In Germany, ‘House Burping’ Is a Cold Reality

After moving to Berlin from Honolulu, Wyatt Gordon was surprised when his new German roommate marched into his bedroom at 8 a.m. and threw open the windows.

It turned out his cohabitant, Laura, maintained a strict ventilation regime. Three times a day, at precise times, all the windows in the apartment needed to be opened. It didn’t matter whether it was the dead of winter or a weekend morning, or if Gordon had company — rules were rules.

“I had guests in my bed that I’d brought home from the club or wherever,” said Gordon, now 35, a city planner originally from Richmond. As is common on Berlin weekends, they would crawl into bed around dawn — "only to be woken up an hour later by a blast of ice-cold air," he recalled. "How do you explain to the person lying in bed next to you that this is what the German culture demands of us?"

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