Nicholas Grossenbacher, Professional Adventurer

Nicholas Grossenbacher is many things: a teacher, a writer, a linguist, but above all, he is a man of adventure.

Today, he teaches the  ninth grade Past in the Present course as well as AP European History. However, before he became a teacher, Grossenbacher (or as his students call him, Mr. G) led, as he puts it, “a very interesting life with a lot of different things going on.”

Mr. G was born in Chicago and moved to Arizona at a young age. He went to high school in New Jersey and college in Los Angeles, and then lived in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Seattle, Washington. Mr. G has studied spoken languages such as German, Bulgarian, Arabic, and, of course, English, as well as Ancient Greek, Ancient Latin, Syriac (a form of Aramaic), and Old Church Slavonic. Before teaching at JCHS, Mr. G ghost-wrote a book, worked on a documentary, and did, in his words, “a variety of different freelance work.”

Mr. G explored many ancient cities and, in our interview, recounted many interesting experiences. He was chased by wild dogs in Syria, attacked by monkeys and led into opium dens in India, and experienced particularly strange and suspenseful encounters in Istanbul and Guatemala.

Perhaps his most frightening adventure (and most well-known among students) occurred while Mr. G was travelling in Istanbul. With barely any money and little knowledge of the city, Mr. G had been in Istanbul for only a short time when, one day, a man approached him on the road. The man was amiable, and after a discussion about Mr. G’s position and what had brought him to Istanbul, the man offered to bring Mr. G to a live music show. Mr. G got into a cab with the man’s friend, whom, Mr. G says, “I did not find as charming,” and the cab began driving to a “far-flung neighborhood of the city” in the opposite direction of the live music venue.

The men brought him to a basement bar, crowded with questionable people and insisted that Mr. G order something.  He refused, suspicious that the men would charge him with an exorbitant bill. Nevertheless, despite not ordering any food, after the men finished eating and drinking, they brought Mr. G a bill that asked for more money than he had in the bank. Subsequently, they then threatened to “beat him up” if he would not pay. Mr. G managed to convince them to drive him to an ATM where he would withdraw however much money they wanted.

They loaded into the car, and as the car was accelerating from a red light, Mr. G opened the door and “rolled out into the street. [...] I didn’t even stop to see if they had stopped the car,” Mr. G says. “I ran, and I ran, and ran, and ran, through the backstreets of neighborhoods until I felt like they weren’t behind me.” He then returned to his hotel and checked out promptly.

“I never saw those guys again,” says Mr. G. “Probably a good thing.”

We are truly lucky to have people like Mr. G in our JCHS community!

A special congratulations to Mr. Grossenbacher and his wife on the birth of his first child. Mazel Tov!