around looking for a place to have lunch. On the way we passed a table where a man was offering free American Express mugs, duffel bags, and magnets. My husband went immediately to the table to take a coffee mug, and filled out an index card with all of his information despite my warnings that he would receive incessant offers from American Express. Even though he didn't even have an address yet, they somehow found us in Georgia and sent weekly advertisements claiming he'd been pre-approved for a credit card. I found the coffee mug today in a box that has been collecting dust at my parents house since before I moved to Georgia. He never once drank from it.
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