Half-empty most of the year round, Berlin's hotels are desperate for foreign guests. But, as one young law student discovered recently, hotel staff are required to be as unexotic as possible.
Carolyn, a 25-year-old law student at Berlin's Humboldt University, signed up as a hotel receptionist with a temporary employment agency during the summer holidays. Carolyn, who came to Berlin from Burundi when she was seven, had always enjoyed hotel work and was happy to put up with customers endlessly comparing her to Naomi Campbell.
As one of her first assignments she was sent to the Hotel Adlon, a newly opened reconstruction of one of Berlin's legendary meeting places, right next to the Brandenburg Gate.
Carolyn was at her post only a few minutes when the manager ordered her to spend the rest of the day in the kitchen, where guests could not see her.
The problem was her hairstyle, which the manager decided was "unsuitable" for his hotel lobby.
Hotel Adlon, which was opened by President Roman Herzog and includes 78 foreigners among its staff, insists that its action was not motivated by racism but that all staff must conform to "average central European characteristics".
Carolyn insisted that her hair, which is tied in short, neat plaits, is not in a Rastafarian style and that, as a black woman, she can never hope to conform to "average central European characteristics".
Horrified by her treatment at Hotel Adlon, Carolyn crossed the city to work at the Intercontinental, another of Berlin's leading hotels, but the management there also found her hairstyle unacceptable.
The trade union which represents hotel workers said the hotels' behaviour showed "racist tendencies", but because she was sent to the hotels by an agency, Carolyn cannot sue under employment law. Germany has no anti-discrimination legislation, so Carolyn's only hope of legal redress may be to appeal at an EU level.
The furore about Carolyn's hair follows a furore over an advertising campaign designed to improve the image of the north-eastern state of Mecklenburg Vorpommern, following a series of attacks on foreigners by local skinheads.
The advertisements showed a young black woman with the caption "blonde, blue-eyed and brainless" (being the stereotype of west Germans as seen from the east).
The idea, according to the state's head of protocol, Mr Thomas de Maiziere, was to show that the people of Mecklenburg Vorpommern were "reliable, open to the world, prepared for the future and self-aware".
But the campaign provoked a barrage of abuse from outraged members of the public complaining that taxpayers' money was being used to insult Germans. The agency which produced the advertisements has received bomb threats as well as abusive letters and the model now lives in fear of attacks from right-wing extremists.
Part of the problem is that, although seven million foreigners live in Germany, the country does not officially allow any immigration whatsoever. Citizenship is based on the ius sanguinis, which means that it is defined according to ethnic identity rather than place of birth.
Thus, hundreds of thousands of people born in Germany to foreign parents are not entitled to German citizenship, but so-called "ethnic Germans" from eastern Europe who may never have set foot in Germany have full citizenship rights.
Ethnic minorities in Germany, unlike their counterparts in Britain and France, are almost invisible in the country's public life. Although there are two million Turks in Germany, many of whom speak flawless German, there is not a single Turkish newsreader or television presenter and there is only one Turkishborn member of the Bundestag.
The Greens and the former communist Party of Democratic Socialism are calling for a thorough overhaul of Germany's citizenship laws but they have little hope of success. With a general election looming next September, the big parties are determined to do nothing to alienate middleclass voters. In Germany, as in most European countries, there are few votes to be won by being nice - or even fair - to foreigners.
