Untertertia

I don't remember much from the first part of 1966 - except for my obsession with gymnastics and that fateful visit from my dad... The school year ended in April so there must have been exams and I must have passed because I advanced to Untertertia.

And by the time the April break came around I was getting pretty stressed. We'd been in Germany for a full year (with no end in sight) and I'd been at Ako (Aloisiuskolleg) for 8 months. By then I was speaking German with no discernible accent - some of my teachers didn't know I was American... (My lack of an accent probably resulted from having spent my entire childhood listening to my parents speak Hungarian and German - and mimicking them)...

BTW - while I'm talking about languages - one of my main sources of merriment at school was helping others with their English homework... Some of them had 'issues'... As an example: "In the heavens was hunting did he gone". The author of that particular gem was trying to say: "He was looking at the sky". I laughed so hard I ended up on the floor - the author wasn't amused... But I digress...

The whole "Hey - I'm in Germany" thing had gotten old... I was over the initial "shock and awe". There was nothing new or interesting about it any more... (Been there - done that...) It had just plain started to suck :-) And mom was feeling the same way. After spending a year with her sisters she had remembered why she left Germany in the first place... And my sister Kathy was pretty freaking unhappy before we even got there :-)

So during that April break we headed to the nearby U.S. Embassy and explained that we were stranded in Germany and needed help getting back to the states... Their response was something along the lines of "Good luck with that. Hope it works out for you." :-)

Note: We did leave Germany at the end of August 1966 so we obviously figured something out - but you'll just have to wait and see - it's a surprise :-)

Untertertia (the next higher grade) was a significant change. The academics were tougher but there was more free time and less direct supervision than in Quarta. Also - you had your choice of languages - modern (English and French) or classical (Latin and Greek).
Now you'd think I'd have chosen modern given that I already spoke English and had taken three years of French at Waldron Academy. But nooooo... I was under the impression that school was for learning so I picked classical... No wonder all my friends thought I was an idiot :-)

The Untertertia dorm was in the "Stella Rheni" (Star of the Rhine) - a stunning neo-classical villa that apparently came with the property :-) I'll add some pictures in a subsequent post... We had to hike down to the main campus for meals and classes but there were only 4 of us to a room (instead of 30). So yeah - it was a definite step in the right direction...

BTW - did you know that a cow can get totally airborne if you jam its tail down onto an electric fence? ... OK - I know that seems totally random but it's not: The path to the villa went past the school's pasture... Hacki (the musk ox puncher) demonstrated the "flying cow" phenomenon on an unsuspecting bovine one day as we were heading back from lunch... (I honestly don't know what he had against ruminants...)
And as it turns out cows aren't that stupid - after that incident they started moving away from the fence whenever we got near... Word must have gotten around: "Hey - did you hear about Bossie??? Just chewing her cud by the fence and ZAP! Airborne! Darn near popped an udder when she landed. Yeah - we think it had something to do with those bipeds."... But now I really digress...

The next few months seemed to take forever (for a variety of reasons) - and I'll leave that story for another day :-)