It was great to be invited back to an annual event at the RheinAhr Campus of Fachhochschule Koblenz in Germany, their Managing Cultural Diversity seminar, which is open to all the students of the university who wish to spend a weekend thinking about how to internationalise themselves by taking a semester abroad or by applying for an internship. Lecturers from Australia, Slovenia, Hungary, Poland, Germany and Lithuania not only led sessions but also contributed as participants during the sessions which are usually more workshop than lecture. In this seminar we thought about international business negotiations, the cultural meaning behind sayings, greetings, shared values and ethical dilemmas, cross-cultural attitudes to intellectual property, why Australian TV can be so bland or stereotypical and finally differences in body perception. Participants also had the opportunity to experience for themselves what culture shock feels through a game and to tell their own stories about critical incidents through pictures. My own session attempted to exlore how businesses might need to adapt their social media presence to appeal to different markets.
Although many of the participants are German there was also a wide range of other cultures represented both through the lecturers and through exchange students from Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Australia and Turkey. But even the Germans got a novel culinary experience when we ate at a German restaurant one of the evenings. Many of them reported that this was the first time that they were trying some of the typical German delicacies on offer! Most of the participants don’t know each other at the beginning of the seminar but as usual the activities bring people together and it was clear that some new friendships had been forged by the time we dispersed on Sunday afternoon. Some photo reminders of this very successful event will soon be uploaded to the Facebook group, Sprachen Internationales, which is being maintained by some of the students at RheinAhr Campus.
Thanks for the invite! It was great to be part of it and I was lucky to be able to arrive and return relatively easily considering the snowy weather which has plagued Europe for the last week and a half.