When I moved to Germany for the first time in 1992, I was 21 and was going to university in Freiburg. I had never worked in an American office for more than the time required to do a temp job over spring break and had spent summers working at McDonald’s. When I was 18, I lived near Geislingen for 8 weeks, staying with the family of an exchange student who had lived with us for six months when I was nine years old. This was my first encounter with a “real” German home and the accompanying culture rules this entails. It was not a very exciting summer for an 18-year-old woman who had just graduated high school and wanted some adventure. I read a lot of Michener (the fattest English novels I could find for the money), listened, but not spoke, a lot of Schwäbisch, and tried not to make any cultural faux pas. READ MORE »
Posts tagged drafts
Airing out a German phobia: the killer draft
Sign on a streetcar window in Vienna.
Austrians also fear drafts!
One definition of a split second: the time it takes between opening a window on a hot train and hearing a German say the two most dreaded words in the German language: “Es zieht!” (“There’s a draft!”) In the summer on German trains, in the days before most were air conditioned, I can remember betting with friends how long it would take before a German would close the window when the train began to pull out of the station. It was usually under 10 seconds. An open window while the train was standing still was okay, but the minute air began to flow through the window as the train picked up speed, you could hear the slam of windows being shut — even if it was 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32°C) outside! READ MORE »
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