This is an attempt to record the adventures Vicki and I are embarking upon in our new lives together in Europe. To give everyone a quick background of the events up leading up until today I need to go back a few months, to the end of last school year. . .
I was finishing up my first year in Winona and, due to budget cuts, my position as a middle school music teacher was cut. I had been applying for music positions as they opened up, but unfortunately Minnesota schools across the state were in budget crises. There was a lot of competition (over one-hundred applicants for one position in particular) and the few interviews I received didn’t quite pan out. Of course there are no hard feelings to those who got the positions. There are so many teachers between employment with lots of talent and more experience than myself; I know they are doing good work in those schools.
My time was limited as I was traveling as a counselor with one of Blue Lake’s (a summer arts camp in Michigan that I’ve worked many summers at) international tours. The weeks continued and it was getting to be the middle of June. I had no interviews lined up and it was simply too late to apply for any more jobs that summer. After one last weekend hurrah with friends from Winona, I headed to Michigan and on to Europe.
While in Europe a family Dennis, Carol, Jodi, and I knew from our trip in 2007 surprised us by showing up to one of our concerts. Two years ago, we met the Herths in Wolfsburg and had a wonderful visit at the Waldorf School. Along with many interesting projects at the school and visits in the city, we ended our stay and Joe and Annette’s home telling stories and laughing for hours upon hours. It most certainly ranks up there as one of the nicest stays of the tours I’ve been on.
As I said, Joe and Annette, along with their son Benjamin, surprised us at our concert in Bad Kreuznach this summer. Annette had grown up in this city and they were visiting family while they were on their way south for vacation. They had wanted to see us all again because they had memories as fond as ours from the previous trip. We all went to one of Annette’s favorite restaurants for dinner and had a wonderful evening recounting stories of the trip two years earlier and the one from this summer. The laughter flowed like it had the last time we all were together.
While at dinner I mentioned my being ‘between employment’, the term I preferred to ‘unemployed’. Annette said that was unfortunate, because their former music teacher, Friedrich, just took a new job in Wolfsburg and they had filled his position. Although I have had fleeting notions of teaching in another country, and I have constantly been asked if I was going to teach music in Germany from my two degrees, I was not of the mindset that I would be teaching outside of Minnesota or Wisconsin this year.
After I returned to the states in mid-July, Vicki and I decided to move up to the cities and spend the next year subbing in the Minnetonka and Wayzata school districts. We found a beautiful apartment just a few blocks from Lake Calhoun in St. Louis Park and, for us, it was perfect. Right next to the city, a park out the back, spacious inside, and big bay windows looking out into trees (oh, and a dishwasher and garbage disposal) – we couldn’t ask for a better location or apartment. We walked to the local bakery for bread, to Whole Foods for groceries, to the beach for relaxing afternoons, and to the Caribou where Vicki was going to work as a second job.
Naturally, life never is simple and a week after we moved in I got a phone call which threw the current plan into question. Dennis got a hold of me and told me I need to email Annette because she might have a job for me. I sent off the email and a few days later I got a call from Annette informing me that the person who had accepted their music position bailed on them. They were wondering if I would be interested in the position. After getting a few more details they told me to take a few days to think about it.
I took a few days to think about it, talked it over with Vicki, and we decided it would be interesting to look into this opportunity (believe me, there was a lot of hesitation). I talked to Annette, told her about Vicki and asked if there would be any possibility of a job for her. She said they were looking for a half time English teacher, but couldn’t make any guarantees, as Vicki speaks no German. In the end, we were invited to come to Germany for two weeks to look at the school and have an extended ‘interview’ for the two positions.
We go to Germany; spend two wonderful weeks with Annette, Joe, and their family; go to Berlin; observe; teach; and return to America. They had offered us the music position, but had to discuss with the English department about the half position. Meanwhile, we were undecided. Vicki had a long term sub position with orchestra in Minnetonka and I put myself on the two districts’ reserve teacher lists.
Back home we spent more time weighing out the pros and cons of teaching in Germany and, in particular, the Waldorf School. In the end, we decided that the chance to teach in a foreign country was too precious to pass up – especially with the promise of steady employment for both of us: we would take the jobs if they decide to offer both us both the music and English positions.
As everyone knows, they did exactly that. We decided to split the full-time music position and the half-time English position evenly so we both have .75 time positions and plans were put forth to move to Germany in mid-October.
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