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The clock finally struck 13:01. The stupid clock was a minute late, but that applied to every clock in this entire language school, so that didn’t really matter. Everything was always a few minutes behind or excessively early, which was ironic, considering that this was Germany, and everything in Germany is on time except for the trains.
Jenna was forced to wait to get out of the classroom because of her fellow classmates’ shoving and pushing to snatch their phones from the box they put their phones in. By the time that she managed to get her phone back, it was 13:04, horribly late. Luckily, Jenna’s one and only friend in this sad place was waiting for her. Last Monday when they met felt like a decade ago. She and Raffia knew each other better than Jenna knew her friends back in Delaware. Oh, how she longed to see Raffia after every class. Seeing her smile or grin made her feel something other than malice.
Maybe that implied that she needed to get better friends, but that didn’t matter now. She’d work out her issues with her friends when she got back home. She was on vacation, but really it was just a series of mild inconveniences disguised as German class.
Raffia was waiting for her. She waved her over quickly, and the two of them began to walk down the Humboldt hallway down to lunch. The grey halls and stupid, strangely sticky blue carpets did not “gefällt ihnen” at all. It was kind of hard to see due to the lack of light. Germans were known for their enginuity… and yet, the motion activated lights never worked. Dear God.
Jenna checked her phone for the time, and she noticed that it was 13:05. They were horribly late. Jan was going to kill them if they showed up in the middle of his boring monologue about something or other half the people didn’t understand because they didn't speak enough German. A good one third of people were probably staring off into space. It was all the same stuff for someone who was here for over one week. That was ok. If anything else was said, the one sixth of people that were listening would spread the info down.
“Should we just… not go to lunch?” Raffia asked.
“Hold on,” Jenna said.
Jenna looked at her phone. She had taken a picture of the menu. Jenna was glad that it wasn’t the menu from last week. They usually forgot to change out the menu paper until Wednesday, so it was anyone’s guess what they got that day.
“Fisch und Gemuesereis”
“Oh hell nah, I’m not eating that,” Jenna said.
“Maybe we should just go there to get some bread. I have a secret olive oil stash in my room,” Raffia said.
“Yeah! We should do that,” Jenna nodded.
Suddenly, Raffia felt something peck at her Gay Croc™. It was her favorite pair of Crocs™ because it had the rainbow on it. It reminded her every day to embrace her lesbian side despite being alone. She was oblivious of the other lesbian right beside her because Jenna was too scared to come out, and coming out to someone wearing Gay Crocs™ felt a bit on the nose.
The two looked down.
There was… a creature. A bird, to be specific. Jenna backed away from the wild creature because, truth be told, she was a bit afraid of creatures to begin with. They were too unpredictable. Raffia also took a step back because she didn’t want her Gay Crocs™ to be pecked at.
The bird was small and pathetic, missing a few of its flight feathers which showed the soft, pale down underneath. It seemed blind in one eye, based on the fact that one eye was clouded over with white and it was looking at them with the one eye that wasn’t. It probably had something else wrong with it, too, but these things were the only things Jenna and Raffia could point out at first glance.
But, it was kinda cute. Enough for Jenna to feel a slight bit of empathy in her cold, maliced heart. Enough for Raffia to become insistent on feeding the poor creature.
“Look, it’s a bird!” Jenna said, pointing out of the obvious.
“Oh my God! Crazy! A bird in Humboldt! What are the odds?” Raffia said, her tone laced in sarcasm.
The bird walked towards them. Jenna backed away a bit more.
“Should we get some food for it?” Jenna asked.
“Probably. I don’t think it’ll survive on its own,” Raffia replied.
“Should we feed it Humboldt bread?” Jenna asked.
The two exchanged a glance before looking down at the bird. No, they would absolutely not feed the bird the stale bread. Only humans had the stomach acid capable of digesting the Humboldt bread.
“Oh damn, the watermelon we were going to steal…” Raffia said.
“‘We’?” Jenna asked.
“You’re my accomplice now,” Raffia said.
“Cool. I was planning on stealing other stuff too,” Jenna grinned slyly.
“I’m not gonna ask,” Raffia said.
The two of them walked past the bird, not before Jenna snapped a few pictures of the bird to send to her friends back in America. Mostly for Miles. Miles was Jenna’s only friend who she could relate to more personally. They both met each other in their worst phases of life: middle school. Aside from Elementary school friendships, those were when the best friendships formed.
The two of them went to the Spiesesaal, traversing the lobby and Haus 1, sneaking a glance at the Freizeitwand to see how pathetic the activities would be today. To their astonishment, they were having a Nudelabend, and there were still spots available! Jenna rushed over to the sign up sheet at the sight of genuinely good food. She signed herself up and Raffia. They then walked down the hallway to lunch, passing by abandoned rooms and lights that flickered just for fun. By the time they got there, Jan was waiting. Raffia and Jenna didn’t look forward to this sight. Jan didn’t look pleased that they were twenty minutes late to lunch. Being yelled at was made better to Raffia by Jenna being there. Her making a stupid facial expression or always having the most inappropriate thing to say at any given moment at the ready always made her laugh. Maybe a bit too much.
“Warum seid ihr so spät?” Jan asked, disappointedly.
Jenna and Raffia exchanged a glance. Jenna felt that she didn’t miss anything important. She had already been here for two weeks. She knew the rules of Stadtgang. She was going to break them regardless of how many times they were said to her.
“Ihr habt meine ganzen Vortrag vermisst…” Jan continued, a single tear running down his face.
Jan proceeded to sadly rant in German to them for the next five minutes, not noticing that they snuck off to the bread basket to get what they needed for themselves. As much as Jenna felt Jan’s great disappointment, the malice and evil in her heart could not be tamed without a sweet treat, so she felt nothing. Raffia could understand the whole thing better than Jenna, but chose not to care. Jenna also stole a spoon along with the three breads she took. She was planning on purchasing a Grand Dessert™ pudding and eating it in her room, something that would make one “earn a Konzequence” from Jan considering that the pudding was found in the fridge section and contained dairy. Truly criminal behavior, almost punished worse than balcony climbing.
They returned to their spots before Jan noticed they left. He finished by wiping a single tear from his cheek. He then immediately regained his happy demeanor.
“So! Guten Apitit!” Jan said joyfully, ushering the girls back into the lunch room.
Jenna stole another piece of bread to eat on the spot. She considered drinking some water, but she remembered that she has a wide variety of sodas to pick from in her room. Being American, drinking a soda felt like the natural choice.
The two of them left quickly with the food. Jenna ate the three pieces of bread as they walked because she was mildly overweight and very, very hungry. The only thing that was keeping her from becoming more like a New Yorker and biting people was the Humboldt bread and Humboldt hot chocolate from the brand new hot brewed beverage machine that miraculously produced good drinks. Unfortunately, the hot chocolate wasn’t as good as WaWa Hot Chocolate™. Oh, how Jenna missed WaWa™.
The bird was in the courtyard, wandering around blindly and pecking at plastic in search of nesting material. It was quite depressing to look at. Raffia wondered if Germany had a wildlife hotline to call for cases like this.
“I’m gonna run up to my room real quick. Be back,” Jenna said.
“Get the bird some food,” Raffia said.
“What kind?” Jenna asked.
“Anything! Go!” Raffia demanded.
Jenna sprinted up the single flight of stairs it took to get to her room. She rushed to her Zimmer, praying her roommate wasn’t there or something. Luckily, her roommate was taking a shower, so she wouldn’t have to deal with her for now. Jenna didn’t particularly care about what her roommate was doing in that shower with other people, so long as she didn’t ask her again to shower with her. She grabbed the cheese puffs a Romanian man introduced to her two years ago and went back down. She took some of the food out.
“Pspspspspspspsp… come here, yeah boy, come here…” Jenna said to the bird.
“Hey, you can’t tell that bird’s gender,” Raffia pointed out.
“Whoops, my bad. Pspspspps… come here they, yeah they… Come hither…” Jenna corrected herself.
The bird was offended by Jenna’s misgendering and misuse of grammar, and hobbled away slowly. It could also smell the malice in Jenna’s heart, so it didn’t exactly wanna take food from her.
“Damn. Got rejected by a bird,” Jenna sighed sadly.
“That’s a new low,” Raffia sighed.
Jenna handed Raffia some of the food. Immediately, the bird hobbled back. Raffia hand fed the bird food while Jenna filmed. It was quite nice, until Jenna and Raffia realized that they may be late to class if they kept this up. Jenna ran up to her room to put away the food, and she took the short walk from floor one of Haus 4 back to the ground floor of Haus 4, where their classes were located. Luckily, she wasn’t late to class.
Jenna got something out of her after lunch class because her teacher was actually good and wanted to teach the class things. He made a lot of jokes about certain recent events that applied to Jenna, but that was ok. Raffia, on the other hand, had six red bands in her class, so they all were forced to sing Bohemian Rhapsody and play Stadt Land Fluss for the painful ninety minutes of class. She feared that the kids would fight each other due to their hypercompetativeness. The ones who were under thirteen, the red bands, got to do stadtgang early. Everyone else had to suffer.
Raffia and Jenna got out of class last. They rushed back to their rooms so they could be in their rooms in time for the room check. This would decide if they could go to the stadtgang or not. Raffia and Jenna wanted to go shopping at Rewe together. The two of them had run low on snacks and drinks they needed to survive the Humboldt food. Raffia’s stocks, as she liked to call it, were shockingly low.
Raffia got to her room quickly. Her roommate wasn’t there, naturally. She probably went to the city already without being checked. Oh well.
As Raffia was hastily making her bed, she heard flapping and soft, pathetic cawing noises. Upon further investigation, the bird was attempting to get on her balcony from the courtyard. It couldn’t, because it could only fly about two or three feet in the air. This poor creature was probably missing a few flight feathers, as suggested before. Even if it could fly, it would probably just fly into a window or something due to its blindness and lack of depth perception.
Still, Raffia felt bad for the creature. It seemed to like her a lot more than it liked Jenna. Maybe it could stay in her room for just a little.
Raffia quickly left her room, rushing past the Betreuers who were doing room checks. In the time it took her to collect the bird from outside and get back to her room, the Betreuers had checked only three rooms. Any other person could’ve probably done more, but likely one person had brought a water heater with them and the Betreuers had just now discovered it by seeing it, not from the smell of tea and ramen in the halls, emanating from the room for a good two weeks. Maybe more, considering Raffia was only here for two weeks.
The bird sat casually on the table, auf dem Tisch, if you will. The Betreuer loudly knocked on the door, completely spooking Raffia even though she was expecting it to come. She let the Betreuer in. The Betreuer walked in, looking over her stuff and looking at her bed. The bird stared at the Betreuer, and the Betreuer looked back at it.
“Nice statue,” The Betreuer praised.
Raffia blinked, staring at the Betreuer before looking back at the living, breathing bird on her table.
“Thanks. I definitely made it at the Kreativhaus,” Raffia replied sarcastically.
“Nice,” The Betreuer replied, the sarcasm going straight over his head.
The Betreuer marked Raffia’s hand with a pen to mark that she had passed the room check. He left to go check Jenna’s room, not shutting the door behind himself. Raffia was appalled by the fact that he didn’t notice the very obvious bird, but whatever. When Jenna was done with the room check, she was quick to leave her own room because she didn’t like her roommate. They met up at Raffia’s room. Jenna’s bag was filled nearly to the max with soda cans, half of them being another person’s debt payment to her.
Raffia and Jenna looked at the bird before exchanging a glance.
“Should we take the bird with us?” Jenna asked.
“Yes, but… Who’s bag would they go in?” Raffia replied.
The two of them glanced at the bird.
“We should definitely name the bird something,” Jenna said.
“Like what?” Raffia asked.
“Crowatia? Because they’re a crow?” Jenna suggested.
“Now, now. We don’t know if this is actually a crow. It could be a raven for all we know,” Raffia said.
Jenna nodded, as if that were a valid point to make. It wasn’t like entire countries' names were flipped. Then again, there was only one logical option to name the Humboldt bird.
“Let’s call them Betreuer-Kun, because they’re always watching,” Jenna suggested.
“Genius,” Raffia nodded.
Naturally, the bird would be called Betreuer-Kun. This was because the Betreuers were always watching, but they were pretty useless. They were not the best at their jobs, but most of the Betreuers were very nice people. (If you’re reading this, you should know which type you are based on how many people suggest you should come back to Humboldt next year.)
The bird made a pathetic attempt to fly. It flew into Jenna’s bag, topping off all the cans. It seemed very comfortable there, so Jenna didn’t bother. It was also a very good fashion statement.
“Let’s go to Rewe,” Raffia said.
The two left the room together. The bird was somehow perfectly fine with being transported, probably because it couldn’t really see where it was going. When they got downstairs to the lobby, there was a massive line to the sign out sheet. Jenna could swear that everyone who was over thirteen was waiting to sign out.
Now, of course, the rule was that one needed to be in a group of three to go to the city. Since Jenna had a decent disregard for most of Humboldt’s rules, she ignored this. Jenna and Raffia figured the bird qualified as a third person, and if anyone asked, they’d put it in Jenna’s school-branded raincoat.
After what felt like forever, they both managed to sign out. They quickly walked through the park and through the houses. They moved through the city center. Jenna caught one of her old teachers smoking some cigarettes and talking to someone else. That was definitely normal. It was also totally normal to see some red band kid alone. Since Jenna did not have her sweet treat yet and that particular red band had wronged her, she snapped a pic and planned to snitch on that little idiot directly to Jan when she got back. That kid should’ve never told her she didn’t deserve her German citizenship.
The two of them made it to Rewe at last. Jenna’s first move was to go to get Pfand. She only got a measly 5,25 Euros. 2 of those euros came from Jenna’s cans, which horrified Raffia for some reason.
“You need to lay off the soda,” Raffia commented.
“You need to lay off me,” Jenna huffed.
The first order of business was to get a sweet treat into Jenna’s long slender fingers before her malice grew tenfold. At the fridge section of the Rewe, she found the perfect treat. A Grand Dessert™ pudding, the vanilla version. Like her.
Jenna’s mood significantly improved after procuring the Grand Dessert™ pudding. She walked away from the dessert aisle and went to the next aisle of importance, the can aisle. Raffia needed her mandarin oranges. The two girls walked together, the bird still sitting in Jenna’s bag like the true passenger princess it was. The two of them got to the aisle. Jenna longingly looked at the olives before deciding against it. Raffia got as many mandarin orange cans that she could carry in her bag without being suspicious. All the cans were checked to see if they were the same brand. Raffia couldn’t have any of that off brand nonsense. It would ruin the one time of the day she ate her mandarin oranges and let Jenna drink the juice. After getting the mandarin oranges, the two girls stopped by the ramen section.
Now, ramen was banned from Humboldt for a good reason. The people running this place didn’t want people cooking noodles in their room and making the entire place smell bad. That Jenna could understand. However, Jenna did not care about this rule like many others. She had no plans of cooking the noodles in her room; she just wanted them for Nudelabend. Jenna would sneak them into Humboldt, or she’d give them up to the Betreuers when she got caught with them in the Taschenkontrolle. Either one worked.
Of course, that wasn’t all the shopping Jenna would be doing. She needed her fix of sodas, naturally. Her last stop was by the fridge by the checkout, or Kasse, if you will. There was a variety of cold sodas she could buy. For example, all the Fanta™ flavors Jenna could possibly want. Her first thing was to take all the Tutti Frutti Limited Edition Fanta™. She spotted some Sprite Cranberry™s in the fridge, and took one with her despite it being nowhere near December. It was always a thirsty time of the year with Jenna. She thirsted for Fanta™ like she thirsted for blood. She took a few more flavors of Fanta™ before going to the checkout. The Betreuerin that was nearby did not bat an eye at what the two of them were buying. Jenna put the ramen and the Grand Dessert™ pudding she bought in the bottom. Then, she put all the sodas on top. She made sure one soda was out for her to drink upon buying. Malice could be fixed with a nice, cold Tutti Frutti Limited Edition Fanta™. The bird sat on top of the bag, sitting on the sodas.
The two girls hurried off back to Humboldt with their loot. They didn’t want to be late, as that would bring them actual consequences that both Raffia and Jenna feared.
When they got to the front of Humboldt, two Betreuers were waiting for them. Raffia was stopped immediately. Jenna walked past without a single care in the world. She strolled into the lobby to sign herself out casually. Raffia’s bag was searched, every crevice being looked at by the Betreuers. They looked at her with suspicion for how many cans of mandarin oranges she took; however, these Betreuers weren’t paid enough to care about this, so they let Raffia go free. She too signed herself out. So what if Jenna had the most contraband on her? Raffia was totally more suspicious. Jenna successfully and easily snuck in her ramen and concerning amount of sodas. Raffia felt that maybe Jenna wouldn’t have developed such a severe soda addiction if the Betreuers had questioned her sooner about all the sodas she was taking with her from stadtgang.
Jenna and her went to their rooms to unpack their stores of food. To avoid her roommate, Jenna went to Raffia’s room to enjoy her Grand Dessert™ vanilla pudding. She made herself comfortable on top of Raffia’s table, as Raffia did not have a third bed for her to lounge on. She pulled out her spoon to enjoy her pudding. Jenna opened the pudding and took a spoonful out. Raffia came over to investigate. The bird stared at them both through its one good eye, silently judging them.
“Aren’t those puddings not allowed?” Raffia asked.
“Shut up,” Jenna said kindly.
Jenna kindly shoved a mouthful of her pudding into Raffia’s mouth in a totally straight way. Totally. Naturally.
Raffia paused for a moment, questioning herself. Jenna brought a spoonful of pudding to her own lips to eat, ignoring the fact that it was just in Raffia’s mouth. Raffia felt she enjoyed that pudding a little too much. If they were sharing spoons, they should practically make out at this point, am I right? Unfortunately, Jenna was too consumed by the pudding to notice her friend blushing heavily and her own feelings. The pudding wasn’t even that good; however, Raffia tasting it first made it feel better emotionally.
When Jenna finished the pudding, she realized that the warm feeling inside of her was not from the pudding, but rather, from sharing an indirect kiss from Raffia. Raffia had frozen there in her tracks from the pudding. Jenna was about to apologize, but Raffia quickly shut her up with a kiss on the lips. That left Jenna frozen in her seat, on the Humboldt table, in the Humboldt room, in the Humboldt Institut. Raffia quickly ran off from her room, yelping something that sounded like “I’m going to dinner bye!” or “iamgoingtodiebye”. Jenna couldn’t process either one.
Never in her life did she predict this would ever happen to her in a German language camp. On the contrary, she hoped it would happen.
It was her one true dream. To share a kiss with a hot bae over a sweet treat. So what if she was in a language camp? That was just the backdrop to the main event.