I arrived in Munich Germany in the afternoon on March 18, 1987. The mission president, his wife, and the assistants to the president met us at the airport. They took us to the mission office and told us about our trainer companion and assigned city. Then, they took us to a guesthouse style hotel and dropped us off.
We got to the hotel around 4:00 or 5:00 p.m. After we got settled in our rooms, three other missionaries and I decided we would venture out on the street for a walk. Even though a light snow was falling, none of us wore our suit jackets or coats.
As we walked, we passed a shopkeeper who was sweeping the snow off the front stoop of his storefront. He looked at us in our shirtsleeves as we walked by and asked, “Seid Ihr nett kalt?” We could tell he was talking to us. However, he had a thick Bayern accent, used the Bayern slang “nett” instead of the formal German “nicht,” and spoke very quickly. Needless to say, none of us could understand what he said until he repeated himself while rubbing his hands on his arms and miming a shivering action. We stammered, “Nein,” and continued our walk. Our first interaction with a native and we barely passed!
I was assigned to Bamberg and my missionary trainer was Elder Liddiard. Bamberg is about 230 km north of Munich. The assistants picked us up from the hotel the next morning and took us to the train station. After we purchased our train tickets, I learned that I would need to change trains in Nürnberg to get to Bamberg. This made me extremely nervous because I had never traveled by train and did not feel overly confident in speaking German.
Fortunately, another elder in our group (Elder Jaenisch) was assigned to Coburg which was north of Bamberg. I was relieved to learn that he and I would travel on the same train from Munich to Nürnberg and the same train from Nürnberg to Bamberg. Then, he would travel the last leg of his trip by himself from Bamberg to Coburg.
Elder Jaenisch’s parents immigrated to the United States from Germany when they were children with their parents to flee Germany during World War II. While he grew up in Salt Lake City, he spoke more German than the rest of our group.
We got on our train and headed toward Nürnberg. We were both nervous. When the train conductor came around to check our tickets, Elder Jaenisch engaged in a friendly conversation with him and asked him which track we would need to be on to catch our next train. He responded, “Gleiß Zwo.” While we knew Gleiß was track, neither of us knew what “Zwo” meant. Elder Jaenisch asked him to repeat himself with “Wie Bitte.”
The conductor repeated himself slowly, “Gleiß Zwo” and held up two fingers when he said “Zwo.” Thus, Elder Jaenisch and I learned the Bayern slang for Zwei (two) is Zwo!
Much to our relief, the zone leaders met us at the train station in Nürnberg and helped us find Track 2 … and we caught our next train.
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