Up In My Tiny German Attic

I spent the entire man on the moon year living and working for the Army in Frankfurt, Germany, as a Civilian Personnel teacher. I lived with and sometimes travelled on weekends to various other countries [1] with my uncle, aunt, and cousins. But after my family went back to the States that summer, I was basically on my own. I found an attic room to rent from a German couple who could not speak a word of English. So I learned enough German to say things like "Hier ist das geld fur der zimmer!" ("Here is the money for the room!"), as well as a few other phrases to get by.

I don't mean to make light of the dark side of history, folks, but there was a decidedly Diary Of Anne Frank feel to this brief period of my life. My room was on the upper floor of an apartment building and was about the size of a walk-in closet. There was a cot in the exact center and above that was a porthole that opened up for air. Every time I took a breather, there was a ring of pigeons peering down at me from the terra cotta tiles. (Thankfully, they never pooped on me!)

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of these Lilliputian living quarters was the bathroom arrangements. Those last three months in Germany were a trial from a bathroom facility standpoint. I had a sink in that tiny room for such tasks as washing my face and brushing my teeth, but that was it. No toilet. No tub. No shower. Nor were there any bathing facilities anywhere within shouting distance. I got very proficient at standing at the sink and patting down the pits with a little water. For pooping and peeing, there was a tiny room down the hall with one toilet in it. Literally a hole in the wall. The crapper was shared by three other one-room tenants on that upper floor, and wasn't a whole lot bigger than one of those airplane lavatories with the swirling blue water that can turn into a shitsicle when ejected from the stratosphere.

Needless to say, whenever anyone emerged from that matchbox, the odor was sulphur-riffic! There was no ventilation of any kind to dissipate those molecules of stink. And towards the very end of my stay, I was probably the worst culprit of all. My funds had dwindled to next to nothing, and the word "budget" wasn't in my vocabulary. I subsisted on a daily ration of grahambrot (graham bread) and bottled Bulgarian pepper salad. It was all I could afford at the local supermarket.

This produced some of the most grievous BM's of my sojourn on this planet. The graham bread was thick and grainy, and the Bulgarian peppers, though not hot, were pickled. The end result was a stream of oatmeal-like stink that lingered and lingered and lingered. I pity the poor fool that entered the potty premises within an hour of my occupancy.

Not only that, the toilet itself exacerbated the problem. It featured one of those shelves or platforms [2] onto which everything drops and festers like cow patties in a meadow; and innumerable flushes didn't even begin to wash away the evidence of my unbalanced dining habits. To this day, I firmly believe that there is a picture of my unholy Frankfurt grahambrot/Bulgarian peppers scheisse in the dictionary beside the word "skidmark." I imagine even the pigeons kept their distance towards the end there.

I look back on that whole claustrophobic stint and realize that it had to be the most fragrant period of my life, and we're not talking Calvin Klein's Obsession here. Imagine my relief when I returned to the States and got to take my first real shower in three months. And yes, fellow poopers, true to my disregard for the concept of "too much information": that included a thorough ass-scrubbing.