Awkward Situations

One woman in the choir I’d always wanted to meet is named Otti. She is German and I always love it when she talks to people in her thick accent calling everybody “My dear.” Even when she’s mad at you. One time she was scolding our choir director for trying to change a speaking part, telling him in a firm voice, “My dear, it is simply impossible.”

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Anyway, I finally had the opportunity to meet her one night when she drove me home from choir. I found out a little about her, like she’s from Germany but has lived in Andorra for around 30 years and all of her kids speak four or five languages. Later from other people I learned that she used to be an athlete and that even though she comes off as a very strong person, she can sweet talk her way into anything. Clare said that when they went to one business to ask about gifts for the Christmas raffle she was so embarrassed at how the conversation started that she pretended to be a different costumer, but by the end Otti had the man eating out of her hand and practically wanted to kiss her. Not bad for a septuagenarian! I don’t know how she does it, but she’s also managed to get paid gigs for the choir, and then somehow she doubles how much money we make.

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Well, on the night she drove me home I was telling her all about how most of my family background is German and how I’d like to learn more about my ancestry and German culture. Something I’d like to do in the future is research my family tree back to Europe and then go visit all of the places I come from. I’d also like to learn German at some point, but we’ll see if that happens. Well, when I told Otti my last name she got excited because she knew a German who lived in Andorra with the same name, spelling and all. Every time that I’d talked to her since that night she’d tell me about where the person was and how she was trying to arrange a meeting.

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So last night when we were warming up for our concert Otti came up to me and told me that she’d arranged a meeting after the concert and that I needed to be at a nearby hotel café at 7:30. The thing is, I’ve found that here in Andorra, you never know what to expect. Never. So many awkward situations! When I got there she introduced me to Mr. Maass (I didn’t find out his first name until the end of the meeting) and then she left! Well, we talked a little about where his family was from, Hamburg, and the possibility of us being related. I thought it was funny that he told me he’d asked his dad if he knew if anybody from the family had gone to America and he told him he thought there was an uncle who’d gone to Detroit, whereas our family has been in the states for generations and generations. Then he started talking about his business and then this older German guy joined us. I was a little annoyed when he basically told me it was a dumb idea to learn Catalan, and then completely shocked at a racist remark he made later. He wanted to learn Spanish to get by in Andorra, but he said he was also buying a house in Florida. I made the remark that Spanish would also be useful in Florida, but then he said it would only be useful if he wanted to talk to the pool boy or the gardener. At that point I started looking for an excuse to leave. One funny thing is that some people from the choir came in and who knows what they thought seeing me there in the café with two older random men. Oh Andorra.