You can’t buy pregnancy tests at the supermarket. You have to buy them at the pharmacy. I wish I had known that before spending ten minutes miming “being pregnant” in the middle of the store. I had caught the attention of a lanky teenage sales associate who was stacking apples in the produce section. I think I said to him, “I need a test to find out if I have a baby in my stomach.” I didn’t bother to find a useful word like “uterus” before leaving the apartment.

Theo was my first “forever” boyfriend. In reality, he was the first of several “not-even-close-to-forever” ones.

Murphy’s Law: The fear of pregnancy wasn’t the only issue that winter in Bremerhaven.

Theo had dumped me the previous week. Shortly after, I realized that my period, which usually arrived like clockwork, was late. Theoretically, if I were pregnant, would I feel obliged to involve him in organizing an abortion? There were so many scenarios to consider.

I didn’t expect the sponsor of my international exchange program, the Bundestag, to look kindly on medical expenses. I had spent all my savings on a trip to Italy for Christmas. It was January now, and I regretted spending so much money. “How much does an abortion cost anyway?” I wondered.

Returning to the apartment with the newly purchased test in hand, I realized I didn’t know exactly how it worked. I tried to read the instructions – all in German – to no avail. I tried calling the customer service number.

My roommates and I kept a small notebook next to the phone to record the duration of our calls so that when we received the bill at the end of the month, we could split the costs fairly. So, I knew I had spent exactly 47 minutes talking in vain with the pregnancy test company. I had all male roommates, and it would have been pointless to ask them for help at that moment.

I decided that I was making things much more complicated than they should be. How difficult could it be to pee on a stick and wait for a single or double pink line? In the end, unfortunately, I found myself with three lines. My anxiety was justified.

Meanwhile, I had to deal with the Baumann debacle. A month earlier, Diedrich Baumann, a retired merchant sailor and the hosting "father" with whom I lived (along with his wife Gerda), had made sexual advances towards me on a weekend when we were alone at home while Gerda was visiting a friend in another city.

I had sought comfort with Diedrich’s stepdaughter, Judith, who lived in town and had moved out of her parents’ house just a couple of years before. She told me she knew there was something strange about him. When she was a teenager, he would watch her through a crack in the bathroom door while she was taking a shower. She said she was never sure what he had done or why. She had tried to talk to her family about it back then, but no one believed her.

This prompted me to pull myself out of that unbearable situation, abruptly fleeing their house and finding refuge in my friend Marcus’s apartment – the one with the unusual phone bill system – where by chance he and his friends had an extra room available.

Later, the Baumann family apologized and wanted to reconcile. Gerda insisted that we meet for coffee. It was then that she told me Diedrich was in counseling for a sexual dysfunction and asked if I wanted to come back to live with them; she wanted to make amends. I was not tempted to accept the offer.

The sad part was that otherwise, I was very happy with the Baumann family. Gerda and Diedrich treated me like an adult, as an equal, in a way my real parents never had. For example, they had a subscription to the opera for me; I greatly enjoyed these weekly “cultural nights out on the town.” I also liked our trips to their charming beachside holiday home near the Baltic Sea. They offered me a glimpse into a lifestyle I would never have had access to otherwise.

I had to inform the administrators of the international exchange program about what had happened in the Baumann household. I learned (too late) that before my arrival, no one from the organization had ever come to check on the family.

I was angry. My living situation was in flux, my love life was tumultuous, and my language skills couldn’t keep up with the speed at which my life was expanding into chaos.

What I thought would be a saving grace was my job. After a semester of attending classes at a specialized school for Business and Transport Logistics, I had found work at a consulting company for international ports. They considered me a great asset because I spoke English fluently, the language in which all the projects were conducted. I had become friends with the company’s secretary and had confided in her about the various traumatic events that had happened to me. She must have informed my boss because he started giving me special attention afterward. And by that, I mean he would stand behind me when I was sitting at my desk and start massaging my shoulders.

Creepy. What made him feel entitled to treat me this way? I was afraid to say anything because maybe I was imagining my effect on these men, after all. That’s why I wasn’t willing to report yet another case of sexual harassment. Twice in a month? Who did I think I was, some kind of Svengali for dirty old men? I feared being seen as the boy who cried wolf.

Then, I got my period.

Hooray! I still remember my euphoria at the discovery. During my celebratory bike ride around the city that day, I veered onto an unfamiliar street near the port where I worked.

I knew Bremerhaven had its red-light district, but I had never thought about visiting it.

It was sunset, and the women were assuming what I thought were their nighttime positions in the brothel windows. The sign for “Asian Delight” caught my attention.

In all the months I had lived there, I had never encountered another Asian woman. And now, from a distance, these women looked like me. Or maybe I looked like them.

I’m not saying I was mistaken for a prostitute, but I could speculate that my image confused people. I was a tomboy in the sense that I was studying a traditionally male profession (we were only three women in the program), had men as my closest friends, yet I resembled the women who had chosen to use their bodies to make a living.

Weeks later, I would coincidentally meet one of the Asian women from the window. She approached me when we were shopping at the same supermarket where I had sought my indecipherable pregnancy test. She was curious to know who I was because we looked so much alike. She told me she had a degree in biochemistry from the Philippines but had chosen to come to Germany to work because she could earn much more. She said she wouldn’t be there forever.

I hope she got what she wanted.