My new career as a professional train wreck also meant I could dwell in wreckage wherever I wanted—preferably somewhere very cheap, as Internet magazine writing is enjoyable but not lucrative. As it happened, Witold was in year six of his one-year job in St. Louis. He’d won Non-Tenure-Track Faculty of the Year; he’d been made director of undergraduate studies—basically, barring a cataclysm, his job would be lived out in one-year increments in perpetuity. (That, by the way, is what we call “the new tenure.”) Before I moved to Ohio, he’d even bought a two-bedroom condo in a lovely neighborhood, in cash, for approximately the price I paid for my top-of-the-line Discman in 1996. No mortgage for him equaled no rent for me—not to mention, perhaps, the return of cohabitation, which might tick the fun percentage of a certain relationship up into the double digits.

“This place,” he said in the spring of 2013, as I grappled with being newly “academic-famous” (that is, not at all famous), and we lugged what remained of my personal effects out of the beat-up 2000 Saturn on the back end of our very last stultifying four-hundred-mile journey down I-70 from Ohio, “is exactly the right size for a young family.”

“Wow,” I said. “Are you proposing?”

“No!” he said.

“We’ve only been together seven years. Wouldn’t want to do anything rash.”

“Are you serious?” he said. “I thought you weren’t the marrying sort.”

I shrugged.

“And I quote: ‘I have no interest in participating in a patriarchal ownership ritual, thank you very much.’”

“Well, it’s not like I’d take your name.”

“‘I am nobody’s help-meet!’”

“All I’m saying is that I could really use some health insurance.”

On the heels of that grand romantic gesture, Witold and I were married at City Hall in a ninety-second ceremony. He did not shave for the august occasion. By our first anniversary, and shortly before my thirty-eighth birthday, that health insurance had already come in quite handy, given that I was three months pregnant. (Six months after that, it came in handier still, when the Schuman progeny had to be wrested from my uncooperative torso by brute surgical force.)

Our daughter was born in St. Louis on what would have been my grandfather’s one hundredth birthday. We gave her a weird Polish name. When she is old enough to withstand an international flight (or, more accurately, when she is old enough for me to withstand bringing her on an international flight), we will take her to Germany, and Austria, and Prague. I will point out the window of the train as the landscape rolls by—craggy mountains and defunct nuclear power plants; painfully bucolic villages and electric-green rolling hills; buildings that look older than God and that will make her think about believing in Him. I will show her Kafka’s grave (but probably not the mental-institution-turned-hotel where I nearly conceived her twenty-years-older sibling with a guy I didn’t even like). I will remind her that the ground floor is “Floor Zero” and the first floor is the second floor. I will extol the virtues of room-temperature mineral water. I will show her how to skin cooked potatoes with a knife and fork, and how to weigh her produce at the supermarket before checkout, so as not to get yelled at. When we invariably still do get yelled at, I will explain to her that it’s not personal; she’s not really in trouble; that’s just how Germans express their love. That will be both true and a lie at the same time, and someday, I will explain to her that understanding something and misunderstanding the same thing are not mutually exclusive. Someday, I will tell her all about it, but only when she’s much older. And only after the first time she’s waited outside a door that was created for the sole purpose of slamming in her face.

Acknowledgments

Many unsuspecting (and suspecting) individuals appear in this book, in forms they may or may not recognize, and it is them I thank most of all. They are not mere supporting characters in some loser’s narrative. (Especially the Germans: Ganz vielen Dank, und es tut mir Leid.) They are complex and real, with their own stories, and I hope that they do not object too strenuously to their roles in mine.

My oldest friend, most unjudging confidante, and staunchest supporter, Amy Boutell, good-naturedly hectored me to write a memoir “about all those losers you dated, etc.” For years. Well Amy, as you can see, I have many serious problems, and now they’re immortalized in print, like this.

Alia Hanna Habib is the fiercest and smartest literary agent in the world. I wish I could mail-order her a Sachertorte every day. Bob Miller, Big Boss at Flatiron Books, was willing to bet that readers might actually be interested in Germany. Colin Dickerman, my editor, is as insightful and supportive as he is merciless; the cohesive work of narrative nonfiction that you hold in your mitts is due to his sharp, diligent eye. (What is legally classifiable as nonfiction, that is—a distinction, among others, I learned from ace lawyer Mark A. Fowler.) I also owe an infinite debt to James Melia, who is better at his job than I once was at a very similar job in the same building; he is a wonderful and incisive reader, whose delightful well-bred Gentile millennial maleness also prodded me to clarify such mysteries as youth hostels, public school, Eastern European Jewish immigration, and urinary tract infections. The cover design for this book is by Darren Haggar, and the illustration is by Alice Pattullo who was given direction to “make the cockroach cuter” and did not resign on the spot. The lovely production design is by Donna Noetzel, and the production manager, David Lott, is the only reason this is an actual book and not a collection of chicken-scratches on a stack of index cards. Greg Villepique went above and beyond his job as copy editor. Steven Boriack has the not-enviable task of organizing publicity for an inveterate misanthrope who can’t go anywhere without a miniature person in tow. And Kersten Horn managed not to be a condescending pedant about my German, whilst still saving me from claiming that his Landsleute regularly go around saying, “Hey, you: shit!”

Dan Kois, my first editor at Slate, is my hero, and I’m sorry that I was Max Brod to his Kafka and disobeyed his only (VERY REASONABLE) wish, which was that he be credited as Bob Ass. David Haglund allowed me to file at least a dozen Slate posts about utterly random German things, which provided the basis for this book. Jean Tamarin, Brock Read, Gabriela Montell, and Denise Magner have been wonderful to work with at the Chronicle of Higher Education and Vitae.

In my very first conversation with Kai Evers, my doctoral dissertation adviser at UC-Irvine, he said to me: “I like to read things that punish me.” I hope this qualifies. John H. Smith’s Ereignis seminar proved stimulating long beyond the classroom; David Tse-Chien Pan still insists that I could get an academic job if I really wanted one; Gail K. Hart taught me about Schiller’s skull and the Bürgerliches Trauerspiel (and the unfortunate fact about force-lactating suspected infanticides); Anke Biendarra never bullshat about the job market; Glenn Levine taught me to teach. My associates at the IFK in Vienna (special shout-out to Björn Blauensteiner) were lovingly described in a chapter that got cut; my associates at USML and OSU made it in; thank you (or sorry). Karen Zumhagen-Yekplé, Samuel Frederick, and Bob Lemon kept me from wanting to set the entire profession of academia on fire, Michael-Kohlhaas-style (or possibly Billy-Madison-style); Sarah Kendzior, Karen Kelsky, William Pannapacker, Joe Fruscione, Liana Silva, Annemarie Perez, Dorothy Kim, and Adeline Koh remind me that I did the right thing when I left.

RTV survivors, you will always be my crew, even though I can’t throw down anymore and never will again. Ed, Akil, Patricia, Scalise, Adam B, Catherine, Emily, Josh, Dylan, Nicole, Nate, Eva, Raven, Mike G, Mace & Co. (“Wait, was it an AMPERSAND in the Character Bible? Or an ‘and’? I CAN’T publish until I know!”). You will forever be the most talented people I have ever worked with, who were simultaneously made to do the most mind-numbing bullshit at work imaginable.

Love and thanks to my oldest and closest friends: Brittany and Matt (and Huck); Frank and Audrey (and Zelda and Gus); Jacob; Jessicca and Caleb (and Olias and Apollo); Jill, Jeff, and Eleanor; Gretchen (and Adam, Juniper, and Hazel) and Liliana. Dana Lemlein, Willow Schrager, and Judy Sznyter all searched through actual photo albums to provide a richness of embarrassments from my years abroad.

Eunjae Lee, the wonderful caregiver for my daughter who had the nerve to go off to medical school, gave me four to six priceless guilt-free uninterrupted hours every week to work.

Readers of Slate, the Chronicle, and my blog, Pan Kisses Kafka, thank you for alternately puffing my head up and puncturing it down to size. And I’m forever grateful to the authors who took pity on a plaintive first-timer: Dave Barry, Pamela Druckerman, Rosecrans Baldwin, Simon Kuper, J. Ryan Stradal, and Mike Scalise.

My in-laws: Jolanta, Adam and Lauren, Lisa and Ken, and Monica and Sean (and Asher). Please do not read this book. Babcia Wanda, Grazyna, and Uncle Richie: PLEASE do not read this book. My extended family: the Schumans (read at your own risk); the Johnsons (remember that only He can judge me in the end). My nuclear family: David, Sharon, Billy Budd (yes, that’s a dog), my brother Ben (who, in accordance to disownment-threats, does not appear anywhere), Lani, Charlie (another dog), Milly, and Forthcoming Issue #2. In memoriam: Stephanie Green, Stanton Schuman, and Sam Schuman.

My husband, who listens (and listens, and listens…) and, more importantly, taught me to listen: you are the realest and best heart I know, and you passed that on to the small human who lives with us now—and then you cared for that small human while I wrote, and rewrote, this book. And, finally, my daughter, who was tormenting me from the inside when I got the idea, threatening to bust out when I got the contract, and cleaved onto my bosom, a sleeping succubus, for much of the composition.

About the Author

Rebecca Schuman is a columnist for Slate, where she frequently writes about higher education, Germany, popular culture, and parenting. She holds a Ph.D. in German from the University of California, Irvine. This is her first book. You can sign up for email updates here.

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Author’s Note

Epigraph