This is part of a series from our recent travel to Europe in June/July 2026.
The heat didn’t take Sunday off. We woke up to another morning that felt more like a wet blanket than a weather forecast, the humidity having made sleep more of a negotiation than a rest. But mornings in Hameln have a way of redeeming themselves, and this one was no different: coffee on the patio with Connie and Gerd, the kind of unhurried breakfast that makes you forget you didn’t sleep as well as you wanted to.
Gerd, it turns out, drives the same model of car that Anna and Thomas have been looking at. When he and Connie arrived, he’d brought it along so they could take it for a proper test drive, which was both thoughtful and practical, and very much in keeping with the kind of people they are. As it happened, Gerd’s car also became our chariot for the evening. With air conditioning that actually worked, it was exactly what we needed for the drive to the graduation dance.
Much of the afternoon passed quietly, mostly because the heat made ambition feel unreasonable. Anna made pasta for lunch, delicious, simple, the kind of meal that doesn’t need much commentary other than that we cleaned our plates. After that, we started getting ready. Suits. Ties. The good shoes. It’s not often on a trip like this that you get a reason to dress up, and there was something genuinely fun about it, that particular energy that comes when everyone in a house is getting ready for the same thing at the same time.
The drive to MittenDorf Gastronomie, a venue outside Bodenwerder, took about twenty minutes. We arrived to a scene I wasn’t entirely prepared for, even knowing what to expect. This wasn’t a graduation ceremony in the American sense: no gymnasium, no rows of folding chairs, no mortarboards tossed in the air. This was something closer to a celebration in the fullest sense of the word.
The evening began with sparkling drinks, wine, champagne, the kind of welcome that signals immediately that this is a proper event. Then came the introductions. The graduating students were presented as couples and walked in formally before the assembled guests, roughly a hundred people gathered to mark what these young men and women had accomplished.
Once the formal introductions were complete, many of the students made their way to the floor for what I can only describe as an impressive waltz. Coordinated, graceful, genuinely well-executed, it was the kind of thing that takes real practice, and you could tell. Chris and I stood there watching, probably looking like the proud out-of-towners we were.
Then we ate. There was no shortage of food, all of it good, and the evening settled into the kind of warm, generous rhythm that a celebration like this earns.
The moment that stayed with me most came somewhere in the middle of the night. The parents were called to the floor: fathers with their daughters, mothers with their sons. Michele danced with Anna, and watching the two of them out there, I felt that particular kind of emotion that sneaks up on you when you’re not expecting it. We’ve known Michele since he was a teenager living in our house, navigating a new language and a new country. And here he was, nineteen, graduated, dancing with his mother at his own celebration.
The rest of the evening belonged to the students. They seemed unselfconsciously happy, the kind of happy that comes from finishing something hard alongside people you’ve spent years working next to. Michele was right in the middle of it, enjoying every minute with his classmates. Watching him, it was hard not to feel grateful that we were there to see it.
We’d been invited to this. That’s the part that doesn’t get lost on me. We’re not immediate family, not teachers, not part of the community in any conventional sense: we’re two guys from New Orleans who happened to host a German teenager a couple of years ago and stayed in each other’s lives. That Michele and his family wanted us there, dressed up and at the table, meant more than I know how to say without it sounding like more than it is.
The drive back to Hameln was quiet in the best way. By the time we got home, there wasn’t much to do except fall into bed, which we did, efficiently, and with the mild electric anticipation of knowing that tomorrow we’d be packing up and heading toward Brussels, and then Paris.
The trip was shifting gears. But first, sleep.
