The interview with Tina Hildebrand took place on April 10, 1990, when she was twenty-two and living in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Originally from Texas, she was 19 when she spent a year in Hanover as an exchange student; she lived with a host family there. I met her when she was a student.

Tina Hildebrand: I had always heard: Northern German people are real cold, and it takes forever to get to know them, and, you know,... And my "family" was just the opposite. They took me in, and they, right from the beginning, wanted me to called them Mutter and Vater. They considered me their sister, and I was treated like a member of the family.

Lana Rings: Did they want you to use du?

TH: Oh, yeah. Right from the very beginning. And that, to me--I was so used to doing that, because I was with my family the first couple months. I stayed with my family, I really didn't make that many friends, and so I used du with several people. And after I did it, I knew that I was doing the wrong thing. And that took me a long time to get used to, because I didn't do it with the people I was with ninety percent of the time. And I did it one time to a teacher. And the whole class looked at me, and then they all started laughing. And the teacher didn't think it was funny. He did not particularly care for me from the very beginning. And I didn't mean to--I knew the rules, but it just slipped. And it's a funny attitude. I guess, you know, you wouldn't expect it from a native German, but I didn't think he'd react so harshly to somebody who's not native, but he did. And it was very offensive to him that I said du.

LR: Now were you shocked that your host parents wanted you to use du with them?

TH: No, I guess it didn't every really occur to me that I would ever say anything else, just because they wrote me, and I felt like I knew them before I ever went over there. And so we didn't have any tension at the beginning. I just felt very comfortable with them, and they did everything possible to make me feel comfortable.

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This page designed and edited by Catherine Vrba-Christie

Interview and transcription by Dr. Lana Rings