20 Years--Back in the DDR excerpt

 

This year marks my 20th year as a professional writer. Over the course of 2024, I'll be sharing a few of those offerings you may have missed along the way.

This week was National Fast Food day, which seems like a good time to feature an excerpt from my novel "Back in the DDR"

This chapter features an ode to fast food, through the eyes of a 13-year-old boy. 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Here Comes The Son

 

Because Debbie had to be back in Munich for the start of her summer school classes, we made the trek from Romania to Munich in one very long day. It was a 13-hour drive. Luckily, this time we didn’t get stuck by any cow-crossings.

I must admit, there was only thing I really missed on this vacation (other than flushing toilets): the title game of the European Championship, West Germany vs. Czechoslovakia. That game happened while we were in Romania, and there were zero televisions in the town. One of Dad’s childhood buddies heard on the radio that West Germany lost to Czechoslovakia in penalty kicks. Uli Hoeneß missed for the Germans.

               Speaking of the radio, I kept asking Dad to find a music radio station, but there was nothing. We did hear a few weird sounding foreign songs, and the ABBA song “Fernando” about a thousand times, but that was it. The event the entire continent seemed to be following was Wimbledon. We heard about it in all the Communist countries during our travels. The Romanian Ilie Nastase had made it all the way to the finals against Bjorn Borg. Mom and Debbie said they wanted to watch that match if possible. It’s going to be on television tomorrow. Debbie’s dorm gets AFN-TV, so we’ll hopefully be able to watch it in English. That wasn’t the case for the women’s final. Chris Evert was facing Yvonne Goolagong during our drive, and we listened to it on the radio…in Serbian. You haven’t lived until you’ve listened to a tennis match on the radio in a foreign language. I’m pretty sure Chris Evert won.

               As we drove into Munich, I made an incredible discovery. I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. There it was in all its glory, the Golden Arches, the Giant M. An actual, real, honest-to-goodness McDonald’s.

               “Dad, dad, dad,” I said, pointing to it. “Pull over, pull over, pull over. They have a McDonald’s here.”

               He laughed, thinking I was joking. I most certainly was not.

               “I haven’t had McDonald’s this whole year!” I said.

               “Your stomach thanks you,” Dad replied.

               “Dad,” I said, getting serious. “You can’t deny me a Big Mac. If you have a heart in your body, you will pull over at this restaurant. Oh my God, I can smell the fries. The fries, Dad! The fries!”

               “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt,” Mom said.

               “The boy is hungry,” Oma agreed. If there was food to be eaten by me, Oma was on board.

               “We can go there later,” Dad said. “First we need to check into our hotel.”

               I made a mental note of the path we took from there. By my estimations, our hotel was about ten blocks away from the best fries in the world. Ten blocks away from a burger with special sauce on a sesame seed bun. Ten blocks away from America.

               While Mom and Oma each checked into their rooms and secured a cot for me in Mom and Dad’s room, Dad drove Debbie back to her dorm, and Opa found a beer garden to have a Paulaner Pils. Meanwhile, I waited impatiently in the lobby. This was ridiculous. Where was the urgency, people? There was a syrupy Coca-Cola waiting to wash down a burger with three pieces of bread. That’s one extra piece of bread! How long was I supposed to stay away from that kind of American culinary vision? After about five minutes, I couldn’t wait any longer. I looked in my wallet. Ten Deutsch Marks. That’s plenty. Off I went. I figured I’d be back before anyone even noticed I was gone.

               I took two turns before I got to Martin-Luther-Strasse, home of what could very well be the only McDonald’s in all of West Germany. As soon as I walked into the lobby, and smelled that heavenly smell, I was transported back in time and place: to Chicago, after one of my soccer games, having a Big Mac as a reward. It tasted just as good here. So did the fries. The only real difference I saw was that they had beer on the menu. I stuck with the Coke.

               I cannot tell you how good it was. I took the Coke with me, figuring I could show it to my family, after I returned to the hotel. I pictured holding it up and saying, “While you people were lollygagging, I was paying tribute to the country of my birth.”

               Unfortunately, I might have been thinking about what I was going to say a little more than I was paying attention where I was walking. It didn’t really hit me that I was lost until I drained the last sip from my coke. I had been walking much longer than I did on the way there. When I crossed a bridge, I knew for certain I was hopelessly lost. I hadn’t even seen a bridge on the way to McDonalds. To make matters worse, I didn’t remember the name of my hotel, or the name of the street.

               I had been in Munich before, so I figured I should just keep on walking until I saw something I recognized, like the main train station, or the University of Maryland campus. After another fifteen minutes of aimless meandering, I came across a big park. I walked through the park and passed the beer garden near the Chinese tower, hoping to see Opa having a beer. No dice. So I kept on walking. I saw signs for the Englisher Garten. Might as well go there.

               Let me tell you something about the Englisher Garten in Munich. It’s in the middle of the city. It’s a big park. And nobody there wears a stitch of clothing. Nude. Totally Nude. Everyone except for me. I’ve never gotten out of a place faster than that. I know it sounds great to see nude people, but trust me, you don’t want to see what I saw. I think it will be burned into my mind forever. Some people really, really, really need to keep their clothes on.

               I had now been gone a good hour, and I knew I was going to be in big trouble. When I got out of the park, I started following the signs to the Altstadt. Knowing Dad, our hotel had to be in the oldest part of town. I walked by a phone booth and noticed a giant phone book hanging from a metal chord. I leafed through the phone book’s hotel section. Nothing sounded familiar. But one of the logos looked familiar. It was a lion, like the lion in the Löwenbrau logo.

               “That’s it!”

               I asked an old woman how to find the hotel, and she told me that I was nowhere near it. She recommended that I get a taxi to take me there. I knew I didn’t really have enough money to pay for a taxi, but I figured the taxi driver didn’t know that, so I flagged down a cream-colored Mercedes Taxi, and gave him the address.

               When we got near the hotel, I heard the “neener-neener” sounds of police vehicles. Something was obviously happening near our hotel. In fact, the cab driver couldn’t get within a block of it. The police had closed down the street.

               “I have to drop you off here,” he said. He clicked off the meter.

               “I don’t have enough money,” I explained. “I was going to go into the hotel and get the rest of the money from my parents.”

               “We can’t get there,” he said. “The police have the street blocked off.”

               “I know. I’m sorry.”

               “How much do you have?” he asked.

               I gave him every last Pfennig in my wallet. It was still well short.

               “It’s illegal to get in a cab, kid,” he told me, “If you don’t have any money.”

               I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. Boy had I screwed this up.

               “Get out,” he said.

               I didn’t need to be told twice. I was on the sidewalk in a second. The cab angrily peeled out.

               Luckily, the sidewalk wasn’t blocked off by police, so I walked past the flashing lights, and headed toward the lobby of the hotel. I was bracing myself for the grounding of all groundings. There was a very good chance I wouldn’t see the sunshine again for the rest of the year.

The police were in the lobby of the hotel. I walked past them and went right to the front desk.

               “Do you know the room number for Helga and Fritz Sieger?” I asked.

               The eyes of the front desk lady nearly bugged out of her head.

               “Officer!” she screamed. She pointed to me, and the German police officer came running over to me. He started speaking into the radio attached to his bullet-proof vest.

               “Yes, he’s here. I have him in custody.”

               What? The cab driver couldn’t have already called the cops.

               “Do you have his parents?” the cop said into his radio.

               “Yes, they are with me. We are on our way back.”

               “I’ll hold him in custody here until you return,” my cop said. “He won’t get away again.”

               Every person in that lobby was staring at me. This was worse than the water balloons hitting the Colonel’s wife. I was in deep doo-doo this time. Nevertheless, despite the unwelcome attention, and the scary bulletproof vests, I held it together. It wasn’t until I saw my mom walk in through the front door that I started to lose it a little bit. She had obviously been crying. Dad looked like a basket case too.

               Mom nearly broke me when she hugged me.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Lord. We thought that you had been kidnapped.”

               “Why would anyone kidnap me?” I asked.

               “Where were you?” Dad asked.

               “I got lost,” I said.

               “Going where?” he asked.

               “Coming back to the hotel,” I said.

               “From where?” he asked.

               I couldn’t make eye contact with him because I knew what he was going to think.

               “McDonald’s,” I said.

               The police officer chuckled.

Mom and Dad did not.

I had disappointed them again.