My name is Georgia and I just finished an internship with Routes into Languages at the University of Southampton. I studied French and German at Southampton and spent my third year as an Erasmus student at the Goethe Universität in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
When I was in Frankfurt, my main group of friends was made up of other German speaking Erasmus students from countries such as Hungary, Switzerland, Moldova, Greece and France. I was so happy that I got to know them as they were really friendly and we learnt a lot about each other’s countries – all while speaking and improving our German!
We did lots of things together, such as day trips to local towns and going to bars in Frankfurt. One of the most enjoyable activities we did were “international evenings”, where we took it in turns to invite people round and cook food from our home countries. This gave us the chance to try food from other countries and we also did other things: on the evening hosted by our Hungarian friend, we learnt traditional Hungarian dances; for the Swiss evening, we had a quiz about Switzerland and on the Greek evening, we sang Greek songs. It was really interesting learning things about different countries and I liked being able to share things about the UK too – apple crumble and custard went down very well!
Through these evenings, I learnt lots about my new friends’ home countries, which also helped us get to know each other better. Since we were from so many different countries, I felt that you were able to learn lots about them equally and that we treated every international evening with as much interest and enthusiasm as the last. Toblerone cheesecake didn’t hurt, either…
Monthly Archives: October 2015
A Cultural Journey during a Year Abroad!
Filed under My Intercultural Experience
Cooking for Spanish Friends
My name is Fraser Bowen, I’m from the UK, and I studied BA French and German
On my Erasmus year abroad in Switzerland, I was cooking for a small group of Spanish people. I made the assumption that Spanish people love spicy food, and I made them a very spicy meal. However, it turns out I had got Spanish food mixed up with Mexican food. Mexicans love to put chilli everywhere, but the Spanish have herbs and spices that aren’t chillis. The Spanish people couldn’t finish my food, which I had put extra chilli into, because it was too spicy! It was pretty embarrassing when I said that they should like spicy food, they’re Spanish! It turns out that all the American TV I watch which paints all Hispanic people as Mexican hasn’t helped me develop a very good idea of the different cultures present in the Spanish speaking world.
••• My Intercultural Experience •••
As time passes, our world becomes more of an integrating and globalise environment. Not only the products we use come from different places and nations, we also meet people from all around the world, either through travelling, education, and job or even just in our daily life. This gives us chances to interact inter-culturally and to create an exciting and memorable experiences.
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Filed under Festival News, My Intercultural Experience
