I still like it bare
Being an Asian and growing up in a typical Asian culture, I used to walk around barefoot in the house back home. T was surprised during his first visit to Malaysia that we don’t wear shoes in the house.
Won’t you have cold feet?, asked he.
You’ll see, said me.
I kept this habit of not wearing shoes in my ‘substitute home’ (speak, my room) for the first few years living by myself in Germany. As for those cold winter days, I’d just cover my feet with thick wool socks or sometimes worst come to worst, I’d wear house slippers.
After spending my first few years in student hostels, I’ve come to accept the fact that the Germans have the habit of wearing shoes in the house/room. My house mates would come back from shopping or from lecture and they would walk straight into his/her room with their shoes on, completely ignoring the fact that they would be dragging dirt from the streets into the room as well.
There was a voice screaming in my mind, oh my God, there might be traces of dog poo on the streets, or cat pee, or bird shit, or zillions of micro bacteria crawling underneath those shoes. Why can’t they have this kind of common sense that it is unhygienic wearing shoes in the room/house? Most of them have carpets in their rooms which make matters worse.
I’m not someone who’s obsessed with cleanliness but can’t you see it’s plain common sense?
So when I see shoes outside a room in a student hostel, I’d tell you that there is a very high possibility that the person residing in this room is an Asian 
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Now that I’m living together with my boyfriend and his family all wear shoes in the house, I’m wearing (house)shoes in the house myself! I’d try not too think too much about the bacteria or else I’ll go crazy .
ARRGHH!!! Is that true? I know that westerners do wear shoes in and out, but I didn’t know that it applies to Germans too! How do you go to bath, bed and cross your legs on the sofa then?? Post a Part II to this leh! =P
While most may think that Japs are clean freak, I beg to differ. =( To my dismay, though they are particular about dust within and without, I still think that they are a mile behind the Chinese in many aspects. They think that socks are ‘clean ‘. Can you imagine a bunch of Jap guys massaging their socks-on feet, drinking, laughing and the next moment, they’d reach their hand into a bowl of nuts, making the nuts a ‘ everyones’ feet ‘flavour ! Am I crazy clean or what? Thank God that my husband has come to understand my hygiene standards. Phew.
Haha, I still don’t wear shoes in my apartment even after being here for so long. I wear house slippers, though, in winter because my apartment doesn’t have carpet. Yeah, I went through the period of telling people why I never wear shoes inside the house, and I also had to keep in mind that I need to keep my shoes on when I visit Americans at their homes. Sigh….
Eewww…Stardust, that is so disgusting..about those Jap guys reaching into the peanut bowls with their hands after massaging their feet. If we sit on sofa or go to bed or taking shower, of course we’ll take off our shoes
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Chin, exactly, I sometimes feel sorry for the host because of me with my shoes on, stepping on their carpets.