Smell Hell

There is no way that I am staying in Germany for another year.

I’ve toyed with the idea and on rare days when I wake up thinking in German, or I walk down the street and the non-jay-walkable traffic lights are all green, and my groceries are all cheap I think.. wow, I could really stay here for a while!

But then, as I’m trotting along in my pleasant German daydream, get a whiff of a boy coming down the grocery isle and retract my statement immediately. I can smell a German boy from approximately…a really long way away. I wish I could describe to you the specific stench, but I try and plug my nose and run away before I have to inhale its noxious fumes for another second. In my mind, it is the smell of flowery-nasty with a hint of B.O, but that’s about all I got.

Then, as I try and escape into the fresh air of the German outdoors, I am knocked over by the smell of cow poop and my pleasant German day dream turns suddenly into a nasal nightmare.

I treasure my sense of smell, I really do. If you were to blindfold me and drive me to any one of my childhood friends’ houses I could tell you whose house it was just by walking through the front door. I could give you a timeline of life experiences by laying out the deoderant I was wearing during that phase of my life, and I have about 4 different perfumes that I can no longer wear because the memory forever associated with them is too strong to wear on an everyday basis.

I could also tell you, blindfolded, if we were in the mountains of North Carolina, the beach of South Carolina, or any other place where I have spent significant time. When I was a freshman, for example, I stepped of the bus ready to play a lacrosse game at Guilford College and I said “It smells like North Carolina”. An unnamed bully of an upperclassmen said “That’s because we’re in North Carolina, duh”. Well in my very limited freshman knowledge, I was unaware of our crossing state lines from Va into NC, so despite her snarky comment I was silently proud of my nose.

The problem with this sense of smell though, is it is very stubborn. The memory associated with smells do not and will not go away, and will not be easily persuaded of another memory.

For example, (again lacrosse), when I was a sophomore warming up for a game against Virginia Weslyan, which is in Virginia Beach, I was irrationally happy. Like a lunatic weirdo, I kept sniffing the air and having to repress a joyful, if not maniacal, laugh.

Katie Flippen, a Virginia Beach native and my warm-up passing partner, couldn’t help but ask what I was laughing about. I told her, “Virginia Weslyan smells just like South Carolina! I love it. “. Being the Virginia beach native she is she countered with “no, it smells like Virginia Beach”. Semantics aside, I would not concede and maintained that Virginia beach smelled not like itself, rather, like South Carolina. That was that. My nose had said its piece and was not going to change its mind.

With that stubbornness in mind, we come to Germany. Germany will forever smell of cow poop and B.O. in my mind. When I drive past a farm in Virginia, it smells like Germany. When I smell an American who hasn’t showered in a while… it smells like Germany. And worst of all, when I smell a boy in Europe wearing that flowery excuse of a stanky cologne, it smells, unfortunately, like Germany.

Although the smell of cow poop has somehow morphed itself in my mind to a positive association, it is the only positive smell association I have with this country and as you can imagine, it’s not really a great one.

Even if the association is not the fault of Germany at all—like the fact that I associate German laundry detergent with when I had the flu—the fact that a negative memory and a German odor go hand in hand means my stubborn sense of smell will not rest until I get the heck out of this smell hell.

Anyway this rant was inspired by my present condition, which is a super smelly train ride. The train is full of elderly germans and very crowded, so there’s no way out. The person next to me is asleep and won’t stop farting, there is someone in the vicinity who apparently drank a lake full of vodka yesterday which is now seeping through his/her pores and worst of all, there is a German boy behind me spraying his scent in the forward direction. The rest of this post may not make any sense as my brain might be on the fritz due to lack of oxygen.

Because of this unfortunately odiferous experience, I feel as though I am about to explode. Rather than actually physically explode though , I’m exploding my thoughts into my computer and wrapping my nose in my scarf. While I’m here I would like to propose a few rules for public transportation:
      
        1. It should be illegal to fart in closed quarters.
      
        2. It should be illegal to get on a train at a level of intoxication or hangover that results in your           neighbor being able to smell your rank stench of bad decisions.
    
        3. It should also be illegal to wear any sort of perfume or cologne. In fact, I propose that all German boys be banned from buying any sort of scented spray of any kind because boys cannot be trusted with sensitive and delicate things such as scent.

       4. That’s about it. I need to air out my nostrils. Peace friends.