I’ve never had the courage to go back to the small wine-mak­ing town where I spent my most lonely, pe­cu­liar and re­ward­ing year as a Ro­tary Youth Exchange stu­dent 14 years ago.

It’s not be­cause I don’t have fond mem­o­ries of Alzey; I do, es­pe­cially of the big-hearted and pa­tient host fam­i­lies who put up with my id­iocy as I bum­bled my way through the year. It’s more to do with how I re­mem­ber my­self at that time. I was a gi­gan­tic loser, and mem­ory has only sharp­ened this fact. The ten­der age of sev­en­teen is cruel enough in a coun­try where you ac­tu­ally speak the lan­guage and un­der­stand the cul­ture. It just gets worse else­where.

I haven’t for­got­ten the days when I wan­dered around the freez­ing vil­lage alone, killing time until I could go home be­cause I was use­less at school. I had, in total, twelve friends – eight were other ex­change stu­dents who lived in dif­fer­ent cities and the re­main­ing were host-sib­lings who had no choice but to be friends with me. I skipped class like a fiend be­cause I couldn’t un­der­stand any­thing any­ways. To top it off, I got fat be­cause I vis­ited the bak­ery an av­er­age of two times a day, stuff­ing my face with brezeln (pret­zels) and käse lau­gen (cheese buns). Most of this ended up on my face, sadly, giv­ing a look that was akin to Jabba the Hutt.

I was ba­si­cally a tod­dler: clue­less, slightly mute, with my host fam­ily lead­ing me around from place to place with­out hav­ing any idea about what was going on. I reached new heights in the art forms of lone­li­ness and os­tra­ciza­tion, cov­ered up with the ve­neer of pride and stub­born­ness.

I re­mem­ber early on, my first host mother, Ute, ask­ing me why I couldn’t be more like their last ex­change stu­dent, Michelle.

“Michelle was so pas­sion­ate!” she said, ma­neu­ver­ing the grey mini­van in traf­fic on route to school at some in­sane speed. “She would al­ways try so hard. Her Ger­man was much bet­ter than yours.”

I grew to hate Michelle – how out­go­ing she must have been, how she mas­tered Ger­man in mere months whereas I slogged along, sound­ing like a 3-year-old with a ter­ri­ble mem­ory and a speech im­ped­i­ment. Every­thing came eas­ily for Michelle whereas I made every cul­tural mis­step, screw-up and fail­ure in the book.

And yet, so pre­dictably, as it has hap­pened with thou­sands of ex­change stu­dents be­fore, and will hap­pen thou­sands of times again, there was a light at the end of the tun­nel. Many months in, some­thing clicked in my brain. Some­thing changed.

I started writ­ing my diary in Ger­man, adding in the Eng­lish words or phrases I didn’t know, such as the gut-cring­ing phrase, “oh my god, can you say elec­tric eye con­tact” in re­sponse to a boy I had a crush on. I started dream­ing in Ger­man. And yes, while I might have only still had twelve friends, we grew close and con­tinue to be to this day. I still was car­ry­ing an extra 20 pounds but some­times, for just a while,  it’s re­ally fun to eat every­thing you want. And then go back for sec­onds. And thirds. I moved to an­other host fam­ily, one who ac­cepted me for who I was, loser-like be­hav­ior and all, and I still get a bit weepy when I think of how they res­cued me, and with that, my year.

School got bet­ter, too. I switched classes and grades: I at­tended Eng­lish with the grade 13 class, His­tory with the grade 10 class and Ger­man with the grade 5 class across the street, still some­what ad­vanced for me. How they laughed at me in the be­gin­ning. How I laughed with them later.

I stopped sulk­ing and started en­joy­ing life again.

As I left Ger­many a year later, sob­bing and wear­ing a ridicu­lous Ro­tary Club navy blazer cov­ered in thou­sands of pins, the cus­toms of­fi­cer asked me why I was so sad.

“You lived in Alzey? That’s not that great a place,” he said, smil­ing.

I had no words. I couldn’t tell him about how I had gone from feel­ing like the most awful per­son on the face of the planet to feel­ing like I be­longed some­where. I couldn’t put into words just how much I didn’t want to go home. The trans­for­ma­tion from feel­ing so hor­ri­bly sad to feel­ing so in­cred­i­bly con­tent - all in the space of twelve months - is one that is dif­fi­cult to ex­plain to any­one, let alone a cus­toms agent.

Re­flect­ing back on it, it was by far the best year of my life. It was also the worst year of my life. And yes, as far as the clichés go, it changed my life for the bet­ter.

I’ve gone back to Ger­many dozens of times since my ex­change - my best friend now lives there and it’s a fre­quent stopover hub en route to some­where. Yet, every sin­gle time, I al­ways think to my­self, “Should I go back to Alzey? Should I go back to re­mem­ber how I felt back then?”

And some­how, just some­how, I talk my­self out of it.