An online supplement to the books
When in Germany and The German Way
by Hyde Flippo

Interview with Cherie Schorning - Part 2

INTERVIEW > PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3

GW&M: You have lived abroad before in Japan. Did that help you in any way in Germany?

SCHORNING: You'd think so, wouldn't you! That's what I thought too, before I got to Germany. While I was packing and saying goodbye to friends and family, I was all puffed up and far too confident about how I'd respond to my second expat tour: “Hah, if I could live happily for four years in Japan, Germany will be a piece of cake!” — Boy, was I wrong! Having lived in Japan didn't help me very much in Germany. It may even have been something of a hindrance, because I was basing my expectations of Germany on my experience in Japan. I've seen this happen to others also: consciously or not, they base their expectations of a new expatriate assignment upon an older one, and there's not always a good correlation between the two.

This point should be obvious I suppose, but it isn't to many people. Most businesspeople and educators don't receive the sort of pre-assignment training that, say, career diplomats do, and so a lot of times we don't even see these pitfalls.

When I went to Japan in '82, I left knowing that the contract was for a fixed amount of time. I was single then, and I went there alone to take a teaching job at a very well-known, upscale women's college. I was also going to a country where the amount of yearly sunshine wasn't terribly different from what I'd been used to in New Jersey, where I was from. I had my own job, which was the reason for my being there, and this contract had a definite time frame. I met quite a few “trailing spouses” in Japan, and while I noted their bewilderment, insecurity, and lack of focus, I couldn't empathize with their predicament, because my own situation was very different from theirs.

A trailing spouse tends to feel unimportant, neglected, and lonely, as if you're just the caboose behind the breadwinner engine... he's pulling the train, doing all these interesting and important things, while you're just trailing behind uselessly. When I lived in Japan, I was the engine. In Germany, I was most definitely the caboose.

In Japan I'd sometimes meet Japanese from outside the school, and in the course of introductions, they'd ask me where I worked... the moment I mentioned the name of the school, they'd all gasp and take a few steps back. There was immediate respect for me, because of my connection with this particular institution. That's the sort of “stroking” an Engine gets. The Caboose doesn't get that. The Caboose is forced to say, “Well, uh... I'm here because my husband/wife was transferred here...”

Another difference between these two experiences was in terms of culture: wherever I went in Japan, it was quite obvious that I was a foreigner, and so people automatically began to speak English, or find someone nearby who did. My experience of Japan in the mid-80s was that the Japanese were always appearing to accommodate themselves to the ways of foreigners instead of requiring foreigners to accommodate themselves to them. Ah...the Germans don't do that. To say the least.

The Japanese seemed to think: “Oh, well, of course you can't be expected to know what to do, so we'll help you! And of course you're not expected to speak, much less read our language, so we'll help you any way we can, you poor thing!” My school in Kobe did everything in its power (and a few things you'd think were beyond its power!) to make its American teachers feel comfortable, safe, and protected. If we needed to go shopping, we had help. If we needed something repaired in the house, the school took care of it. If we needed to visit the doctor, we were taken to the best physicians, and even provided with someone who could come along and translate for us!

Once, after I'd been there for only a few months, I offered to take the train from our suburb into the city and pick up a baby gift from our department for one of the staff members who was on maternity leave. From the way everyone reacted, you might think I'd just offered to cure cancer and end world hunger! So I went to town on the train, got the gift with absolutely no trouble, survived the whole 'ordeal,' and was a great big hero. That's the sort of thing I mean when I talk about the “protection” and the “stroking” I got in Japan.

Over weeks and months, a great many apparently trivial events like this one can make a tremendous difference in the overall experience. It's important to feel competent when you go overseas. I felt extremely competent in Japan, but utterly helpless and useless in Germany. The contexts were so completely different. Japan for me was not what I could call a “typical” expat experience... it was an ideal situation. Most importantly, I had my own job, a job which commanded respect. I had my “label.” And nobody expected me to know the language or be able to follow the customs of the host country, so whatever I did manage to learn was praised to the absolute heights.

Paradoxically, under those conditions I learned the language very quickly. When I arrived, I couldn't speak a word of Japanese, but when I left after living there for four years, I spoke better Japanese than many expat executives who'd been there for decades. To this day I still speak better Japanese than I do German—and I left Japan in 1986.

But when I followed my husband to Germany in '93, I had no job of my own, and as far as we knew, this wasn't an expatriation—it was an emigration. We both thought that we'd be spending the rest of our lives in Germany. Although I'd taken a quick course in German at Berlitz, I still couldn't seem to manage very well, even in the simplest of situations. Now, I was 23 when I went to Japan, and 34 when I went to Germany, and I know that some people feel there's a correlation between age and language acquisition. Now Hyde, I know that you're an expert in this field, and I'm sure you've read quite a bit about theories of language acquisition, but I say... fiddle-faddle!

I don't attribute my difficulty with German primarily to my age. I attribute it to my attitude, which was lousy.

I had a terrible attitude about living in Germany, and although I went dutifully to my German classes, very little of it stuck. Whatever did “stick” did so in spite of my efforts, not because of them. I felt like a “useless caboose,” and I often recalled the trailing spouse wives I'd met in Japan ten years before. Now I was walking in those shoes, and boy, did they ever pinch. And to make the comparison between my two language-learning experiences even more embarrassing... I had all the time in the world to learn German, because for the first two years in Germany I wasn't working.

In Japan I was holding down a rather demanding job, and had far fewer opportunities to practice the language, because we American teachers were strongly discouraged to speak Japanese with anyone, whether they were students, faculty, or staff members. Part of our job was to provide English “immersion” for everyone, and so I had to fight for opportunities to speak Japanese with people who weren't from the school. My Japanese classes consisted of only three or four contact hours a week in the evenings, while my German classes were practically full-time, four days a week! Yet I know I learned more Japanese than I did German. Context and attitude mean everything.

The Germans did not realize that I was a foreigner, simply by looking at me (much to my surprise!), and unlike the Japanese, in my own experience the Germans I encountered had very definite ideas about who was going to do the cultural accommodating—me, not them! Which is perfectly legitimate and understandable—it's just that I hadn't been expecting it.

I found holidays in Germany particularly distressing. My husband's family is German, but they have a very strong Dutch connection because they spent many years in the Netherlands. So on Christmas, Easter, and so on, we'd travel to relatives, and I'd be thinking, “Good—now here's my big chance to practice German, after spending all those endless days, weeks, and months sitting in German class.”

Ah, but when this particular German family gets together, they all speak in Dutch! In DUTCH, Hyde!

They all speak three or four languages fluently, including English. (Sadly, Japanese is not one of the languages in their linguistic repertoire.) As I'm sure you know, Dutch, German, and English bear a great deal of similarity to one another. They bear just enough similarity for an American to grasp a few words here and there, and then get the meaning of what's really been said totally screwed up.

For an extrovert like myself, someone who simply adores to talk, this situation was a torment. It increased my sense of exile... and remember, too: as far as we knew, this was not a expatriation. It was an emigration. There was no end in sight to this, to the best of our knowledge.

So living in Germany, for me, under these Useless Caboose conditions was probably the hardest thing I've had to do yet in my life. When I got there I couldn't communicate; I had no job, no friends outside the German, Dutch-speaking family, and few, if any, cultural concessions were made to me simply because I was a foreigner (and by the way: God help you if you forget somebody's birthday in Germany).

Above all of this—literally—was that famous German sky... gray, gray, gray, and rainy.

NEXT > Part 3 of this interview

Interview Copyright © 1997-2005 Hyde Flippo

In the next installment Cherie discusses how S.A.D. almost killed her before she finally conquered it, how she came to terms with another culture, and important lessons she learned from her time in Germany.