From East Berlin to the Land of Milk and Hot Dogs

Janina Winkler is from East Berlin – and she was the first GDR student to go on exchange to the US with STS. When Janina set off for Springfield, Illinois in the summer of 1990, the Berlin wall had not yet been down for a year and East and West Germany had not yet been reunited. Her mother borrowed the money for Janina’s program fee from friends in the West. “STS was very surprised at the time and said that I was the first exchange student from the GDR that they had sent to the USA,” Janina remembers. The fact that she spoke English well was pure coincidence. “I had an English teacher who we all had a huge crush on. That’s why I really pushed myself!”

In the US, Janina experienced the exact opposite of pre-reunification era Berlin. Her affluent host family raised Angus cattle on a farm and Janina’s room was furnished in English country house style. As a GDR girl, she sometimes felt like an alien. Her host sister was horrified by Janina’s armpit hair: “She told me to shave it immediately, which I did for the first time in my life.” Janina, on the other hand, was amazed by her host sister’s extensive make-up sessions, jumbo-sized bottles of milk, potato chips and popcorn in buckets and a total of four television sets in the house. “Everything was gigantic! I was in a capitalist land of milk and honey.”

Janina vacationed in Florida, went skiing in Colorado, experienced Thanksgiving tables piled high with food, and she was overwhelmed by American Christmas. “I got over 50 presents. My host mom enjoyed treating me because she knew we didn’t have anything like that behind the iron curtain.”

At school, Janina became a member of the track and field team and made good friends. She was amazed she could choose classes like driving, cooking or parenting – and she was astonished how little her classmates and their parents knew about international politics and other countries. “Many only knew about Central Europe from a 24/7 world war TV channel that was very popular. Their image of Europe was from the 1940s.” But Janina was all the more enthusiastic about the food options in the school cafeteria: “They served hamburgers and hot dogs every day. Complete junk food, but very trendy back then.” And she loved American pop culture, hip-hop and Prom. “I went from deepest socialism to maximal capitalism. That level of consumerism was weird even for Westerners from Europe. But at the same time, I felt so loved by my host parents. From then on, I’ve always had the feeling that we East Germans could be at home anywhere in the world.”