My Intercultural Experience

I'm every day more and more excited about my intercultural experiences in Kassel. A long journey ended yesterday, even though I'd say, it is just the beginning.
For the last 6 months, a team of 20 international students in Kassel, from 17 different countries, got together to learn (about) intercultural communication and competence. An amazing group of students, motivated, responsible, highly engaged, straight forward, with a rich intercultural background - each of them enriched our project remarkably! We took the innitiative, found a great trainer - the best I met so far in this area and the best I've met so far in any area in Germany - got some financial support from the university and here we go!
For me it was an amazing experience! We learned to understand intercultural communication by doing this, by getting out on the campus in small multicultural teams, interacting with people, discussing with them, analyzing, sharing, etc. etc. We connected their experiences with ours and put together a great documentary film. It is a short film prepared to explore the theme of cultural interaction between German and international students at the University of Kassel.

Enjoy:

Meet More, Mix More from Carmen Muresan on Vimeo.

Maybe this project ended, but to me, it just opened new doors, gave me new ideas and an area I am highly motivated to further explore.

Wish you all wonderful intercultural experiences and let's "meet more, mix more"!

What is a culture?

I'm sitting in the train to Dortmund, surrounded by many people, but most of grannies… modern grannies, with mobile phones, digital photo cameras, mp3 players, etc. That's not my image of a grandmother. And if you ask me, why not, maybe I would say… it's not like this in my culture, it's not like grandmothers behave in Romania.

But now I am really thinking if there is not even a grandma in Romania having a mobile phone? I think there should be! At least, having one of those big mobile phones with big buttons, to keep in contact with the young family members. Or there are grannies, having their own satellite antenna, even if it's just a Digi.

Coming back to "it's not like this in my culture, it's not like grannies in Romania behave": It's very common to find this kind of "excuse": this is how WE do it, this is how WE think, this is how WE behave. But who is this WE? Me and my family, me and my friends, me and my university colleagues, me and the people in my city, in Transilvania or in the whole country?

Think a little bit how you present your country, your culture, and your traditions to foreigners? I remember the country presentations at the 2007 EFPSA Congress in Turku. We did a presentation of Romania, including all stereotypes about the 3 regions: Transylvania citizens are slow but very tidy, and are dancing in a circle, when they go out. Moldova citizens are poor, starting the day with a glass of "palinca", and are dancing "hora" every evening, Muntenia citizens are hectically, loud, rich and dancing on the bars. I'm sure my friends from Bucharest will laugh and say, that it's kind of true, remembering my way of saying "Uuunde va grabiti?" (= Where do you hie?) but you got the point. Oh I don't want to think about Germany's presentation

I could tell you tones of stories about Germans, and this only because I always meet so many different Germans that I cannot say anymore: They are like THIS ! (friendly, but distant; clean; tidy; organized; always on time; have good food; etc.)

Although, there is always a group you belong to, a group that has some characteristics. But people don't belong anymore only to one group (Feuser, 2008). You have one nationality, live in another country, study at one certain university, work in a certain company, have certain friends, go to sports, play in a band, or in a theatre, live in a WG etc, etc. And think that all these groups have an influence on you

I always hear from people who get to know me: "You are not like Romanians!" (he? How are they?), or "This is your German part" Do you believe me, that I'm more often on time in Romania then in Germany, and that it happened in Germany, that I couldn't finish a task on time and that nobody killed me?

Well, my train is almost in Dortmund! So… Happy glocalisation! (Ups, my spell checker doesn't know this word)

Ha, can you believe it that I was able to write this post in a German train, because trains in Germany use to have plugs!

Reference:
Feuser, F. (2008). Intercultural Communication. Training for tutors. University of Kassel. Germany