Interviews >> Katja (USA via Germany)                                                                         

Katja

(USA via Germany)

I met Katja in a business setting. I have to confess that she is the first German that I’ve gotten to know closer and personal-“er”. I don’t know about stereotypes, but she’s not aloof and distant. On the contrary, she has a great sense of humor. Though she does have a lot of determination and a “can do” attitude.

She took me by surprise the first time I told her about the “Sentimental Refugee” project and asked if I could talk to her for an hour or so, to pick her brain and gather her experiences as an immigrant. She responded right away: “Let’s do it now!” I wasn’t prepared for that. Talk about being on the ball… No wonder she runs her own business.

Katja was born in the town of Newberg, a couple of hours away from Hamburg. She says that, as a kid, she never thought about immigrating. But then she discovered stamps…

1. It all started with my stamps collection…

KATJA: I think it started with my stamps collection.

CRISTINA: Really! How does that story go?

KATJA: I collected everything, from little pencils, to pencil sharpeners and everything else. Australians seemed to have these really cool stamps with animals and plants, so I just started collecting stamps. That’s how I learned to look up countries on the map. Europe is sort of in the middle and Australia is down on the right and I said to myself, that’s where I want to go. As far as possible. I wanted to go away.

CRISTINA: How old where you then?

KATJA: I must have been in 1^st grade. Over the course of the next few years I went through several school exchanges. In 10^th grade I went to England. In Germany one can take a year off in 11^th grade and come back directly in 12^th grade provided that one goes to school during that year. I wanted to go to Australia but my boyfriend convinced me that I shouldn’t go. So I didn’t but ever since I kept thinking that I will never let myself be influenced like that again.

To continue the story, in 1995 I worked for about 6 months in a department store to earn money. It was an after school job. I saved up and bought a ticket to Australia. I went to work as an “au pair” in Sidney and from there I started traveling around. I went backpacking throughout Australia.

2. The travel bug…

CRISTINA: Did you go by yourself?

KATJA: Yes. You meet more people this way. If you are with another person from your country nobody else will come up and talk to you. I would have been talking German and that is isolating. Plus, I didn’t want to compromise. I wanted to do exactly what I wanted to do.

Australia is a really great country to backpack in. Everywhere you go there are a lot of hostels that are really cheap, around $10, Australian dollars. You can take the bus everywhere or fly here and there. You meet a lot of the same people everywhere you go.

CRISTINA: How long did you do that for?

KATJA: About three months. After that, I wanted to see the rest of the world because I met many people who had been on the road for years, really, traveling, working a bit here and there. I realized there are a lot of things to do and see. So every year I go somewhere for four weeks to some exotic place.

After I finished the trip to Australia I came to the United States for the first time, stayed a week and left a suitcase behind. After that I went to the Caribbean and joined a sailing ship, as a member of the boat club. You could sail around the islands, but you had to work too, you had to be part of the crew.

A friend of mine came from Germany and we went together on the boat. We were working eight hours every day. We saw Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Cuba, the Bahamas. We ended up in Cuba and got invited to Castro’s palace.

CRISTINA: You actually got to see Castro’s palace?

KATJA: Yes. It is a replica of the house in “Gone with the Wind”. You get off the boat in Havana and you see all those poor people. Government officials were afraid that they would be asking us for food or they would simply steal it so they came on the boat to guard it. They would carefully guard the storage space, count everything and lock it at the end of the day. The funny thing is that afterwards toilet paper was missing. Or soap.

3. Staying in the United States.

CRISTINA: So how did you end up staying in the US?

KATJA: I met an American in Germany who never wanted to come back to the States. He was married in Europe. He said I could stay at his house.

In the beginning I came here because I wanted to study. I signed up for school so I had a reason to come – for my parents, that is. I signed up for a travel college. I figured that since I always liked to travel, why don’t I work in the industry? But the school was really horrible.

CRISTINA: Why?

KATJA: In the first three weeks of school we learned that the Earth was divided in two halves, the Northern hemisphere and the Southern hemisphere. I complained to the director. It was a private travel college where you paid a lot of money to get your degree.

CRISTINA: What did he say?

KATJA: He knew that I was right. But he couldn’t do anything about it. So I think for the first time in my life I was a straight A student… (laughter)

The teachers kept writing me up for different things because I kept complaining: I wasn’t wearing a uniform, or my pants were too tight, or I was wearing the wrong shoes. I paid that money out of my own pocket so I really felt like I wanted to learn something. But they still couldn’t do anything about my grades. And on top of that I had submitted an entry for a scholarship and I won it! They were very mad. There was an awards ceremony at the Aero Club of Southern California. I showed up there and of course I didn’t wear my school uniform because it wasn’t ‘cool’. The directors of the school were there and they didn’t even take my name.

CRISTINA: So did you finish the school?

KATJA: Yes. That was in 1999. Afterwards I didn’t work in that field. Instead, I met Wendy, the owner of a store in Los Angeles by the name of Polcadots. That happened because I had started babysitting while I was studying. I had run out of money so I put a sign up and I met one mom. And through her…

CRISTINA: Where did you put your sign up?

KATJA: I put up a poster in a local grocery store, on a board, that I am looking for a babysitting job. The first woman I worked for also had a post that she was looking for somebody: “Looking for someone to look after my Princess”...

We connected and through her I met another woman who was a single mom, a make-up artist living in Santa Monica. I decided to take care of her daughter and take her to school when she had early jobs. Through those two women, because I needed more hours, I met Wendy, who owned a store. Because I’d worked in retail before I said I wanted to go see the store and I kept telling her that I wanted to try working there. She’s really sweet and she let me try it. I showed up one day after school and she hasn’t let me go ever since. We became really good friends. She and her husband supported me through a lot of my stay here, with different visas. They support my ideas no matter what I want to do. She was absolutely supportive of me when I left her and went to work in the travel industry, even knowing that she would lose me for the store.

4. Adjusting to a new country… and not hanging out with one’s country people.

CRISTINA: In terms of adjusting yourself to a new country… you told me that you didn’t really want to hang out with Germans very much.

KATJA: At first I wanted to learn the language. Not that I was avoiding Germans in any way, I just didn’t want close friendships with them because I wanted to experience the new culture. There are always these little communities that I didn’t want to be part of. I wanted to experience the multi-cultural atmosphere around here.

When I was a child in school two black people came into our class in 11^th grade and people was staring because everybody else was white. There was one Australian boy but you couldn’t really tell he was a foreigner. There were no foreigners in the school, other than Turkish people who are a bit like Mexicans here. So yes, I wanted to blend in. On the other hand, you have all these Americans coming from different backgrounds. I have one good Japanese friend who came here in the ‘80’s, I have one good American friend, someone else from the Middle East, another from the Philippines, and someone else from Taiwan. I started noticing that you don’t look at what color people are anymore.

5. Differences in style…

CRISTINA: But people grow up differently and I think we develop habits and assumptions that we make about people that we don’t even realize. Did you find that others were different from you – or vice-versa?

KATJA: People thought in the beginning that I was really blunt and rude. If I don’t like something, I’ll say it really fast. If I go to a club and someone offers me a drink or invites me to dance I just say “No, thanks” and walk away. I don’t want a free drink if I’m not interested.

In conversations I noticed – especially in California – that you have to “speak through a flower”: everything has to be positive. If you say something negative, you have to blend it in otherwise people might end up in a psychology session. That’s typical Los Angeles: “I need to go to my therapist to work it out”. They are twenty-five years old and they go to the therapist for their relationships. Can’t you discuss things on your own? Everyone seems to want to have a pill for everything. It’s not about dealing with the problem, but about shaving the surface.

People sometimes say that around here people are very superficial and they live in an artificial world, but then again, sometimes that’s just what you need. I don’t want to have someone prying into my deepest personal life. At least you meet a lot of people and then you decide if you want to move deeper into the relationship.

It’s easy to meet people here. And then it’s hard to meet good people and good friends. Take customer service: in the old country you walk into a store and nobody greets you with “Hello, how are you doing?” Here everybody is so polite and nice. They greet you and say “Can I help you with anything?” and yes, it is superficial, but then again, it’s a nice welcome also and it makes life a lot more pleasant. Customer service is one thing here that people stay on top of.

CRISTINA: Speaking of people being different, do you think it’s just a question of language and people are pretty much the same everywhere? That there is only a language barrier but otherwise you can be close with everyone? And of course, beyond individual personalities because there are people in the place you grew up in that you won’t get along with.

KATJA: There are differences in the living circumstances. Sometimes there is a whole other world. Look at the school system here, the public one I mean. The truth is that the kids unfortunately don’t get enough education and the parents have to worry about sending them to private schools. They work their whole lives to get them into college. They have to spend all their savings to get their kids a good education. But I think that should be a given because the youth is the future of the country and if you don’t take care of them, it will get out of control.

That’s how you have gangs, they don’t have ethics, they grow up with both parents working because otherwise they can’t afford those schools. The kids come home from school, maybe they have a housekeeper and maybe not, they watch TV, eat fast food and don’t have someone to say to them “Let’s go to the library”. They don’t have a hobby and are pretty much left on their own. They grow up not finding boundaries. I think that’s what’s happening here. They are either left alone or they have a baby-sitter or housekeeper who picks them up from school and they are hardly with their parents. Or the parents have to work all the time.

How would they know what’s bad if nobody tells them? How would they know that there are other things that they can do? I think it’s not just a matter of language, I think it’s a matter of culture, upbringing, college education and politics.

CRISTINA: How do you mean “politics”?

KATJA: I mean for the country in general. Not specifically each individual’s view. The government is implementing certain views.

CRISTINA: Like the government officials stealing toilet paper?

(laughter)

KATJA: Here people don’t get good information about the view on the world. That’s why, I think, many Americans think “in the box”. They never read foreign newspapers for instance. But it’s hard to have the New York Times admit that the Iraq war was nothing but a marketing campaign to convince Americans that it’s a good thing to go there to find weapons of mass destructions. And how many did they find? Zero. But people believed it because they got brainwashed. It was a whole campaign that was started. Even with newspapers that you thought you could trust, it was on the front page.

I don’t think anybody has the time to do research on newspapers so people rely on one or two papers. That’s how people get brainwashed, they don’t get another opinion. And if they don’t open up to the “London Herald” because that’s a language they can understand in another part of the world, they will never know or see another opinion. There is only this one way of thinking and some people think that’s being patriotic. It’s very good to be proud of your country. But you can’t ignore everybody else.

I think everybody should go on school exchange programs. I think it starts with education. Kids here don’t even have to take world history, only American history. So how would they know about all these other things? How the world became what it is now? And they only see war when America wins the war.

CRISTINA: They only get the good side.

KATJA: Yes.

6. The entrepreneurial bug.

CRISTINA: How about the entrepreneurial bug that you have? You love business. Did you grow up with that?

KATJA: Not really. My parents were part of the generation after WWII. They were born in ’37 and ’40 and didn’t have an easy upbringing. My dad made it pretty far for not having been able to finish school. There was no money so he went school at night while he was working in construction. He started on construction sites and he ended up being the managing director of three different companies. He was actually an example that you can do it, you just have to go for it.

He always said that if he ever had the money he would have liked to have his own business and he was always supportive of me and my sister whenever we came up with ideas.

My parents never had the opportunity to go to other countries. Field trips two hours away were their thing. They were grateful that opportunities came to us or that we were looking for them and they were very supportive.

I never wanted to open a business in Germany though. Here in the US you meet so many people who just do it. In one way it is true that America is the land of opportunity because it’s really easy to start out. Then how you make it, that’s another story. There aren’t so many bricks in your way, so many regulations. That’s why a lot of people have their own business and I was very impressed with that. I told myself “I want to do that too”. I don’t want to work for anybody else. 

I took an apprenticeship in Germany with a company in wholesale/ retail, it was a mail-order firm that was actually very new. An offspring of an established company, something like Spiegel and Eddie Bower. It started very entrepreneurial too, with five people who had an idea on how to create a discount market catalog. The owner of the mother company gave them a million dollars. He said “Let’s give it a try, here’s the money”. And they did. They posed as the models in the beginning, it was very small and they worked their way up. For the first 5-7 years none of the competitors even knew about it because they never did any advertising. They cared a lot about the bottom line and capturing the niche markets. That’s when I started there: they had just started to grow and every year they were outgrowing their business plan. They had just moved into another building and became bigger and bigger.

Through my apprenticeship there I went to different departments. They were always listening to their employees. If there was something that you wanted to bring up, they would at least listen to you. They wouldn’t say “You’re an assistant, what do you have to say?”

One time I brought up a project: I thought they paid way too much money to buyers around the world for their traveling tickets. So I thought they could save a lot of money by buying all their tickets online and I said so. They told me “You have six weeks” and they gave me a desk – which not everybody had at that time – saying “Work on this project, then write a report with what the results are”. They thought “Why not hear what she has to say?”

7. The secret to being well adjusted.

CRISTINA: You’re really adjusted. You have friends, you have a good life, your own business, you’re doing your own thing. What do you think is the secret to that?

KATJA: I think it’s “Adjust but don’t blend in.”

CRISTINA: How do you mean?

KATJA: I mean adjust to the circumstance that you live in, but then again, you have to always be a little bit different. Keep your own vision. People always say that it is that you think positively, or that you have a different view. I spend my vacations in different ways than other people would, and I don’t need some fancy hotels to show off with.

If I want to do something, I know it’s only me who can make it happen. I don’t want to whine to people about how it’s not happening. If you don’t take on your own life, other people are not going to do it for you. I think that’s how I met all these different people too. You go out and you are open to other people. They notice you as having a different approach and a different view on life. I met so many different cultures. It’s not that one thing is better than another, it’s just different.

8. Meeting new people.

CRISTINA: We were talking earlier about being really easy to meet people but that it’s rather superficial...

KATJA: Yes. It took me about a year until I found some good friends. I literally took the “LA Weekly” (note: a local weekly newspaper with events listings) and I said Monday it’s this, Tuesday that, and Wednesday this, and so on.

I went to all sorts of different clubs. It didn’t matter if I liked the music, I had no idea what kind of music they were playing. I also didn’t care that I would see some gay, or fetish, or transvestite event, because I wanted to see those too. This way you meet people. Some, you take their phone number and if you meet them again, you feel you know if you want to hang out with them more or not. Sometimes you give away your number and you never hear back again, which is fine too.

And then on other occasions you meet people and you feel you connect with them in closer friendships.

I met a lot of people outside of clubs. I met my best friend standing in line for an event. Also, some other friends who live right around the corner… I talked to them because they were wearing a t-shirt saying “Berlin love parade” – we had all been there and realized that now we live less than a mile from each other. We started hanging out.

Then you meet friends of friends. Even if you don’t like someone, if they take you to a party and you meet other people, maybe there is somebody there that you can hang out with and become friends. That’s what people notice about my friends: they are from all walks of life. You notice that at my birthday parties. People ask “How did you meet Katja?” One was from parties, another was from a mom, her daughter and their friends, the other one from my ex-boyfriend and his friends, or from all different walks of life. They are not all artists or in business.

CRISTINA: You love art?

KATJA: I do. I am always attracted to people who do art because I am more on the business side. I love photography. I used to draw.

9. Dating.

CRISTINA: How about dating? Any thoughts on that?

KATJA: I think I dated only one true American guy, from L.A. I dated some pretty mixed mutts – which got me in trouble too. Dating in LA is hard because all the girls seem to rush into things. Some say yes really fast. If someone buys them a drink, the next thing is a dinner which they didn’t really want, but they got a free dinner. I always thought that if I’m not interested, I don’t even want to make somebody pay for something.

I had two boyfriends here, one was from a mixed culture. He’s American but his dad is from the Cayman Islands and his mom from Latin America, his grandma is German. He came from San Francisco. The other guy was from Lebanon and that was trouble.

I think I don’t really understand the whole dating culture. I don’t think I ever did. I don’t know… do you have dating in Romania?

CRISTINA: Well, sort of... I don’t understand this thing though where you go out with somebody ten times and you still don’t know if you are together or not.

KATJA: Yes… me too. Are you dating? Are you together? Are you exclusive?...My understanding of dating is you go out with one person and you don’t start dating other people unless you see what’s going to happen. If it doesn’t work out, then you move on. But here it’s like this … unless you are “exclusive”, you can still keep on going on dates. And that’s alright, it’s accepted. I don’t understand that.

CRISTINA: Sometimes it’s confusing when people ask you for your phone number. I strike conversations with people everywhere I go, like you. So if a man hands me his business card, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he wants to go on a date with me. It could be simply “Let’s keep in touch”. Sometimes the line is very blurry, isn’t it?

KATJA: Well, sometimes I make it clear from the beginning that it’s “no strings attached”.

CRISTINA: How do people react to that?

KATJA: Most people agree. Of course. If a guy is interested in you, he wouldn’t want to lose the connection so of course he would agree. And then you can always say from the beginning that you’re not interested in dating and say “I don’t even know who you are”.

CRISTINA: That’s another thing. I think people sort of jump into things too fast. They lose interest really fast also.

KATJA: Yes, it’s hot and cold. They are on fire right away, but then they cool off really quickly. And they even make fun of this “let’s be friends first”. It’s a running joke. It’s a “chick thing”. Whereas I think that in the old country it’s more accepted that you stay with one person, you get to know them, then you decide if you want to be together or not and you don’t try out ten other people in the meantime. You may have a peak, but you stay and find out about this one person.

I have been on dates, but I’m still learning how to work this dating culture. A lot of times either they just want to get you into bed, or they are just boring. If they have no view on life, they have no energy, I’m not giving them my energy.

CRISTINA: But that’s across cultures. You are going to find boring people everywhere.

KATJA: True. But there are specific things about the American dating culture. Take Valentine’s Day. Women cry over that, if they don’t have a date. I’m saying “So what?” Or for the prom. You have to have a date that picks you up with flowers.

Here in America you don’t see a lot of people with old cars. This is a culture that lives on credit. It’s not even about how much money you have, it’s about how much credit you can get. Nobody asks you how much cash you have in the bank; they only check your credit. I think that’s a big cultural difference also. People live a lot on credit lines and it seems okay. If I have -$10 in my account I freak out. But here it’s not uncommon to be $30,000 - $50,000 in debt. People pay off their student loans for a long time.

10. The work culture.

CRISTINA: How about the work culture? Is it different? You worked in Germany, the US, and Australia too.

It’s definitely different. My work ethic is definitely different. It could simply be me as a person, but I also think it’s what I was taught to do. Let’s say if I work on a project and it’s not done by 5, even though my schedule ends at 5, I stay overtime or make arrangements to get it done on time. Here sometimes people don’t feel responsible for that.

CRISTINA: That’s unusual to hear because I meet a lot of people, Western Europeans too, who say that nobody works harder than Americans.

KATJA: I think they work maybe more hours but they don’t work as efficiently. They do work more hours in general. In America the work week is 40 hours long and in Germany it is 37 ½ hours, but sometimes it seems that they are more caught up by too much personal conflicts and conversations, small talk, rather than sitting at their desk and getting things done. I think it’s an issue of productivity. In Europe it seems to be higher.

CRISTINA: By the way, I think one of the cultural differences from Europe to America is that people in America don’t mind working anything. They don’t think that work of any kind is beneath them. In Europe there are still social classes and there is a kind of snobbery as in “I’m not going to be a waiter, I’m college educated”. Did you find that to be the case?

KATJA: No, not really. I always did waitressing and other small jobs. The first job I had was delivering newspapers when I was 13. That was the first money I made. And it wasn’t because my parents made me earn money. I’ve never done it full time. But my sister works in a hotel, in the restaurant, and she wouldn’t want to do anything else in the world.

11. A class conscience.

CRISTINA: Do you think there is a social class sort of conscience in America? In 7 years of living here I never had an experience of being looked down on for where I’m coming from. Whereas in Europe people look more at the way you are dressed and they want to see if you have the proper credentials.

KATJA: That’s not true. It happens here too. There is the “dress to impress” concept, or “Hollywood style”.

CRISTINA: Yes, maybe… but here at least you can be part of it, if you really, really want to make it happen. Whereas in Europe, you are always the outsider.

KATJA: I guess it never bothered me; I never had that sort of experience. We always went to parties and… yes, they look at you, and they pick and choose but so what?

12. Where is “home” now and will you ever go back?

CRISTINA: When you say “home” do you mean Europe or do you mean America?

KATJA: I think I use the term differently. When I’m talking of Europe, Germany is my home country. When I’m on vacation I say “I’m going home” and that means coming back to the United States.

CRISTINA: Do you think you’ll ever go back to Germany?

KATJA: I don’t think I’ll ever want to live there. I guess I’m open to suggestions, wherever life might take me. If I were to have a family soon I would probably think differently but right now I’m pretty happy. All the things I love are within immediate reach: I like the outdoors, I like the beach, and I go rollerblading, biking, running, or hiking in the mountains. In the Malibu Canyon you can go rock climbing – that’s 15 minutes away. And Hollywood is 20 minutes away. Then there is the climate. You don’t have to worry about rain. And in winter, we don’t have snow here but within half an hour, in a resort like Big Bear, you find snow. Or you drive 5 hours away, to Mammoth, and you have great snow. I think the West is known for its natural beauty. I think that’s why people come here, for outdoor activities opportunities. Weekend escapes like Las Vegas – which I don’t love, but it’s there. You can go to San Diego, or Mexico.

CRISTINA: What did you mean when you said that if you had a family you might think differently?

KATJA: Because California is known for some of the worst education in the US. And then there is another aspect: in first grade I walked to school by myself. In the beginning my parents brought me to the one big cross-street, where I had to look left and right and they taught me that, then they would just let me go. I would ride my bike to my friend’s house. They weren’t afraid. Maybe that’s different now there too; I haven’t really been in touch with them that closely. But here you can get a ticket for not being with your kids for a few moments.

13. An issue of safety.

CRISTINA: Do you feel unsafe here?

KATJA: No, I don’t. I know there are things happening. I had friends who got mugged not too far from here. But that’s in every big city. In Hamburg there were a lot of shootings, they have a Red Light district that attracts a lot of bad people. There were a lot of different cultures living there. But I think every big city has its good and bad areas and you just have to know where to go. I don’t intentionally go to east LA at night because I know it’s not safe.

14. The practicalities of life.

CRISTINA: I just realized that I haven’t yet asked you much about the practicalities of life. I grew up in an all cash culture that was very different from what’s happening here. Cash is pretty much disappearing. I didn’t even know what an ATM machine was, let alone how to open a bank account. Did you have to learn anything? How to rent an apartment, how to rent or buy a car etc.

KATJA: That’s what you run into the minute you come here. You want to open a bank account, they ask you for a social security system. And you say, of course, “I don’t have one”. I didn’t have a California driver’s license. Even buying a 6 pack of beer, they were asking me for my ID and I only had a German identification card. They wouldn’t let me buy it. And I tried to explain that that was a government issued ID. I almost felt discriminated against because they didn’t accept my German ID (laughter). And then with the California driver’s license, I refused to do it.

CRISTINA: Why did you?

KATJA: Because I already had an ID. Why did I need another? I finally did it because my insurance rates dropped a lot. If you don’t have a social (security number), you can’t be anything in the country. You can’t get a cell phone, a credit card, nothing.

But then there are all these other rules. For instance if you’re married your insurance rates drop. I was wondering what the logic was behind that. What’s the difference? I’m still a good driver. Maybe they think you have more responsibilities and you drive more carefully.

And then there is the credit card culture… I actually like not having cash. I use my ATM card a lot. If I lose my card I can just cancel it. If I lose $100 in cash, it’s simply gone. That’s how I feel. If I charge everything on the card, I know my balance in my head, or I check it every day. And then I always have receipts for everything. That way I know exactly where my money went.

But now almost everybody uses cards. I think that’s a positive – if you know how to use it right. What I know from working in the store… it happened to me once that my ATM got declined and I was very embarrassed. I called my bank right away. They had put a hold on it because there was a suspicious charge on the account, which they didn’t know if I had made or not. But then this happens to the people coming into “Polcadots” all the time. You simply ask “Do you have another one?” and they matter-of-factly say “Here’s another one”, or “Use this one”. They don’t even think about it twice. It’s no big deal. So that’s what I was saying, it’s about how much credit you have, not how much money you have in your account.

And I do think that people dress to impress.

CRISTINA: Well, you never know where an agent might be hiding…

KATJA: It seems that here you never really know who people are. They could show up in a limo and wearing a Gucci outfit but they could have zero money and don’t even have a job and then there could be people who are millionaires but you’d never know it. You never know who is in front of you.

15. Are you still collecting anything?

CRISTINA: Are you still collecting anything?

KATJA: Yes, I do. Watches. Everywhere I go I buy a watch. And if someone doesn’t know what to give me, they give me a watch.

16. A positive attitude and keeping your word.

KATJA: I also wanted to say that everywhere you go, if you have a positive attitude you are always going to be alright. I think I’m a go-getter. If I have something in my head and say it, it means I thought about it for a long time and if I say it, it’s almost already done. This business has been in my head for a long, long time so when I’m talking about it it’s a commitment because I already told people about it so if I don’t do it, they’ll think bad things of me.

CRISTINA: You’re right. I feel that too sometimes, that once I say something to people, I am obligated to do it. It’s an extra kick to do something and sometimes I do it to myself on purpose to get motivated.

KATJA: But people know me by now. They know I’ll do it.

CRISTINA: I remember when I first told you about this project and this interview, I barely finished the sentence and you said “Okay, you want to do it now?” and I wasn’t even ready. I didn’t have a recorder with me or anything. You’re not the procrastinating type at all, are you?

KATJA: (laugher) No. I think that’s another thing about some of my friends here, they say “Yeah, yeah” but they never end up doing it, or it takes a long time.

CRISTINA: But I think that’s more of a human trait. A lot of people everywhere procrastinate.

KATJA: No, it’s different. They say for instance “Let’s catch up for dinner” and you never hear from them. Sometimes you plan things in advance, and I’m putting things in my calendar so we don’t have to talk about it before. It happened to me two weeks ago. I was supposed to have some friends over for dinner and that night I cooked for them. I went shopping, I started cooking and then when I called they said “We haven’t heard from you anymore, if you’re still doing it” so they never showed up. I didn’t understand that. If I say that I’m going to do something, I do it.

CRISTINA: Perhaps it’s because Los Angeles such a networking town, you cannot refuse an invitation. But then you have to confirm to make sure that people really mean it.

KATJA: That’s true. You always have to RSVP or ask them again. But as far as I’m concerned, when I say something, then that’s what it is and I’ll contact them if anything changes.

 17. The end.

I didn’t get Katja a watch as a thank you gift for this interview, though I now know it for next time. We’ll be sure to get together again for a cup of coffee (or tea) and a good talk about the world. Thank you, Katja.

Katja runs her own marketing consulting business focused on the retail industry. She is based in Los Angeles, where she enjoys the beach almost every day. For comments and questions contact the editor@sentimentalrefugee.com .

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