WRITERS ABROAD MAGAZINE: THE THIRD SPACE
The Wrong Job
By Laura Besley
I never planned to be abroad for a decade. My first job away from the UK was in Germany,
working for a language school called Marcus Evans Linguarama. I applied for the job after
teaching English in the UK for a little over a year. The job advertised was for a position in
Paris and I travelled to London for the interview. Towards the end of the hour long interview
the HR Manager said, almost casually, ‘I see that you speak Dutch fluently and a little
German.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’ I had lived in Holland as a child and done German at school, although I
was sure that the majority of it was long buried away.
He looked up from my CV. ‘And you don’t speak any French?’
‘Not really.’ I did it for two years at school, but I was never very good at it. I found it almost a
flamboyant language and felt I didn’t have the confidence to pull it off. I was far too shy to
speak French.
‘We also have positions open in Germany,’ he said. ‘In Düsseldorf.’
I had never heard of Düsseldorf and it certainly didn’t have the same ring to it as Paris.
‘Okay,’ I said. I decided to take a risk and show my ignorance. I figured Dusseldorf couldn’t
be a particularly big city if I’d never heard of it. ‘Where in Germany is that?’
‘In the West. It borders Holland. You could visit regularly. Do you still have friends and
family there?’
‘Yes, I do,’ I said. ‘That would be nice.’ In true British style that’s not what I meant at all.
What I really meant was: I don’t want to go to Germany, to some place I’ve never heard of. I
want to go to Paris. Everyone has heard of Paris.
‘Think about it,’ he said.
I told him I would. We shook hands and I left the interview room. When I walked back into
the main lobby I saw Natasha, a girl who had been on my TEFL course with me and had a
first from Oxford in French, bien sûr. There was not a shred of doubt in my mind that she
was going to get the job in Paris. If I wanted a job with this company, I would be going to
Germany.
I went home and googled Düsseldorf. To my amazement it was the seventh largest city in
Germany (in terms of population) and the capital of its state. I now felt a little foolish at
having admitted I hadn’t heard of it, but I sent the email anyway saying that I was interested
in going to Germany. A month later I was packing my bags and boarding the plane.
I immediately felt at home in this flat, spacious city with bicycles galore and the wide river
Rhine running through it. The people I worked for and the students I taught were lovely,
generous people. For the first time in my life I lived alone and enjoyed it immensely. My
long-lost German resurfaced and by the time I left I was able to speak German fairly
fl