CHAPTER SIX
Culture Shock

Frogg awkwardly tried to get used to living in the Reinhart home.

He had his own room with a comfy bed and a window that faced the pretty tree-lined street instead of a structure of oppression like the Berlin Wall. But still, it had none of the things that had made his old room his. He wished his beloved cat was there, and all of his little gadgets and books. There was one day the professor had come back from some sort of business and had a box. When Frogg looked in it, he saw it contained some of his belongings from his old apartment - mostly clothes and a few toys.

"Did you see my papa?"
"Briefly, only a minute or two."
Frogg didn't know what he felt then - some cocktail of anxiety and elation. The professor would not elaborate on anything that they might have talked about, or how his father was doing. In fact, he might have seemed bothered by whatever happened. But Frogg was still relieved, because if his father was still at home, maybe his actions of going into the Wall didn't get him in trouble. Despite everything that happened, he did not want his papa to become a victim of the Stasi or sent to prison.

A few days later, the professor came back to the house much too early.

"Well, it's been done. I lost my privilege of getting into East Berlin."

He had said it as the three of them - Frogg, Hans Reinhart and his wife Gisela - were sitting at their dining room table. The little boy guiltily kept his gaze low at his hands. "Is it my fault?"

"Well, if it's my fault for taking you in, I have no problem with that at all. I never really liked going into that side of the tracks, anyway. It was far too depressing over there."

He still felt quite bad, though. Frogg was positive that he was completely invading their lives and was a huge inconvenience for them, and he had no idea what would happen to him now.

Frogg liked Gisela Reinhart, even if he had no idea of how to act around her at first. She immediately squashed his manners when he called her 'ma'am' or 'Mrs. Reinhart', insisting that it made her feel too old. She worked from home as a painter, and one day when Frogg was exploring the house he came across her studio. He looked at her oil paintings, captivated. This kind of art wasn't allowed in the East. Frogg was the least artistic person alive and had no idea how she could make such pretty things... He liked her abstract paintings of the water the best, reminded of his favorite memories of the Baltic Sea. When she listened to classical piano as part of her creative process, sometimes he would sit in the next room over to hear as well, too shy to invite himself into the studio. A week after he arrived in their home, he walked into his new bedroom to see that he had been gifted his own record player with a few vinyls of classical and a little note - 'you can still share mine any time.'

He could tell that she pitied him.

There was one day when the professor was out, she had asked Frogg if he wanted to have a cup of tea with her - probably in an attempt to get him out of his shell. He was shy, but still said yes, and she had him hold a tray as she loaded it with the kettle, their cups, and a plate of pastries for them to share. As they walked to the sunroom, he had his tongue out in concentration, because with his luck and clumsiness he had to be careful. But then, remembering something she had forgotten, Gisela had exclaimed and suddenly whirled around to get it - and Frogg reacted as he normally did from that kind of movement.

He had yelped and the tray went flying, porcelain cups and kettle crashing on the ground, steaming hot tea splashing. He did not realize it, but he had jerked back and made himself small. Immediately the apologies came pouring from his mouth, because he broke something and knew he was going to be punched or smacked over it… but then she had kneeled down and put her hands on his shoulders.

When he opened his eyes, Frogg realized that she looked just as scared by his reaction.

"No,no, it's okay! You're not in trouble!"

He blinked at her in frightened confusion, body still rigid.

"You're never going to be hit in this house. Ever. You're safe now, okay?"

And when Gisela hugged him to show that everything was alright, he was so surprised by the concept of what she had said and the gesture of affection, his arms could only dangle uselessly at his sides in shock.

He was being introduced to all sorts of new things.

West Berlin was so different. It was astounding just how much of a change it was from his home, when in reality, The Wall could be just a few hundred meters of space between the two in some places. Where he had come from, and even though he was aware that much of his previous life had been filtered through Soviet propaganda and censorship, he still went through degrees of culture shock.

Some of these things were mild and surprising like seeing the array and number of car models on the street, or how when he first stood in the Kaufhalle (no, it was called a Supermarkt here, he was still learning all the little differences of the tongue) he was amazed by the produce section. It was full of the kinds of fruit that were extremely rare and expensive in the East. He had never seen a pineapple before, and in this place bananas and oranges weren't a rare treat just a few times a year. He got to try fast food for the first time, and he paid for the calorie-dense meal later with a bad stomachache, but regretted nothing.

And yet, there were other glaring differences that shook him to the very core - like when Gisela Reinhart told him there was something he needed to see, an important part of his country's history that the East distorted more than any other.

Frogg was fortunate that he had a father who had explained to him early in his youth to not always accept East Germany's historical facts as the truth. But yet he had never seen the actual pictures of what took place in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany and Poland. As he stood in the memorial museum looking upon the shocking black and white images, or seeing the trinkets that used to belong to Jewish families before they were taken away to the camps, he thought he was going to be sick. His grandfathers did this?

"I'm not showing this to you to make you feel bad," Gisela explained, seeing his blanched face, "But the history you know may be different from the truth. And it's our responsibility to know these things so that they'll never happen again, okay?"

"...why didn't you tell me, Professor?" he whispered later that night. He was sitting on the floor before the lit fireplace, and though the heat from its flames warmed his skin so much it itched uncomfortably under his sweater, the feeling of ice in his bones persisted. He was shaken by the things he had seen earlier in the day. Of course in their history lessons they covered Nazi Germany, but his history was one in which the East and the future USSR was as much of a victim of the war as any other - blaming the west in an attempt to pit the two sides of Germany against one another. He had learned of the concentration camps and the mass deaths, and knew it to be a horrible horrible thing but had no idea it was genocide. None of his textbooks showed any of those ghastly images.

"I am absolutely positive our space in the lab was bugged for surveillance. I had a job to perform, I had to teach you their curriculum," the Professor softly explained. "And I'm glad to be done with it. I promise from now on, you won't be lied to again."

Frogg had always been mindful of passerby's possibly listening, but never considered the idea of their lessons being bugged. He thought that he had always been so very careful and conscious of the presence of The Stasi in East Berlin, and being in this place, it only made him realize more how horribly wrong it all was. No one should have to live like that.

It was an entirely different world, and the boy struggled to find out where he fit in it, but little did he know just how much bigger it was going to get.

There was a school that sat on the corner of their street, one that looked just as normal and inconspicuous as any other that Frogg had seen. And yet one day when he was helping the Reinhart's carry some groceries inside their house, there was a sudden cracking sound that came from where the students played outside. Frogg turned just in time to see a football collide with a car parked on the side of the street. Except it practically demolished half the vehicle - bent the metal right in and the ball deflated from the impact, still embedded in the side.

"HEY! You said no powers!"

The shout came from the schoolyard, and Frogg could not decide if he was going absolutely crazy or not when a boy about his age flew over to retrieve their ball, offering a quick and unconcerned 'sorry' to them. The boy then took off, narrowly missing a tree as he glided back to his school. Frogg's mouth was hanging open.

"Uncoordinated children with super powers… a disastrous combination." Professor Reinhart was shaking his head in exasperation. At least it wasn't their car.
"W-What?" Frogg was speechless.
"Oh. You must have no idea," his teacher explained as if it wasn't completely insane to see children flying about in their neighborhood, "The Eastern Bloc depicts their heroes and villains a bit differently from us. It's much more laid back here… that school on the corner is one of those Superhero Kiddie Colleges… The Americans started it, seems like a lot of places are following their example."

Frogg was floored.

He knew that he had the worst social skills alive and did not plan on talking to anybody because of this, but he could not help himself. It was lightly snowing the day that Frogg went to get a closer look at the Superhero Kiddie College, and there was a scarf wrapped around his neck. He was thankful for the coverage. It was still awful looking and would take longer than a month to return to its normal pale complexion.

Frogg crept closer to the school where they had their recess. There in the fenced area of the school, the kids were playing, and they did in fact have superpowers. He saw two boys get into an argument over who got to use the slide next, but that was quickly solved when one used his super strength to actually lift it and try to walk away, but then a teacher called out, "Oskar, what have we said about sharing!"

There were two kids zipping around the playground, practically a blur with their super speed in a game of tag. Quite a few wore odd face coverings or masks over their eyes like some of the adult heroes and villains wore on the TV to conceal their identity. He was openly staring, entranced, when someone called out to him. Frogg flinched. He had been spotted.

"Hey, you! come here!"

He looked around as if to confirm it was him being addressed and cautiously approached. Several of the kids came up to their side of the fence as well and he found his hopes getting up. They actually seemed… friendly? It was the boy who had demolished the car that was doing most of the talking, but he was greeted with several questions all at once.

"You're the new kid down the road!"
"What's your name?"
"Why aren't you in school?"

Frogg hesitated. He had not taken lessons in the first few weeks he had been living with the Reinhart's, but that was to resume soon. If he understood it correctly, the Professor was trying to sort out all of the paperwork proving he actually did not need to go to public school and had been enrolled in his higher-level sessions. Making it all official.

"Um. Archibald.. I take private lessons."
"What happened to your eye?"
He rubbed his face near the discolored eye where a vessel had burst during his strangulation. He was even more self-conscious now, feeling his face heat up, but at least they couldn't see his throat. "I had an accident..."

It seemed to be an adequate response, and one of the children mentioned that it looked kind of neat. Frogg then realized that almost all of the kids had gathered at the fence now except for one. She was sitting on a swing with a notebook in her hands, scribbling something down, and the two made eye contact. She only regarded him a moment before dropping her gaze back down.
Frogg almost began blushing - he thought she was pretty.

"Oh, that's just the American girl. She doesn't speak much German," the boy identified as Oskar hastily explained and then began shouting at the teacher who was watching over them all, "MRS. KRUEGER CAN HE PLAY? Do you want to play, Archibald?"

The teacher approved and Frogg was speechless for a moment. He was actually making friends? This was a first. He had not played in what felt like years, he had been so consumed with school… he had matured far too fast in his three years in communist Berlin. And he found himself grinning ear to ear. "Yeah, okay!"

So they let him into the playground. Frogg was having a great time. They played Ein, Zwei, Drei, Halt and even promised not to use their superpowers so they would not have an unfair advantage over him. He did not last very long in the game but did not mind at all in his good spirits, and then they started kicking a fußball between them. Of course, uncoordinated as Frogg was, it did not take long for him to trip over his own two feet or get hit with the ball, but when they all began laughing it was with him and not at him.

All the while he could not help but keep looking over at the girl alone on her swing. Anytime their eyes met his face would become hot, he was so painfully shy and awkward, especially around girls. There were wisps of deep brown hair peeking out from her winter hat, and he liked the way it contrasted with her fair skin. It was cute how bundled up she was compared to all the other children, probably not used to the cold of their city.

Finally, out of breath from their games (an out-of-shape Frogg especially so), he and several of the children collapsed on the snowy ground. Frogg had so many questions and lamented that he could not go to this school with his lack of powers. He thought he might prefer having friends over being smart if he had the choice, now that he got a taste. "What's it like having super powers? Are you going to be heroes?"
"I can turn invisible, just like my papa!"
"I'm gonna be a Superhero," a girl proudly stated, "I even have a name picked out - Miss Magnificent."
"That's a stupid name," Oskar snorted.
"Is not!"
Frogg thought to the superhero that he would see on the TV back home, of the woman who would save East Germany. It sounded close to her name. "Oh! Kind of like Miss Valor?"
Something about what he said confused them.
"No, not like her, I don't want to be a supervillain."
They were mistaken.
"Miss Valor isn't a villain, she's saved people tons of times… just like The Marvelous Menace!"

"Um. Those are villains," she repeated it in a snotty tone as if he were stupid, "My parents say they're com-commu-comminists."
"Yeah the Marvelous Menace tried to take over Bonn a few months ago," Oskar contributed, "They're the bad guys."

Still, Frogg insisted, and they were beginning to look at him more and more as if he might be simple, which only encouraged him to prove himself right. And then, even though he was not sure why he was trying to keep it to himself, he let it slip that he had seen it on the East Berlin TVs often. That got their attention.

"You're an Ossie?"
It was the slang used for Easterners, whereas Frogg learned these children were called Wessie's. It would take some time for him to catch up with the dialect of the West.
"Yeah..."

And they did not believe him one bit, because no one ever got over the Iron Curtain, and he was starting to get frustrated. One of the kids had even got up and left to play elsewhere, seemingly not willing to listen to his apparent 'lies'. So for proof, Frogg pulled up his pant leg and showed them where he had been bitten by the dog as he ran for his life in the Death Strip.

"I'm telling the truth, see? This is where I got bit. They put dogs in the middle of the Wall!"

Some of them made sounds of awe at the ugly mark on his skin, intrigued and grossed out all at once. Then the girl who wanted to be called Miss Magnificent one day announced to her peers, "If he's from there, he thinks that Miss Valor and the Marvelous Menace are actual heroes, because he's on their side, too."

Frogg did not realize what she meant, and then he became aware that a little murmur went through the group sitting with him. A boy whispered something into another's ears. He overheard the word Soviet and could detect the accusation in his tone. One by one the children began to get up. Some looked bad for him, others gave him a mistrustful glance.

"Huh? But-wait. What did I do?"

He was so genuinely confused, not sure what was happening but now everyone was leaving him. He stood, ready to ask what he had done wrong once more, but then the bell rang to end their recess session and all of the children went inside.

Frogg was left alone, shoulders sagging, and dejection written all over his face. He did not know which was worse - having no friends at all for so long or getting to experience what it was like before it got taken away.

He never tried to talk to the children from the Superhero Kiddie College again, too hurt by their actions to try to be friendly again. They simply acted as if he did not exist whenever Frogg had to pass by their playground, or when they trekked past the Reinhart house on their way home from lessons in both academics and classes where they learned to control the powers passed on to them.

But then one day, when he was out walking and catching snowflakes on his tongue, something happened. He was passing the playground of the Kiddie College when he heard a door slam open. Class was in session at that time and the schoolyard was empty, but out ran the fair-skinned girl he had been bashfully eyeing that one day. Frogg watched her run to where she thought no one could see her. She hunkered down with her back against the jungle gym, pulled her knees up to her chest and began crying, shivering in the snow. She didn't even have a coat on.

Frogg was at a loss of what to do, or even if he should do anything… yet he found himself opening the gate to let himself in. When his crunching footsteps approached her, she raised her gaze to him. Frogg gulped.

Are you alright? Why are you crying?

Those would have been the right things to ask, but he was nervous, and he remembered what he had been told about their language barrier… in East Germany, all of the students were required to learn Russian, and he did not know any English. She was still shivering all over, nose and fingertips red from the cold and she kept watching him, almost in a challenging way. Frogg began unwrapping his scarf, and she did not move a single muscle when he awkwardly placed it around her shoulders. He was aware of her looking at the bruises along his now exposed neck when he pulled his gloves off next and delicately set them on the ground in front of her. Then he mumbled something unintelligible, blushed, and retreated quickly.

Three days later there was a knock on the front door of the Reinhart house.
Frogg was sitting up in bed playing with a puzzle that his professor had given him - a Rubik's Cube - when he heard Gisela call from downstairs.

"Archibald, you have a visitor!"

That was odd. He didn't know a single soul who would want to visit him - and then he realized. It could only be one person. He shot up and ran down the hall and stairs, fully expecting to see his papa standing on the porch waiting for him. He knew he should not have been excited since he had hurt Frogg badly the last time they saw each other, but what kind of son would not be happy to see his own father after so long? He needed to know if he was okay, did he get his papa in trouble for going over the Wall?

Frogg skidded to a halt, socks making him slide across the hardwood so that he almost fell. It was the girl from the other day that was waiting for him, not his papa. She was on the porch, holding his scarf and gloves in a hand. Frogg just dumbly stood before her, surprised and caught unaware. She held the things out for him to take. "Danke..."

He took them, still having not said a word. Then, she said it in a strange and stiff way, as if she had to have practiced it a few times, "Do you want to do something tomorrow?"

Frogg could not help it - he thought her American accent was adorable, and he began to smile in what was probably a rather goofy, unattractive way.
"...yes."
"My name is Lisbeth Vogel. What is your name?"
Her pronunciation was poor and the cadence wasn't quite right or natural, but it only made him smile more as he replied, "I'm Archibald Frogg."
"Okay, Archibald," she said and then simply turned to go with a little wave of goodbye, not specifying anything else about what they might do the next day. "Auf wiedersehen!"

Frogg stood there for a moment looking after her. He was stilll grinning in that stupid way, and that was how Gisela found him. She made a teasing but good-natured comment about his new 'lady friend' but he barely heard her. He just turned to her and exclaimed, "How do I start to learn English?"