LJ Idol Week 3 - Morgenmuffel
Growing up in Germany, it does not take you long to learn that being up early in the morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, is not simply a virtue, but your sacred Teutonic duty.
Your father starts work at the office at 7 am and so does everybody else around him.
He gets up at 5, infallibly imitated by spouse and offspring right behind. At 6, when he is already about to leave, you sit at the breakfast table, washed, dressed and ready for a new day.
Showing any trace of fatigue or exhaustion in the morning is not an option. You constantly find yourself confronted with a moral imperative to be productive and active even before the sun shows up, therefore your mother would never even consider slinking back into her bed after the kids leave for school. That just is not how she was brought up.
Nor does this change on weekends when there are so many things to do. Your father is not a silent or respectful person, so when he is up, everybody else soon will be too.
After 7 am there is no breakfast to be had in any case. Nobody forces you to get up before that, but you go hungry until lunch and reproaching glances will catch you at every yawn, every time you rub your eyes.
Holidays are spent camping, and obviously that implies the same daily rhythm - up at dawn and to bed when the sun goes down.
One year, your parents decide to splurge on a budget holiday trip, to Communist Romania of all places. In an enormous cement block of a hotel, you spend ten days of listening to your father grumble about the fact that breakfast service begins only at 7.30 am.
Unimaginable, and so you leave for the beach at 6 without the watery coffee and pale, squishy bread with plum jam served in the hotel's restaurant.
Instead, you are enjoying dark Turkish mokka (your parents) and sweet chai (you) with honeyed, crumbly cake slices sold from a small barrack by a friendly couple who is able to converse with my father in a funny mix of Italian and Russian. Just one more proof for the early bird catching the best worms, yet again.
You never even question this way of live, until, just turned 18, you embark on a weekend trip with your first Italian boyfriend.
And discover that he loves to lounge in bed, as late as he can.
At first, you are horrified.
Up, as usual, before 6, you do not know what to do with yourself when you realise that he has no intention to get up and find something to drink and to eat.
You sit there, dressed, and ready to go, until he finally opens his eyes much later and stares at you blankly.
You still are too infatuated to pout, so you just tell him you haven’t been able to sleep anymore and are hungry.
It takes him several weekends to convince you to not hop out of the bed as soon as you are awake. You don’t feel comfortable, rather like a sinful sloth, but you try to find ways to busy yourself reading, planning the day, nibbling on some cookies until you can finally make him get up.
Finally, he visits you in Germany for the first time, at your family home.
When he arrives, your parents seem to like him, appreciating his good German and his ambitious plans of working while completing his university studies. He does not drink much alcohol, eats in moderation and with good manners and is generally agreeable and well behaved.
You are happy, as every well indoctrinated daughter must be.
Alas, it is not to last.
Not even twelve hours later, your relationship is doomed.
While you appear downstairs for breakfast around 6.30, the young Italian shows no sign of wanting to rise at 7, 8 or even 9.
It is a Saturday, and your father has already started the lawn mower outside under the window, where the lazy Southerner still sleeps. Your mother noisily sweeps the stairs, but her sense of hospitality forbids her, for the moment, to switch on the vacuum cleaner.
You sit on needles, not knowing what to do, when at 9.30 he finally appears. Hair standing up in barely tamed corkscrews, sloppily, if at all, shaved face, eyes bleary and very evidently not happy. It has been quite a late night - which for yourself does not change anything, as your inner clock always insists on chasing you up not later than 6 am - but evidently, your beau very much needs his beauty sleep.
While you try to recover a breakfast for him from the already cleaned up kitchen, your mother arrives and asks him, if he is not feeling well.
Uncomprehendingly, he just looks at her and shakes his head. Before a strong coffee, you already know, he does not even have a voice.
Your father refuses to show himself, continuing to clatter and rumour around in the garden. The boyfriend munches on his bread and sips his weak German coffee, waking up slowly but without enthusiasm.
Later, during the short walk around the place, to show him where you grew up, there is not much talk, let alone amorous effusions.
Barely an hour later, it is time for lunch. 12 o’clock, canonically, no exception.
You sit down with a growing feeling of dread, while the boyfriend stares into the void.
Your mother serves a hearty meal, pork roast with dumplings and red cabbage. The Italian, showing not even the slightest remnant of his agreeable manners from the evening before, pokes the fatty crust of the meat with his fork and visibly shudders.
Your parents concentrate on their food, you try to swallow around the nasty lump that is forming in your throat. The boyfriend soon abandons any pretence of eating, instead, he excuses himself and disappears upstairs, probably to lie down for another round of sleep.
It is time, you know. You feel their eyes on you, and finally look up into their disappointed, judgemental faces, awaiting their verdict, which will, obviously, come from your father.
And he does not keep you waiting, indeed.
“A Morgenmuffel.
I would not have expected you to make such a choice. “
And that is all it takes. The promising young man has now been indelibly marked under the shadow of that epithet, one of the worst insults a scathing German voice can apply.
You part ways forever just a few hours later, after you have taken him to the station and spoken a few meaningless words.
Then you return, to the approving smile of your parents, timely to bed after a light dinner, in order to prepare for yet another gloriously early start into the next day.
Your father starts work at the office at 7 am and so does everybody else around him.
He gets up at 5, infallibly imitated by spouse and offspring right behind. At 6, when he is already about to leave, you sit at the breakfast table, washed, dressed and ready for a new day.
Showing any trace of fatigue or exhaustion in the morning is not an option. You constantly find yourself confronted with a moral imperative to be productive and active even before the sun shows up, therefore your mother would never even consider slinking back into her bed after the kids leave for school. That just is not how she was brought up.
Nor does this change on weekends when there are so many things to do. Your father is not a silent or respectful person, so when he is up, everybody else soon will be too.
After 7 am there is no breakfast to be had in any case. Nobody forces you to get up before that, but you go hungry until lunch and reproaching glances will catch you at every yawn, every time you rub your eyes.
Holidays are spent camping, and obviously that implies the same daily rhythm - up at dawn and to bed when the sun goes down.
One year, your parents decide to splurge on a budget holiday trip, to Communist Romania of all places. In an enormous cement block of a hotel, you spend ten days of listening to your father grumble about the fact that breakfast service begins only at 7.30 am.
Unimaginable, and so you leave for the beach at 6 without the watery coffee and pale, squishy bread with plum jam served in the hotel's restaurant.
Instead, you are enjoying dark Turkish mokka (your parents) and sweet chai (you) with honeyed, crumbly cake slices sold from a small barrack by a friendly couple who is able to converse with my father in a funny mix of Italian and Russian. Just one more proof for the early bird catching the best worms, yet again.
You never even question this way of live, until, just turned 18, you embark on a weekend trip with your first Italian boyfriend.
And discover that he loves to lounge in bed, as late as he can.
At first, you are horrified.
Up, as usual, before 6, you do not know what to do with yourself when you realise that he has no intention to get up and find something to drink and to eat.
You sit there, dressed, and ready to go, until he finally opens his eyes much later and stares at you blankly.
You still are too infatuated to pout, so you just tell him you haven’t been able to sleep anymore and are hungry.
It takes him several weekends to convince you to not hop out of the bed as soon as you are awake. You don’t feel comfortable, rather like a sinful sloth, but you try to find ways to busy yourself reading, planning the day, nibbling on some cookies until you can finally make him get up.
Finally, he visits you in Germany for the first time, at your family home.
When he arrives, your parents seem to like him, appreciating his good German and his ambitious plans of working while completing his university studies. He does not drink much alcohol, eats in moderation and with good manners and is generally agreeable and well behaved.
You are happy, as every well indoctrinated daughter must be.
Alas, it is not to last.
Not even twelve hours later, your relationship is doomed.
While you appear downstairs for breakfast around 6.30, the young Italian shows no sign of wanting to rise at 7, 8 or even 9.
It is a Saturday, and your father has already started the lawn mower outside under the window, where the lazy Southerner still sleeps. Your mother noisily sweeps the stairs, but her sense of hospitality forbids her, for the moment, to switch on the vacuum cleaner.
You sit on needles, not knowing what to do, when at 9.30 he finally appears. Hair standing up in barely tamed corkscrews, sloppily, if at all, shaved face, eyes bleary and very evidently not happy. It has been quite a late night - which for yourself does not change anything, as your inner clock always insists on chasing you up not later than 6 am - but evidently, your beau very much needs his beauty sleep.
While you try to recover a breakfast for him from the already cleaned up kitchen, your mother arrives and asks him, if he is not feeling well.
Uncomprehendingly, he just looks at her and shakes his head. Before a strong coffee, you already know, he does not even have a voice.
Your father refuses to show himself, continuing to clatter and rumour around in the garden. The boyfriend munches on his bread and sips his weak German coffee, waking up slowly but without enthusiasm.
Later, during the short walk around the place, to show him where you grew up, there is not much talk, let alone amorous effusions.
Barely an hour later, it is time for lunch. 12 o’clock, canonically, no exception.
You sit down with a growing feeling of dread, while the boyfriend stares into the void.
Your mother serves a hearty meal, pork roast with dumplings and red cabbage. The Italian, showing not even the slightest remnant of his agreeable manners from the evening before, pokes the fatty crust of the meat with his fork and visibly shudders.
Your parents concentrate on their food, you try to swallow around the nasty lump that is forming in your throat. The boyfriend soon abandons any pretence of eating, instead, he excuses himself and disappears upstairs, probably to lie down for another round of sleep.
It is time, you know. You feel their eyes on you, and finally look up into their disappointed, judgemental faces, awaiting their verdict, which will, obviously, come from your father.
And he does not keep you waiting, indeed.
“A Morgenmuffel.
I would not have expected you to make such a choice. “
And that is all it takes. The promising young man has now been indelibly marked under the shadow of that epithet, one of the worst insults a scathing German voice can apply.
You part ways forever just a few hours later, after you have taken him to the station and spoken a few meaningless words.
Then you return, to the approving smile of your parents, timely to bed after a light dinner, in order to prepare for yet another gloriously early start into the next day.