My Kingdom for Some Oregano

I have been living with my Gastfamilie over a month now, and relations continue to be lukewarm at best. There is another boarder here now, a French student whose name I cannot spell and will only embarrass if I try, and his relationship is the same. Thus it has become quite clear to me that I am looked upon as a Mieter, a lodger, and that is all. I suppose that is all well and good, though I was expecting a little bit more from my experience of living with a family in another culture. Thinking some of the fault may fall on my end, I thought I might warm our relationship a little with a token of my gratitude. So, I asked the Langes if I might cook them dinner. They agreed, and the meal was set for this past Wednesday.

My mother has Italian heritage, and her particular recipe for tomato sauce continues to be the barometer by which I judge pasta.* I thought, therefore, that it would be nice to throw something together in this variety, since the Germans don't get a lot in the way of spices. My Gastmutter's kitchen, for instance, has four whopping containers of paprika (the Germans love the stuff), three shakers of cinnamon, a little nutmeg from the Weimar era, and little besides. I could not very well cook tomato sauce correctly with what I had on hand, so during my grocery shopping I went spice hunting as well. It was relatively easy to find garlic to brown, and basil only took a little longer. Oregano, on the other hand, appears to be wholly foreign to German culture. In three supermarkets, I saw not a hint of the stuff. I did find plenty more paprika, God help me. In fact, I asked for help everywhere I went, but this only made matters worse, since no, I didn't want any paprika; it's not even the same color as oregano, and yes I saw the Weisswurst was on sale, but no I don't want that either.**

Anyway, I managed to cobble together a decent spaghetti with baked German sausage and an almost acceptable tomato sauce. It was the first evening of serious cooking I had done since I got to Germany, and I was actually in rather high spirits by the time everyone sat down to dinner: myself; the Langes; Michael, their daughter Lena's boyfriend; and the new French tenant. I served everyone their salad and pasta, and we dug in.

I am disappointed by how the meal itself went, but I suppose I have my own high expectations to blame for that. Nothing particularly bad happened during the meal, but the conversation was not exactly animated, either. My Gastmutter thanked me precisely once for buying and cooking everyone dinner, and no one else made a comment regarding the food at any other point. I also managed to cook too much, thanks to both an unfamiliarity with the metric system as well as being used to servings sufficient for a hungry American family of seven. As such, the remainder of the meal was unceremoniously stuck in my corner of the fridge as leftovers,*** and no one save myself touched it again until I managed to eat it all.

On the plus side, Frau Zielinska-Lange was kind enough to take the occasion to bake a cake for dessert. She and Herr Lange left the table after dinner plates were cleared, but what remained of the evening became a little friendlier as the younger portion of the table chatted over our evening coffee. The french tenant and Michael even bonded over European heavy metal. In retrospect, I must admit everyone's moods may also have brightened because they no longer had to face my cooking. In any case, I was at least able to say that everyone ended the evening in some manner of positive bearing.

I haven't cooked for the family since, and I am not sure if I will again. I have comfortably accepted what is clearly a landlord/tenant relationship, albeit a somewhat odd one since we're all in the same small house. But what can I say? I am still very new to the culture here, and it is probably wise not to be overly sensitive to these early experiences. The experts all say culture shock can be at its worst around this time, so I should be especially vigilant right now about maintaining an open mind. I don't want to slip into a negative, snap-judgment mindset. That would just inhibit my experience here, and hinder my ability to use this once-in-a-lifetime experience to learn about a different place and a different way of life.

Besides, they're all a bunch of assholes over here, anyway.

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*As a good son, I should clarify that the barometer analogy does not leave room for superior sauces. I like to think of my mother's tomato sauce as a sort of Platonic ideal of pasta, to which other Italian dishes aspire through the pursuit of examined shelf life.

**And trust me, neither do you.

***Leftovers are a rare occurence in this house, and it has been my experience that this family looks on revisitng a meal about as warmly as most people would regard revisiting major dental surgery.