German foreign minister admits he felt nervous at the start

Berlin- German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle admitted in an interview placed online Monday that he had felt nervous when he started out in the new job in November and met with world leaders. As he was about to enter the French presidential palace in Paris, the thought crossed his mind, "I hope there isn't any fold in the carpet which you immediately trip over," he told the weekly magazine Stern in an interview.

Explaining why he had been so focussed on not making any embarrassing blunder, he said, "I didn't grow up in a palace, I grew up in a terraced house in the old part of the city of Bonn."

The minister, who is leader of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), also admitted that he had been upset by the mockery he had encountered in the German media in October over his skills.

The media lampooned him after he declined to answer a question in English at a Berlin news conference, just after his party won enough votes at the September 27 election to enter Chancellor Angela Merkel's government.

"In the first few days, some of them seemed surprised that I even knew how to eat with a knife and fork," he told Stern, but added that he did not perceive this as a sign of latent hostility among Germans towards homosexual men.

"I cannot believe in Germany this has anything to do with the fact that I live with another man," he said.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/301246,german-foreign-minister-admits-he-felt-nervous-at-the-start.html.