Earlier in the year Laurent Borgmann and I were invited to participate in an intercultural dialogue blogger event arranged by the Anna Lindh Foundation. In the end Laurent was the one who could attend and I very much regret that I was unable to go as it seems to have been a great gathering of bloggers from Europe and the Middle East. The idea was to explore how intercultural dialogue could be promoted through blogging and Laurent has been reporting on it for the Absolutely Intercultural podcast since July. The latest episode came out last Friday and includes an interview with prolific Irish political blogger Stephen Spillane for whom this meeting was an opportunity to meet nationalities whom he’d never met before.
The Anna Lindh Foundation was set up after the assassination of the Swedish politician Anna Lindh and aims to foster intercultural understanding in order to reduce and defuse conflict. The event in July was to promote intercultural understanding through blogging and we at Absolutely Intercultural were very honoured to be invited to participate.
Also in this episode are interviews with an American, Kyle Hickman, on an internship at the leading German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) who learned to restrict his smiling to occasions when it really meant something and also to recognise that an invitation to a social event by a colleague was not something that was lightly issued. We also hear from Marina and Lora, two Bulgarian students, studying in Germany, how they coped in low context Germany where formal relationships are strictly focused on the project in hand. Their solution? Throw a Bulgarian party so that guests can get a taste of Bulgarian cuisine and hospitality.
The Anna Lindh Foundation continues their work to foster intercultural understanding through their forthcoming Restore Trust, Rebuild Bridges initiative later this week.