After the show in Fürth, Jens offered to show us around his town of Nuremberg after picking up his three-year-old daughter Etta from Kindergarten the following day. So, we met up by a big beautiful fountain in the shadow of an enormous church in one direction and an enormous castle in the other.
Jens named his daughter Etta. Think music, think Etta James — popular in the states, but very uncommon in Germany. Most people pronounce it with soft T’s (like “Edda”) but it should be pronounced with sharp Ts. Jens says that it’s a typical thing in Franconia to pronounce T’s as D’s and P’s as B’s. (On top of everything, “Edda” itself used to be a popular name in Germany, completing the linguistic chaos loop.)
He said that he rarely visits this part of town, and that he wouldn’t be able to be a great, well-informed tour guide despite being a local. “See that church, it’s fucking old! That castle, fucking old! Fountain, old!”
We walked up the steep walkway to the main castle, taking in the beautiful day while Etta heard her dad speaking a language she didn’t know (she was just starting to have her first exposure to English in Kindergarten — she thinks it is very cool).
Jens would translate back and forth between the three-year old on his shoulders and us three walking next to him, and she would chime in the conversation in German when she saw things, mostly ice cream and ducks. I would look at her when she was speaking, doing my best to listen while still having to wait for translation from Jens. Interestingly, Jens shared that she thought that I was listening and understanding her as she was speaking — and seemed to like that. We were an odd little group, stitched together by Jens’ dad superpowers.
We went our separate ways after having some ice cream in the sun. Later in the car, Etta said just a few words between getting buckled up and falling asleep: “Beautiful, it was. Wasn’t it?”
It was, Etta. It sure was.
