Nearly seventy years ago when my grandfather, Carl, was at Penn State, he became friends with a German exchange student studying there named Harold Lichtendahl. They got along well enough that Harold invited Carl to visit him in Düsseldorf, marking the start of a friendship between my family and the Lichtendahls that now spans three generations. When my mother was sixteen, she spent a few months living with them in Germany. Harold’s son, Tim Lichtendahl, did the same; he and my mother have remained close friends since then. In 2015, Tim’s son, Johann, stayed with me and my family for a semester and went to my high school, where he got to score a touchdown in “American” football! The last time I saw Johann’s family was in 2018 when we visited them in Düsseldorf for Tim’s 60th birthday party – that trip was one of my favorites that I’ve ever taken. Then Covid struck, and we were stuck on opposite sides of the Atlantic for nearly two years. However, in the second week of February, I was able to visit Johann and his mother, Steffi, at their home in Düsseldorf!!!
Looking back, that weekend was one
of my favorites of the whole program. After I arrived in Düsseldorf, Johann and
his mother took me through the Altstadt. We talked about everything: how university was going for Johann and for me,
what we did in our free time, just how…urinary Kölsch looks/tastes. A classic Düsseldorf
conversation. Then we grabbed a few Schumacher Alt’s and enjoyed the sunny
weather and a great view of the Rhine. I just loved getting to see them again! We
enjoyed a dinner prepared by Johann himself before he and I walked down the
street to a small Kneipe, or the German equivalent of a pub. In high school,
Johann was a member of Düsseldorf’s soccer team’s (Fortuna 95) Ultras club – for
the uninitiated, Ultras are the most dedicated members of a soccer club’s
fanbase. When we got to the pub, I realized that all the Germans there – about fifteen
of them in a private room – were former members of the Fortuna Ultras. So that
was interesting! I got to hear many, many stories from the heyday of
their group. The night was long, beer-filled, and soooo fun. I was just glad to
get to talk to real Germans – and they were excited to practice their English
with me! I only wish I knew more German at the time; I used a semester’s worth
of Genau's after just an hour.
We got up earlyish the next day to go watch a field hockey
game, and I’ve never felt more German. Johann and his friend picked up a few
beers (each) before the match, and I got a bright red mask to celebrate my
Gerresheim pride. The game was surprisingly fun! I didn’t expect to enjoy the
field-hockey side of it, but I picked up on the rules quickly enough and was
rooting against Köln with them. It turns out that
the game was actually quite important: Gerresheim was playing for a promotion
to the first league, which would mean better equipment, more exposure, and well-earned
honor. I had a blast and even made it onto local German TV when our team won! A
great end to a great weekend.
My quote for this week of the program comes from one of the best
novels I’ve read this year – Stoner, by John Williams. The book is about
an English professor in the early 1900s at the University of Missouri. Any synopsis
of this novel would fall flat, but mine is: Stoner starts out a poor farmer,
falls in love with the written word, and lives his life, for better or worse. It
was great – 9/10. So here’s a quote from a book about a man no different than
anyone else:
“Now in his middle age he began to know that [love] was
neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming,
a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by
the will and the intelligence of the heart.”
-John Williams, Stoner
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