Closed Door Policy

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 »