I was born and raised in Berlin, Germany, meaning my first language is German. I grew up eating everything potato for dinner and my choice of beverage was cooled hibiscus tea. Although I grew up in a fairly German household, Germany is known to be home to a great number of European immigrants, mostly from the eastern countries. My homeroom in elementary, middle and high school was at least 50% non-German, so my friends belonged to a variety of different religions and backgrounds and spoke languages that were not German as their first tongue. I was used to this mix of cultures, even though as a child of German ancestry I did comment on my non-German friends in various stereotypical and sometimes even downright racist ways, not knowing what I was exactly saying. The point here being, I was a child, who was still driven by youthful ignorance, and later on these incidences had us all more laughing than holding grudges. On my 15th birthday my family stepped on a plane Canada-bound to begin a new life in the great white north and contrary to the almost fairytale-like stories the German media told its German audience about Canada and the simple lifestyles that await any and all who dare to live here, there were some rough patches for me along the way before I could really and truly feel at home. Among these, which startled and shocked me greatly the first time I was exposed to them, were the very single-minded viewpoints people in Ontario had about Germans. I began to feel ashamed of my heritage and origin and would only indicate that I am from Europe, if anyone asked me where I am from. But I get ahead of myself. One of the very first things we did after arriving in the town of W and finding a place to live, was register my brother and I in school. My mom, our very friendly neighbour, who took us under her wing, and I made our way to the principal’s office in the high school I was about to attend for the next three years and ultimately graduate from with more than just a small sigh of relief of finally having made it out without any permanent damage. I remember a tall, middle aged man, the principal named Mr. L, looking down on me, a mere 5-foot 98-pound girl with oversized metal-framed glasses, asking me a question. At this point in my life I had about five years of English lessons as part of the German school curriculum, which were about as helpful in this nerve wrecking situation as a crash course in Chinese given underwater. His voice seemed extremely deep, the words had a tendency of melting into one another and his face appeared to have adopted an obvious shade of red as he asked me the only question I could clearly understand: “And you want to attend this school?” I was thinking to myself that the answer should be quite obvious, since I was sitting across from him in his intimidating, but rather dark office on a bleak and grey November morning. I nodded my head and croaked and shy “Yes”. The series of events that followed I can only remember with a dreamlike surreality, since I found it impossible that a grown man would have the need to put down a mere 15-year-old girl with such coldness. He made it clear that for any student to be successful at this school, they would have to prove knowledge of the English language (straight forward enough), he then proceeded to slam a booklet down in front of me with the page open to about two or three paragraphs from which I was supposed to read. With as much enthusiasm and German language reading skills I possess (Germans like to read with emphasis and lots of expression, identifying each type of punctuation specifically and succinctly with various breaks in the reading flow) I began to read…I started to stumble over words and unfamiliar phrases and as the realization of the type of literature I was reading dawned on me I looked up in disbelief. He had given me a page out of the handbook for school procedures to read, specifically what to do during a fire drill. I wondered, if this was really my only chance to show my level of education and my 92% average I achieved in Berlin. If it hadn’t been for my mom’s insistence that I be given a chance at this school for a semester I would have ended up in an immigrants school (not that there is anything wrong with it, but he seemed rather too enthusiastic to send me away instead of giving me an opportunity). As we were leaving his office he smiled at me and pointed out that I am indeed a girl and will therefore very soon have a boyfriend. I think that was my first encounter with a male, who sexually objectified females. I later found out that this principal had a general dislike towards immigrants and foreign students and had no problem showing this dislike. I started school three weeks before the end of the first semester and was therefore placed into four random classes. Within the first week of the second semester I experienced my second encounter of humiliation by an authority figure. I was in math class and was called out to finished the fraction problem that was on the board. Nervous and still very aware of the thick German accent that would turn every “w” into a “v” and every “v” into a “w”, I drew a blank; 25 students were listening to me, students I didn’t know, didn’t recognize and I missed my friends or even just a familiar face terribly. Half way through my desperate question as to what the variable underneath the fraction is called, my math teacher interrupted me impatiently and informed me that if I plan on making it in this school, I better learn the language. I was stunned into silence. Humiliated, I went home after school and put up a brave front until the next morning, at which time I broke down crying, not understanding the world. Mom and I looked up the word in the dictionary (denominator, really, I should have known, since the German equivalent is “nominator”, but my nerves got to me and I dared to ask for help). I made a cheat sheet and hid it inside my math book. If this book is still used today, that piece of paper can still be found wedged in securely between the first two pages. I was encouraged to talk to my math teacher to express the inappropriateness of her comment in front of the entire class and my understanding that knowing and learning English is imperative to succeeding in school. And so I did. By the end of the second semester I earned an 81% average and a spot on the school’s honour roll. My ability to keep up in class was never doubted again, but unfortunately the differences in cultures and the stereotypes some people still had with respect to Europeans as well as Germans was mind boggling. Once I started speaking, about four months into my time at high school, I was affectionately called “German Jenni”, weird and different, loud yet quiet, brutally honest and a bit too blunt at times. However, when people, and by people I mean other students in school, tried to get a rise out me, I was surprised and even shocked how many negatively charged words they put in association with Germany and the German people: Nazi, war, cold-hearted, unfriendly, porn, the list goes on. With time I was able to tune these ignorant comments out, but a new phase of stereotypical treatment was awaiting me as I embarked on my first relationship with a boy. I am not sure exactly why he was interested in me, but comments of my exoticism and unique way of spelling my name came up as some of the reasons. At first these treatments were small enough to go unnoticed or I just checked them off as insignificant, until a new low was reached a few years into our relationship. It must have been in September when apples were in season, M grabbed one from the fruit bowl in his kitchen and held it up to me. He said: “This is an apple, you rub it on your pants to clean it off the dirt, like so,” he then rubbed the apple back and forth on his jeans rotating it to cover the entire surface, he bit into it and holding it up again to show the bite mark. I was speechless, dumbstruck, unable to form a sentence to let him know that I am from Germany and not the North Pole. At a comedy club, a year after the apple incident, the comedian asked if there were any tourists in the audience and could they please identify themselves by a raised hand. M grabbed my wrist and yanked it into the air. I yanked my arm away and asked what he was doing, his answer: “Well, you are from Germany, so you are a tourist in this country,” by this time I had my permanent resident status for four years. The relationship ended, but my desire to leave my German accent behind and the constant and nagging questions of what I am with respect to my nationality and identity remained. I moved on, went to university and became another Jenn amongst the many students from many different nationalities and languages. The question of whether I am still purely German or already half Canadian seemed insignificant, even though I kept wondering if I should apply for my Canadian citizenship. Unfortunately, Germany forces one to choose and dual citizenship is a rare exception and I wasn’t ready to leave that part of me behind. Fast forward to the moment I met the man of my dreams, B: a Canadian with French, Hungarian and Irish roots, who pledges his love to the Great White North, loves everything potato and thinks it’s sexy when I speak German. The question of national identity didn’t matter anymore for me and the stereotypical treatments had stopped years ago, I felt good, I felt I belonged. Until one family dinner with the future in-laws two years ago turned abruptly into a pecking party of the Canadian government’s leniency to allow non-Canadians to remain in the country, a topic started by the mother. As with the apple scenario years ago, I was stunned into complete silence as the woman, who sooner rather than later will become my “mother-in-law” began to insult my permission to stay in Canada and my decision to keep my German Passport: “Why do people, who don’t have Canadian citizenship stay in this country? Why don’t they just all apply for the Canadian passport or go back where they came from? I don’t understand why the government still allows it?” I have never felt so uncomfortable and unwelcomed in someone’s home before. I was deeply humiliated, mortified and extremely angry. I had no idea such form of racism could be extended to someone, who is about to become part of the family. Less than a week ago I celebrated my 30th birthday and with that the 15th anniversary of immigrating to Canada. From this day onward I will spend more time in Canada than I have ever in Germany. From time to time, after another hair-raising and patience-testing meeting with the mother, I would sarcastically joke that I don’t know what I am talking about, because I am only a foreigner. It doesn’t really matter, B loves my German cooking, sits on the couch with me and watches German soap operas once in a while to learn German. We enjoy our life together in this great Canadian city, our friends come from all over the world, which always makes for a great time and at the end I can only say that Canada has given me a home and my national identity is mine to make.
