Published: March 29, 2008 07:33 pm            

FABIAN ZENKE: A world away

As the towering 18-year-old student walks with a helper into the office at Cullman High School, it’s hard to determine which one is the German and which one is the American.

But when Fabian Zenke introduces himself, his words — though his accent is very slight — give him away. Otherwise, his gray hooded sweatshirt, loose-fitting jeans and shaggy, shoulder-length brown hair all suggest a regular American high school student.

After five minutes with him, however, it becomes clear that Fabian is anything but a regular American student. Zenke, who arrived stateside Aug. 3, is fluent in French and English, as well as his native German.

But that hasn’t stopped him from having a go at another.

“He’s started a new language while he’s been here — Spanish,” said Crystal Askea, Fabian’s teacher and host mother, from a desk in her classroom at Cullman High one afternoon after school let out. “And he’s doing very well with that.”

As usual for Fabian, he takes the compliment with humor and irony.

“In Germany, for English class I had a D or C,” he said. “But really a D. I guess the teacher didn’t like me.”

Though things seem easy for him now, Fabian admitted he had a difficult time when he first arrived in a foreign country with an unfamiliar culture.

“I could understand people, and I could communicate with them,” Zenke said, adding that he had to convert the English words back to German when he first arrived. But that soon ceased, as did his apprehension at being so far from home. Soon he was making friends and fitting in.

“It was one of the easier things,” Zenke said. “The visa thing was hard, to get it extended.”

“He did a great job,” Askea agreed. “I was impressed with him, with the English he knew already. And there weren’t that many cultural differences that made him stick out in our community. It might be a lot different from his point of view.”



Wo kommen Sie aus? Wo gehen Sie?

“I was born in Munich, in west Germany,” Fabian said in a quiet corner of the library at Cullman High. “I moved to Bocholt when I was about four or five.”

For Zenke, who turned 18 in February, home is Bocholt, a city of about 80,000 people near Münster, along Germany’s border with the Netherlands. Considering the cosmopolitan nature of his hometown, perhaps it was appropriate when Fabian decided to become an exchange student.

“To improve my English,” he said when asked why he made the decision. “To learn a new culture.”

After making the trip, Zenke said he had plenty of time before school started to think about his life and whether he’d made the right choice.

“I thought about whether it was the right decision I made to come over,” said Zenke. “Especially when school started, I didn’t really think about Germany as much.”

And Fabian’s nerves weren’t eased much when his trek to America hit a snag along the way.

“Oh yeah, because my flight was pretty rough,” he said when asked whether he was nervous when making the trip. “I had to stop in Detroit and then in Memphis. In Detroit I really had to hurry because I was about to miss my flight.”

As a result, Zenke said he was a little shaken when he first met his host mom.

“When I first met Ms. Askea, I really didn’t talk much because I wasn’t sure of my English.”

‘I thought I knew what to expect, but not really,” said Zenke, who added German perceptions of American culture were fairly accurate. “I looked online before I came over.”

Fabian’s transition might have been made a bit easier by Cullman’s own roots: Many of the residents of Cullman share the same German background as the student from across the Atlantic Ocean.

“There’s an Oktoberfest, like they have in Munich,” he said. But when he’s reminded that there is no German beer —or any beer — at Cullman’s Oktoberfest, Zenke laughed it off with his usual wit.

“But I’m not allowed to drink anyway over here,” he said with a laugh.

Back in Germany, where the drinking age is 16, Fabian enjoyed Krombacher Radler, a lemon-flavored pilsner brewed in Siegerland. Later, he pointed out another interesting discrepancy between American and German custom.

“You can start drinking when you’re 16 and start driving when you’re 18,” he said.

As for fellow Germans in Cullman, Fabian said he is still looking around.

“I haven’t really seen any Germans here,” he said. “I’ve seen a German store out here that sells clocks and washers, but I barely see people who actually speak German. I hear from all the students that say their grandparents speak German.”

Despite the lack of fellow German speakers, Fabian quickly made plenty of friends.

“He’s done very well,” Askea said back in her classroom. “He has lots of friends. He’s very likable and approachable as well. I don’t think it was very hard for him with anything.”

A member of the advanced track at school in Germany, Zenke has also excelled at American academics, a distinction Askea said comes from hard work.

“He’s an excellent student,” Askea said. “He arrived with a very hard work ethic, making sure that he did his homework at night and studying for his tests.”

That work ethic probably came from Zenke’s experience in Germany, where he said the workload on students can be much more demanding.

“You take English to the 13th grade,” he said. “It’s required. And in the 7th grade have you have to choose between French or Latin. I did French.”

“And the hours are different,” he continued. “You go (to school) from eight (a.m.) to one (p.m.) and you have six different classes a day. Here you have five or four periods.”

And the hours are not the only difference. Fabian said American teachers take an entirely different approach to education than their German counterparts.

“It’s great,” he said. “I, mean it’s totally different from Germany. The teachers are more easy going, and it’s more like a friend relationship to a teacher. And they really try their best to make you feel welcome.”

For career plans, Zenke said he hasn’t decided his future, though a career in sports interests him.

“There are different tracks that you can choose like business management,” he said. “I’d like to do something with sport, like a physical trainer or something.

“I think I’d like to go to an international university in Europe,” Zenke continued, though he doesn’t know where yet. “I still have two more years in Germany, because I have to repeat the 12th grade.”

German students finish school after the 13th grade.

After the return trip to Germany, Fabian says he won’t forget to visit Alabama.

“I’m planning on coming back at the end of July,” he said. “I’m spending holiday with my family down in Florida in Cape Coral and we’re going to drive up here. I’m going to show my family how it is here.”



Alltagskultur

When asked about soccer — fußball to Fabian — Zenke’s eyes danced. A fan of BV Borussia Dortmund, a soccer team which last won Germany’s Bundesliga in 2002, Fabian took an interesting path to determining his sporting loyalties.

“I was born in Munich, and my dad is a fan of Munich, of the club,” Zenke said of FC Bayern Munich, Germany’s most famous soccer club. “My neighbor, who used to hang out with us, he was a fan of Dortmund, so I got into Dortmund.”

Dortmund, which plays about an hour away by car from Bocholt, also won UEFA’s Champions League, European club soccer’s most prestigious competition, in 1997.

“I remember that, I was about eight years old,” said Zenke, adding it was one of his first real sports moments.

But even though he’s staunchly loyal to Dortmund, Fabian lists two Brazilians as his favorite players: Ronaldinho and Adriano. And although he has nothing but praise for the Brazilians, he isn’t much of a fan of Michael Ballack, the captain of the German national team.

“No,” he said, “he’s too, I don’t know, he’s a little too lazy.”

As for who should play in goal for the Germans at this summer’s European Championship, Zenke had plenty of wisdom.

“I don’t think that he should play for Germany at the European championship because he’s 38 and we have good young keepers,” he said of Jens Lehmann, who plays in England. Zenke added Manuel Neuer, Rene Adler, or Michael Rensing, “who is challenging Oliver Kahn at Bayern Munich,” would all make better choices.

With the action an ocean away, one could understand if Fabian misses most of the matches. But he said he gets to see his favorite teams every now and then.

“My host family got Fox Soccer Channel, so I caught a few matches,” he said.

The transition to life with his host family has turned out to be a smooth one for Zenke: After a short period of shyness, Askea says Fabian really opened up.

“It wasn’t hard,” Askea said of her family’s adjustment to life with a foreign student. “He made it very easy for the whole family because he has nice manners. Now he’s just like another member of the family.”

“She’s a good cook,” Zenke said of his host mom, who doesn’t make sauerkraut or cabbage — but does make cole slaw, which Fabian enjoys. “I like sauerkraut in Germany, and bratwurst and potatoes — pretty heavy meals.”

Zenke said everyday life in America was not very difficult to get used to, mostly because of southern hospitality.

“The people are very open-minded and everybody talks to everybody,” he said. “And you see people at Wal-Mart and they say hey.

“I haven’t been in New York before, but people say that they’re really busy all the time.”

Some of the people making Fabian feel welcome are his friends on the soccer team, including Cesar Lopez, Juan Moreno and Askea’s son Eric.

“A very good friend is Juan Moreno,” he said. “He’s on the soccer team. I do a lot of things with him. He’s a really good friend.”

First-hand experience with Hispanic culture is something Zenke said was a welcome bonus upon his arrival.

“I spent a couple of holidays in Spain, but not like that,” he said, noting that his friends have taught him some Spanish. “This got me out of Spanish class,” he added with a laugh, referring to the interview.

One major difference Fabian has noted between German and American culture is where Americans get their food.

“One thing I’ve really noticed is fast food,” he said, “It’s a big deal here. You can’t go 50 meters without seeing a fast food place.

“And everything is bigger,” he added. “The streets and the trucks — we don’t really have trucks in Europe or Germany.”

Even though Zenke has noticed a few differences between himself and his fellow students, his feelings about Cullman are probably universal among teenagers around town.

“After school I have soccer practice until 4-ish, sometimes we stay longer,” he said, adding he goes to movies or hangs out with friends. “I mean, there’s not a lot of things to do in Cullman.”

        

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