With a number of intercultural stories and some music left from my Christmas trip to New Braunfels, Texas I somehow felt forced to produce a second show about the German Belt in Texas. The emphasis is on the reasons why Germans have emigrated to Texas and the reputation of Germans in the USA.
absolutely unlimited People did not only emigrate in the 19th century as in our example in show 49, but also today many leave their homes and friends in the hope of better opportunities in the United States. Günther and Cornelia Dirks tell us how they went to Texas to put into practice their dream of opening a German restaurant called “The Friesenhaus” and why their philosophy of “Just do whatever you Dreams are” did not work for them back in Germany.
absolutely claustrophobic
Leaving Berlin during the Cold War, Klaus joined first the Canadian, later on the American Army to feel the freedom to move around. His wife Edith, still cooking and speaking German better than English just felt that Berlin with the wall around it was too claustrophobic, or “eng” as she likes to say.
absolutely unpronounceable Laurent tells us how words like “Schleswig-Holstein-Schnitzel”, “Oma’s Haus”, or “Schlitterbahn” belong to the daily vobabulary of Texans and asks the owners of the restaurant if the Americans really like the Germans so much, that they use German stereotypes for their business.
absolutely un-German
Finally, there are, of course, also people who immigrate to Germany because they searched for a new challenge or just liked the idea of living there. Our studio guest Jean Lennox came to Germany in the 70ies and developed what she calls “a-long-time-love-and-hate-relationship”, staying somehow British, but also absorbing some of the best German characteristics. Will she go back when she retires?
The next show will be coming to you on 7 March from Anne Fox in Denmark.
Welcome to the Golden Anniversary show of Absolutely Intercultural. Yes, this is show number 50 and we are delighted to still be here. We would also like to say thank you to everyone for supporting us, writing comments on the blog, voting for us in award schemes, sending us audio files, giving us ideas and links and last but not least thank you to all those people who have taken part so far.
absolutely connected I have known Vance Stevens, virtually of course, for over six years. He recently wrote an article about the challenges of implementing Web 2.0 in Arabic educational institutions but first he talks about what drew him to the Arab world from his native US and the extent to which expatriates there can stay ‘in the loop’
absolute winners There were no entries for our competition for weeks and then two correct answers arrived within a week. Fortunately I had two Rivus CDs to give away and I managed to speak with both winners. By the way the correct answer was dulcimer or cimbalom. In speaking with Susanne Nyrop from Denmark, I asked her about the strange habit of celebrating the birthdays of Danish shops and it turned out that Susanne had been to the first year anniversary celebrations of the first ever supermarket in Denmark.
absolutely educational Elaine Hoter, Talpiot Teachers College, contacted us about a free online conference on Wedneday February 13th starting at 10am GMT about technology and multiculturalism. By coincidence, Vance Stevens will be one of the speakers talking about RSS, tagging and other Web 2.0 tools. Other speakers include Dr Janet Salmons, Dr Michelle Selinger and Dr Sheila Geresh.
absolutely connected again Vance Stevens finds his students in Abu Dhabi very enthusiastic about using web 2.0 tools as part of their learning and talks about the way in which his experiences are gradually gaining acceptance of his approach at an institutional level. One example is the way in which he convinced the management that Internet was necessary not just for the teachers but for all the students too. Vance’s call to be connected in order to learn means that he and those in his network transcend borders.
absolutely international Our first winner of the Rivus CD was Mai Berry Dahl living in the Netherlands. It turned out that she was Danish but has an even more complicated background. The most surprising fact I learned from Mai was that it is possible to have three nationalities.
absolutely Texas
Gosh – the internet seems to put not just the world, but also our family history, at our finger tips. I noticed this on my last trip to Texas. People from all over the world do research in the Sophienburg Museum and Archives to find their ancestors. A family of three generations in 2008 find their roots in New Braunfels. Volunteer organisations help us to travel the world with a “very restricted budget”.
absolutely unbelievable
Laurent tells us about an unbelievable coincidence he witnessed during his stay in Texas. An American family of three generations makes a trip to an immigration museum in New Braunfels between Austin and St. Antonio to do some research with the help of an old photograph which shows their family house. To everybody’s astonishment this turns out to be the very house the director of the museum lives in. All this unfolds while the microphone is running …
absolutely Texan-German Linda Dietert, a true “Texan-German” tells us about the history of the Texas settlers in the 1850s. Their descendants, some of whom still speak some German after all these generations, are often happy to talk about their background in the “old world” and keep up some of the old traditions such as sausage-making . But of course a Texan “Bratwurst” does not have the same taste as its German relatives – and why should it?
absolutely hospitable
Agnes tells us about the “Hospitality Club” where you can find places to stay for your next journey if you cannot afford to pay for accommodation on your travels. Adelheid Korpp provides detailed information about “Servas” a non-profit organization which also puts you in contact with hosts around the world and she shares her experiences with us. We hear about hosts who give out their keys to guests whom they have never seen before or offer their own cars instead of telling you where to rent one. This Servas-spirit of sharing is meant to “foster new insight, knowledge and tolerance of others”.
The next show will be coming to you on 8 February from Anne Fox in Denmark.
So long…stay tuned!
The hosts of this show are: Dr. Laurent Borgmann and Agnes Dus
Editor: Mathias Knops
In this show I am mainly in conversation with Cristina Costa. But there are also many interruptions from a pesky pantomime audience! They just about allow me to announce a very special film festival.
Absolutely surprising: ‘I had never heard of Salford before!’ Cristina comes from Portugal where she was working as an English teacher in the Portuguese navy but just over a year ago she decided to take on the job of Learning Technologies Development Officer at Salford University in the UK. Cristina describes the now familiar long settling in period when you migrate. But regarding her work Cristina felt right at home very quickly mainly due to her established connections through the Webhead online community.
Absolutely Cultural: It was round about last October that I realised that our children had never experienced that very British phenomenon, the pantomime and that they might soon be too old to appreciate it so this year we made a trip to the UK during which they were introduced to this theatrical experience. When I searched for some sound effects for this part of the show I realised that the word pantomime has different meanings depending on where you live. In the US pantomime means the silent acting out of a story whereas in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and a few other places pantomime refers to the highly stylised telling of a fairy story. When I started researching a bit more on the topic I discovered even more rules which I hadn’t been aware of such as that the good fairy always enters from the left and the wicked witch from the right (as seen by the audience). To find out if it was all worthwhile I asked my 13 year old daughter, Gwen, what she had thought of the whole thing.
Absolutely political: I had just received my registration papers to continue to be able to vote in British national elections when I spoke to Cristina so I couldn’t resist asking her whether she was still able to vote in Portugal. Different countries have different rules. In France and the USA you have the vote for life. In the UK you have the vote for 15 years and in Denmark you lose the vote as soon as you leave the country (with the exception of temproary studentships). The more people take advantage of freedom of movement, the greater will be the number who are disenfranchised. Does this matter?
Absolutely cultural 2:Pangea Day is an unusual film festival planned for May 10th this year. It will consist of short videos made by you if you can complete it by February 15th. The aim is to speak to the world and the organisers advise that you could take one of over 200 cultural universals such as pain, play, anger, music, status or shelter as your theme to make sure that the film speaks to as many as possible.
Absolutely your last chance to win a CD by the Czech band Rivus. What instrument do they play in addition to the double bass and the violin?
The next show will be coming to you on 25th January from Laurent Borgmann in Germany.
So long…stay tuned!
The host of this show is: Anne Fox
Editor: Mathias Knops
This show will be dealing with all kinds of New Year’s Celebrations, rituals and traditions in Denmark, France, and Germany. absolutely repetitive Here you can learn from Beatrice which experiences she made with New Year’s resolutions and her list which she unfortunately has not put into practice yet. She also introduces us to the ritual of melting metals as a way to forecast the New Year.
absolutely French In France – the land of fabulous meals and the home of „haute cuisine“ food is one of the main aspects of a special occasion like NYE. Michael tells us that he spends this night with his friends after having dinner with his family.
absolutely mad Anne talks about forgetting all good behavior on that night as a ritual in Denmark. In some cases it is even necessary to take all the goods out of the shop windows to make sure nothing will be damaged. We learn everything about playing tricks and blowing up postboxes as well as the personal resolution to teach her daughters French. She also talks about the new experience of fireworks which she didn’t know from her time in Britain.
absolutely non-British Andreas tells us about another German NYE-tradition: It is very common, to have „Dinner for One“ in that particular night. It looks like a British TV-show – but it is in fact a German comedy-sketch about an old lady celebrating her 90th Birthday and her butler James who is doing his best to make her feel comfortable. Andreas, like Anne did earlier, talks about the private fireworks which are very common in Germany.
The team of absolutely intercultural wishes all of you a Happy New Year!
The next show will be coming to you on 11 January from Anne Fox in Denmark.
The main feature today is about a teacher exchange between Denmark and Chile which started with a bottle of wine! We’ll be hearing how traditional symbols are being adapted the Australian way. And finally we’ll be visiting Budacast, the podcast of one of our regular listeners, Drew Leifheit, who knows more than most about Budapest and the area around.
absolutely musical Here in Denmark Christmas preparations are in full swing. Not everybody celebrates Christmas but the atmosphere is making us feel generous and so we will send a copy of the latest CD of Rivus, the 3 piece band from the Czech Republic we featured in June, to the first person who can send us a mail telling us the name of the third instrument played by the band in addition to violin and double bass. We can accept either of the two names that this third instrument is known as. Send a mail to contact@absolutely-intercultural.com together with your name and an address we can send the CD to. And in the meantime let’s give you a reminder of what the instrument sounds like… perhaps you know the tune? Did you recognise the tune as Elvis Presley’s Love me Tender? There are a few more cover versions on the CD all given this unique Czech twist and the rest of the tracks are traditional Czech songs.
absolutely educational So let’s start with something absolutely educational by hearing about a teacher exchange which is not the usual run of the mill ‘visit your neighbour’ type of exchange. I am not belittling those exchanges. In fact I did one myself many years ago when I still lived in the UK and taught at a Belgian school for 3 weeks. My exchange was easily arranged by the European Union but what about forging contacts yourself? How could that be done? I talked to Vibeke Stenberg, a teacher at Ryomgaard Realskole, just back from an exchange between Denmark and Chile. What I like about this story is not just that Vibeke’s school has built a relationship with a school in an untraditional part of the world for Europeans but also that this experience shows that exchanges can arise out of all sorts of different ways.
absolutely traditional You may remember that I talked with Michael Coghlan and his daughter, Alison Waye, in Australia back in July. What you don’t know is that we carried on talking and then the topic of a southern hemisphere Christmas came up and I discovered something surprising. And you can see a picture of one of those chocolate bilbies at the top of this page. Do you have any other examples about how traditional symbols have been adapted? If so then leave us a comment here on the blog.
absolutely addictive Drew Leifheit has been a faithful listener from the earliest episodes and has often left thoughtful comments but did you know that he has his own podcast called Budacast all about Hungary, its capital Budapest where he is based and surrounding countries. If you find yourself with a little extra leisure time over the next couple of weeks then why not give Budacast a listen? This snippet is about the clean rooms which are to be found in the Hungarian part of Transylvania. Do you have a clean room I wonder? Let us know here on the blog.
absolutely debatable If you are a university student then there is a good chance you may be thinking of doing part or even all of your course abroad. It seems that universities all over the world are competing for foreign students and this must be a good thing for everybody if there is a cultural exchange. But not everybody agrees and if you would like to take part in a debate about this then the Economist magazine is holding an online debate about this until December 28. You can read the different views, add your own view and vote on whether foreign student placements are a good thing or not.
absolutely linguistic One last little present in this show is to point you in the direction of a new language learning website called Palabea which you can use absolutely free of charge and which includes audio and video facilities so that you can meet with native speakers of the language you want to learn. According to the Palabea people ‘Access to language is one of the first steps to cross-cultural empathy.’’ To which I say ‘Hear hear!’ As ever you can find the link on our blog.
The next show will be brought to you by Laurent Borgmann in Germany on December 28 and don’t forget to mail us with your competition entry to contact@absolutely-intercultural.com if you know the name of the third instrument played by Rivus. So Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it and stay tuned won’t you?
In this show you will hear about situations in which music played an important role connecting people from different cultures, to overcome language barriers or to express feelings for which words would not be adequate.
absolutely universal
Anne Fox our co-host from Denmark, tells us why music is often so helpful when other languages fail. Music is often seen as a universal language, however, in her experience this is not always the case…
absolutely international In the second part of the show we will look into International Festivals which have become more and more popular over the last years. During those festivals tens or hundreds of thousands of young people from all over the world sing, dance and live together internationally for a few days. The Sziget Festival in Hungary is a special one, because it is held on an island in Budapest, so the “absolutely international islanders” literally live in the heart of the capital city. Michael Darde, a French student, tells us how he saw it as a tourist and Agnes Dús from Hungary shares her experiences about taking part as a local.
absolutely colorful
In Cologne on the Rhine foreigners from 20 different countries have been singing together in a choir, called “Colors of Cologne”, for the last eight years. Most of the participants report that they joined the choir in order to integrate better in their new environment and to make friends faster. We will also listen to their music!
absolutely spontaneous
Sarah is a student for whom music has a special importance in her life: she plays the piano and writes her own songs. Music helped her make friends more easily, especially during her stay in the US, and also it is the best way for her to express her feelings.
absolutely together
In the last part of the show EmmaCuevas Saunders, a Spanish student, tells us about how singing helped her integrate into the group in a school summer camp in England. She experienced that when words are not enough music comes in and becomes an alternative kind of language.
Absolutely yours: First of all, thank you to the listeners who got in touch after the last show. Grit Matthias was especially interested in Show 35 where we featured teacher podcasters. Grit’s class makes short podcasts in German. So if you are learning German why not have a listen?
When ‘Uncle Drew’ questioned why we had featured the Myers & Briggs personality test in the last show, I looked into it and found that the questionnaire has been tested across many cultures to check that its personality types are valid and that they had found that the distribution of personality types was the same across cultures although maybe not of the same order. Cultural differences do occur in how we are expected to express our personalities. At the Myers & Briggs blogfor example I found that there were more introvert British entrepreneurs while in the USA there were far fewer and the difference could be explained by the way in which we are allowed to express our introvert or extrovert personalities in the two cultures. So thank you ‘Uncle Drew’ for your comment.
Absolutely Educational: Our main feature in this show is the story of an educational project carried out by CV2 in Denmark with a Ghanaian company. We hear first how things did not go exactly according to plan and in the second part we hear what the Danish partners think is the reason for the difficulties they experienced. If you are familiar with Ghana you can probably see the story from the other side. And if you do then why not leave a comment here about it?
Absolutely Interactive: Are cultural differences apparent in blogs? That was a question I put to Trine Maria Kristensen, a corporate communications expert in Denmark.
Then I talked to Carla Arena, a Brazilian English teacher living in Florida, who agreed to be a mystery guest on my students’ blog. Who learned the most? Carla or my students?
The next show will be coming to you from Laurent Borgmann in Germany on November 30 and will be rather musical!
In this show we will point you to two very different ways of becoming more aware of your personality and what your spontaneous reactions are when getting in touch with people whose cultural rules are different.
“absolutely up in the air”
Our first guest is Simon Brown, a former airline captain with British airways, who tells us how the Myers-Briggs personality test, which was used to make pilots more aware of their different personality styles, opened his eyes.
“absolutely simulated” BARNGA is a card game, which simulates the experience of meeting people from other cultures and working with them. It was played a group of 25 students from several different countries at the University of Applied Sciences, Koblenz, RheinAhrCampus. During the game the students sit at five different tables which are separated from each other. They play a card game with the rules they received on a written sheet at the beginning. When the actual game starts no more verbal communication is allowed. The students have to find alternative ways of communication if they want to play together, such as gestures, facial expression or drawing pictures…
“absolutely confusing”
We will look at what happens when you go through the intercultural simulation in practice. Some students seem to be pretty sure that they play according to the “only valid” rules, while others seem to be a little confused…
“absolutely eye-opening”
In the last part of our show we will return to the airport in Bangkok to Simon and the Myers-Briggs Personality Test in British Airways. Laurent asks Simon whether the test itself and the feed-back he received from his colleagues in the famous envelope had been useful for him. Had it changed his view about himself?
Our co-host today is Agnes Dús from Budapest in Hungary, student of the Corvinus University of Budapest. You may remember her from the interviews she made in Ireland for show number 25. She will co-host the shows from Remagen until Christmas.
The next show will be coming to you on the 16 November from Anne Fox in Denmark.
In this show we are going to look into which parts of our culture we have to re-think or even leave behind when we get married. We have entertaining stories from Lebanon, the United States, Hungary, and Spain and even from our own lives.
absolutely Swiss-French-Lebanese
Our first guest is Stéphane Bazan, lecturer at the Université St. Joseph, who is French and got married to his Lebanese bride in Biblos near Beirut. He tells us about the cultural conventions preceding his wedding which turned into a happy cultural mix for him and his French and Swiss family but also for his new Lebanese in-laws.
absolutely prepared
Jennifer is an American university lecturer who got married to her Lebanese husband in the United States. She remembers thinking about what cultural clashes could arise from the different customs and attitudes of her Lebanese and American families. She even went as far as giving some private intercultural lessons to prepare her family and her Lebanese in-laws for the happy day.
absolutely Mars vs. absolutely Venus
Agnes Dús, Laurent Borgmann, and Mathias Knops had a round table discussion about “leaving one’s own culture behind” where they tell their own stories about how difficult it can get when two persons from different cultures decide to stay together for life. Finally they had to admit that sometimes it is not the national culture which creates problems, simply the fact that men and women come from different planets: men are from Mars and women from Venus.
absolutely Big Fat Wedding
In the last part of our show we will get back to Stéphane, who tells us what cultural challenges he had to face before his “Big Fat Lebanese Wedding” with 800 guests! During the process he sometimes felt a considerable cultural gap between his families, as if he was not from France but from the other side of the world.
Our co-host today is Agnes Dús from Budapest in Hungary, student of the Corvinus University of Budapest. You may remember her from the interviews she made in Ireland for show number 25. She will co-host the shows from Remagen until Christmas.
The next show will be coming to you on the 19 October from Anne Fox in Denmark.
So long…stay tuned!
Host of this show: Dr. Laurent Borgmann
Co-host: Agnes Dús
Editor: Mathias Knops
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OKNoPrivacy policy
In this show we are going to look into which parts of our culture we have to re-think or even leave behind when we get married. We have entertaining stories from Lebanon, the United States, Hungary, and Spain and even from our own lives.