I Took A German Remedial Class In School Despite Being Austrian

It was an afternoon class.

Two hours per week.

And I enjoyed it.

We watched films, we had fun.

Because there were only a select few, it felt special. Like The Breakfast Club. (This was when afternoon classes still seemed ‘novel’ and ‘adult’, not yet appearing ‘normal’ and ‘tiresome’!)

Still, there was something odd about these German classes.

All of us had some kind of immigrant background. We looked other, we had foreign sounding last names.

The class was called ‘German for Foreigners’. (Memories blur and I’d like to believe that could not have been the official name, but it was the one that stuck, the one we students and even teachers used casually!)

A designation that could not have been more wrong.

None of us were ‘foreigners’.

Take me, for instance.

My parents are Indian but I grew up in Vienna. I have the Austrian citizenship. I’m fluent in German. I’m Austrian.

The others, who were, for example, Filipino or mixed (like Spanish-Austrian or…