Chapter 1: Culture
1. Introduction to Culture
Personal experience by Jutta Berninghausen
First day in Germany
A few years ago, I gave an intercultural training in the master program "Global Management". The students had come to Bremen, Germany, from all over the world for this program and this was the first day of their new studies.
Around noon, the person in charge of the program brought another student to the class. She had just picked him up from the airport and his suitcase was placed in a corner. In the evening, she was going to take him to his dorm.
Biplap was from India, 42 years old, and had a small software company in Bangalore. The flight didn't seem to have stressed him out much, because he immediately joined in the discussions, gave valuable answers, and at first glance seemed to me to be a worldly, interculturally experienced person. But when I arrived at the university the next morning, there was great excitement. Biplap wanted to fly back home immediately.
What had happened?
The night before, as arranged, he had been taken to his dorm and then left alone. It was the first night of his life that he had slept alone. Not only had he never lived alone before, he had never cooked. No one made him anything to eat, he didn't know how to buy anything. Finally, he went to bed early and got up at dawn the next morning to buy something to eat on the street, as he was used to doing in India.
But to his great shock, the streets were deserted. No one was on the street, no store was open. So, still hungry, he finally got to the college, waited until the office opened, and asked for a ride home. When fellow students heard his story, a Bangladeshi and a Sri Lankan immediately came forward with similar experiences to relate.
One of them was staying with a host family. He said that on the first evening he was received very kindly by his host mother, the family also invited him to dinner and showed him around, but the very next day he came home to find only a note: "We are out, feel at home, take what you need from the fridge."
A behavior, completely normal in Germany, was for him a great lack of hospitality. During the lunch break, the three Asians arranged to meet and decided to rent a two-room apartment together. One room for sleeping for all of them together, one for living. In Germany, however, students all insist on a single room. Having to share a room with another student would be considered an imposition.
As I was driving home in the afternoon after practice, I ran into the three of them on the way home. All three had clasped each other around the shoulder and were walking home united. The first culture shock seemed to be over.
It was then that I realized for the first time that visiting students in our country face much greater challenges than just studying. Since there are no campus universities in Germany that regulate the entire life for students, they also have to find their way in a completely new everyday life - a life that usually requires a much greater degree of independence and individualism from them than they are used to at home.