When I finished 10th grade in 1997/98, there were more young people wanting to start an apprenticeship than there were apprenticeships available. So, you had to have very good grades to be able to take on the apprenticeship you wanted. Because I was busy with other things at school, I didn't get good grades. And I had no desire to apply. I knew I had to do something, but what and how – I hadn't thought about it at the time. At the end of the school year, a group of West Germans came to my class. It was arranged by our school. They said: "We're offering a trip to West Germany and will hold an application workshop there. We promise everyone who comes along an apprenticeship there." That was exciting, and my parents were happy that I had something. I then went on a bus trip to West Germany. There were quite a few candidates on the trip. We were put in a home there. I applied for a sales position at an Opel car dealership and got the apprenticeship. I didn't give it much thought, just thought, "Nice time, nice city." I moved into a Don Bosco home to start with. At the time, I didn't understand what that meant. I had a carer there the whole time. It was totally weird. I wanted to get out of there pretty quickly, but it turned out we had some restrictive contracts. The Don Bosco home was looking for new carers. So they brought in a few East Germans to "look after" them. I lived there with the difficult-to-educate and drug addicts. It cost 1,600 marks. They took care of the subsidies for vocational training, loans, and other nonsense. They supposedly did a great thing with the East Germans' hardship, but in the end, it was a rip-off. I was only able to get out after six months and moved into a shared apartment. Since I moved back home immediately after completing my training, I had to repay these grants. This meant I had to pay a huge amount for my training myself! Don Bosco was clever!
