Archive special: there was more to the German exchange
24 Years at the Tap End archive edition
Thursday returned to Chris’s teenage German exchange.
He had told part of the story before.
This chapter existed because he realised there were several details he had left out.
The exchange partner was Andreas.
Communication with the family remained difficult because they insisted on speaking German, exactly as an exchange family reasonably might.
Chris was already tired of trying to understand it all day.
Relations with Andreas were not especially warm either.
School involved crossing an autobahn
Andreas’s family lived near a major road.
Instead of walking to a proper crossing or bridge, Andreas encouraged Chris to run across it on the way to school.
Chris remembered being instructed when to go and when to stop in German while traffic moved around them.
The experience became one of the more obviously dangerous parts of the exchange.
Scott was amazed that Chris had apparently accepted this as part of the routine.
Chris briefly became a German radio presenter
One organised trip took the exchange students to a radio station.
The British pupils were encouraged to speak on air in German after a song.
Chris delivered a simple link introducing himself.
For somebody who struggled with ordinary conversation in the language, getting through the radio sentence felt like a major achievement.
The German students appeared impressed.
It was an unexpectedly early preview of the career Chris would eventually choose.
Karen with a K changed the trip
The German school was mixed, unlike Chris’s own all-boys school.
One of the German girls was Karen with a K.
Chris fancied her.
His friend Paul did too.
The problem was that Chris had almost no useful German to talk to her.
He could introduce himself like a radio DJ and knew the names of several sausages.
That was not enough for sophisticated teenage flirting.
The competition became more serious during a large local parade.
Paul threw sweets, so Chris threw a sausage
The parade included floats throwing sweets towards the crowd.
Paul began throwing sweets back towards the people on the floats.
Karen found this funny.
Chris wanted to go one better.
Andreas was holding a German sausage.
Chris took it.
He threw it towards a man on a passing float.
The shot was perfect.
The sausage travelled in a high arc and hit the man squarely in the face.
Chris immediately looked towards Karen expecting admiration.
He received the opposite.
Karen was furious.
She told him off in rapid German.
Because Chris could barely understand the words, the anger sounded even more frightening.
Any chance of impressing her ended instantly.
The photograph won a prize
There was one unexpected positive.
Somebody standing nearby had taken a photograph at exactly the right moment.
The picture showed the parade float, the man and the sausage flying through the air.
This was before people checked digital photographs immediately.
The group only realised what had been captured after the film was developed.
Chris later entered the image into a local newspaper photography competition.
It won.
A failed attempt to impress Karen with a sausage had therefore become one of Chris’s greatest photographs.
His lessons from Germany were simple.
Do not run across an autobahn.
Do not underestimate an angry German woman.
And if you are going to throw a sausage at a parade float, make sure somebody has a camera.
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