Tag: hungary

Belonging +++ work-life balance +++ Denmark +++ Hungary +++ absolutely intercultural 294 +++

Dora Hegedus: Your Thinking Partner

In the last show we heard about different types of freedom and in this show, 294, we will continue this theme and find out how lack of freedom can drive someone to leave their country.

Also, in this show we’ll be looking beyond the Erasmus semester abroad, at what can happen when you aim to relocate to a new country permanently. Your head or your heart? Which will win?

We’ll end with a very important problem which Danish leaders often overlook. But is it just Danish leaders?

My name’s Anne Fox and this show is coming to you from Denmark, which is where today’s guest, Dora, decided to relocate to from Hungary. Dora is a coach and therapist and has noticed that, while the headline advantages of coming to Denmark to live are fairly well known globally, there is a downside, that Dora calls “killing me softly”.

But is this show all doom and gloom? No! We will finish with a very simple piece of advice that Dora has for Danish leaders, but which I think is very good advice for everyone.

Today I am talking with Dora Hegedus who runs a coaching company, called Your Thinking Partner, in Denmark. Dora will tell us why she felt that she and her family should leave Hungary, even though she was already in her fifties when they decided to make the move. 

absolutely killing me softly
But first we’ll find out why the famed work-life balance of working in Denmark is not enough and how Danish leaders are losing their new international employees through careless inattention to one critical factor. What Dora might call, absolutely killing me softly.

absolutely ready to leave
So a sense of belonging is critical to being able to take full advantage of the freedoms of Denmark and in our next segment we will hear how it was this sense of belonging that Dora felt slipping away in her native Hungary. Hear how Dora felt increasingly alienated as we go absolutely ready to leave.

absolutely helpful
Now we don’t want to leave you with the feeling that Denmark is a hopeless case for internationals. It is clearly working for Dora. So here is one last piece of advice that Dora has for Danish leaders on how to retain their foreign staff. Let’s go absolutely helpful.

So that’s it! Ask your foreign colleagues if they need help. Advice which I am sure would bear fruit everywhere, not just Denmark. What do you think? What’s the best way of helping people feel they belong in your country?

Share your story with us via comment or email, and you could feature in one of our upcoming shows. For more information and previous episodes, explore our website.

And if you enjoyed the show, please like us on Facebook too.

By the way, did you know we are also  on Apple Podcasts and Spotify? You can subscribe to us there for free and give us a rating and a comment.

The next show will be coming to you from Germany with Laurent Borgmann on the 7th of June.

Until then – stay tuned to your international colleagues!

The host of this show is: Anne Fox

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absolutely intercultural 135 +++ new editor +++ national youth orchestra +++ reunion of two sisters +++

Dino, our previous editor, is not working for this podast any longer. He finished his studies and right now he is doing an internship as a controller in a company in Switzerland! The team of the international department at RheinAhrCampus wishes him the best in his future. Dino was the most international of us and he jokingly introduced himself as half German, half Italian and half Swiss. We all know that Dino has the potential to go very far and wish him the best!

absolutely new
But who is going to help us with the podcasts? I have the pleasure to present you his successor: Markus Scherer. You may know him from interviews in previous shows. Dino made sure there was a smooth transition and taught Markus all the tricks of the trade so that you, the listeners, will hopefully not even notice any difference in quality. Markus is a student at RheinAhrCampus and in our first category  Emese and Lucy are trying to find out everything about his hobbies, interests and fears.

absolutely open-minded
I am talking to Paul MacAlindin the Musical Director of the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq and his flautist Daniel Agi about their new music project in Iraq in our second category. What happened when they tried to start an orchestra in an Arabic country recovering from a war? Imagine if you have to create an intercultural team consisting of multi-lingual and multi-cultural and multi-religious participants. Perhaps even people who outside your team would never choose to talk to each other – like Kurdish and Arabic participants. How difficult must that be? Paul MacAlindin created the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq which can also be followed on facebook. He will tell you more about his project and the hurdles he has to take. Furthermore Daniel Agi will share his experiences how he supported the flautists during the rehearsals in Iraq.

absolutely coincidental
In our last category you will learn about an unlikely reunion of two sisters. Both have the surname “Bognar”. One grew up in Germany, the other in Hungary. When the German sister wanted to learn Hungarian her teacher matched her with another student who is also called “”Bognar”. This story is too sweet to be true! But how could that happen? Well, Emese is from Hungary and working for the international department here at RheinAhrCampus– and Daniela is German and a student at RheinAhrCampus. They both met for the first time here on campus. But are they related? This is what Lucy is going to find out and at the same time we learn more about the differences of everyday life in Hungary and Germany

Our next show will be coming to you from Anne Fox in Denmark on 27 May

Until then –
Bleiben Sie absolut interkulturell!

The host of this show is: Dr. Laurent Borgmann
Editor: Markus Scherer

absolutely intercultural 131 +++ changing perspectives +++ annoying behaviour in class +++ hospitality club +++ freezing in Australia +++

Why do different people have different perspectives? How can the same person have different perspectives on traffic only because one time the person experiences it in the car and the next day on a bicycle? How do our perspectives on events change over time. How big is the cultural influence on our perspective? And how does our perspecive change when we move to another culture?

absolutely changed
All of us have different perspectives on the everyday things that surround us, we watch news on television, hear stories and we think we are perfectly informed about everything. But are we really? Sometimes a trip to another country or a new episode in our lives can change our perspective on the World dramatically.
Take Paul MacAlindin for example. He moved from small-town Scotland to big-town Germany and this move changed his geographical perspective to one which for Continental Europeans seems very normal.

absolutely irritating
Emese Bognar an exchange student from Hungary, vividly illustrates different perspectives and changing perspectives when she told me what irritated her when she attended a lecture and how her perspective on traffic changed, when she did her driving license.

absolutely hospitable
Agnes Dus from Hungary interviewed Adelheid Korpp, who had tried the “hospitality club”, which is a clever system for travelers to get cheap accommodation. The traveler applies for accommodation to a host, contacts the host and asks if they can stay for 1 or 2 nights. This seems to be a pleasant way for travelers to get around and have a cheap bed for the night. However, more importantly, this could be a good way to change your perspective from that of a regular tourist to that of a dear friend invited to the country. But let us listen to Adelheid how this works in detail, because first of all you need to get approved.

absolutely freezing
In our fourth and last category Roman told me about his time in Australia; he spent a semester at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland and we now really have to change our perspectives here, because he is telling us that in the middle of the Australian summer you can still feel pretty cold, but listen to him yourself.

Our next show will be coming to you from Anne Fox in Denmark on 01 April

Until then –
Bleiben Sie absolut interkulturell!

The host of this show is: Dr. Laurent Borgmann
Editor: Dino Nogarole

absolutely intercultural 31 +++ International Week @ RheinAhrCampus +++ Study abroad +++ Where is Lithuania heading? +++

International Week at RheinAhrCampus – Study abroad – Where is Lithuania heading?


For one week each year we celebrate the international and intercultural aspects of the University of Applied Science Koblenz, this year again with support from the DAAD initiative Go Out!. Every year we invite guests from our partner universities and experts who give presentations for our students about studying or working abroad. However, this time, there were not only students from our own university, but also Agnes Dus from Corvinus University in Budapest in Hungary, and Johan Olsson from Umea University in Sweden. Agnes and Johan were our roving reporters for this week, and they ran from one location to another, always looking for good opportunities to interview people and find out about their international and intercultural experiences.

absolutely studentlike

For our first column they have interviewed three students about their intercultural experiences and plans. Isabelle for example talks about different cultural ways how people do business, and Daniel tells us how his stay in Singapore has changed his life and why you shouldn’t trust too much what you can learn from books about intercultural behaviour.

absolutely experienced
For the second column Johan spoke to Professor Patrick McMahon from the North East Wales Institute of Higher Education. He turned around the perspective and asked him, what he as a lecturer can learn from international students and what has changed most in the British student culture since he was a student himself.

absolutely lithuanian
Agnes met Ruta Jankauskiene from the University of Kaunas. Ruta will give us an insight on the Lithuanian perspective on international exchanges and where her country is heading.
absolutely lifelong
And last but not least we are proud to present a new column “absolutely lifelong” where we will share good ideas to organise your own life long learning. Today’s contribution has been produced by Anne Knopf and Gereon Reuter, two of our students at RheinAhrCampus. They will give you some good advice on how you can improve your English in a realistic way and have a lot of fun at the same time.
Here are the links:

Announcements
Anne Fox will give a talk/workshop on “Using Podcasts in the EFL classroom” at 20:00 GMT on May 19th. Please go to wiaoc.org to find out more about this event.

Karsten Kneese will participate in a panel about “The future of educasts” at 5 pm on June 20th for the Podcastday 2007.

The next show will be coming to you on the 1st of June from Anne Fox in Denmark.

So long…stay tuned!

The host of this show is: Dr. Laurent Borgmann

Edited and co-hosted by: Karsten Kneese

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absolutely intercultural 21 +++ We won the Edublog Award +++ Image Projection +++ Internships and practical training abroad +++

Image projection and internships abroad – We have a winner for our frappr-map-competition – And hey! We won the Edublog Award!

Image projectionBelieve it or not – we are Number One in the Edublog Award in the category “Best Audio Blog”. This is really amazing and we’d like to thank each and every one of you for your votes and your support. And of course for all the comments and emails we got. We will get to all of them when we return from our Christmas break in January.

And our frappr-map-competition has come to an end. And the winner is… Zanele Khumalo from Cape Town in South Africa! Many congratulations, Zanele, and thank you very much for putting pin number 100 on our frappr-map. We will contact you soon and see how we can make you the guest host of one of our next shows. And of course we’d like to thank all the others for participating in our competition and for putting your pin on our map. It is nice to see where you are listening from.

We believe that “actively designing your image” is a very controversial but also an important concept that especially students should pay a lot more attention to when they are planning a stay abroad.

So let’s start with our first column ‘absolutely German!’ where Vera Klopprogge will tell us more about her internship at the World Health Organisation in Denmark.

But not only when you go abroad should you think about your image projection. Also when you start a new job or move to another city you could plan to try out something new. So we have asked Marlen Izquierdo from Spain and Anita Molnar from Hungary if they have worked on their image projection when they first started their new jobs, teaching at a university, and we call the second column ‘absolutely tiny!’, and you’ll soon understand why… =)

For our third and last column ‘absolutely abroad!’, we have interviewed Wiebke Begere, who is doing an internship in the tourist office on Achill Island, which is situated just off the west coast of Ireland. She’ll tell us about the differences between the buzzing Melting Pot Dublin, and the remote and very calm Achill Island. And she’ll also give us an insight on what she has learned from her stay abroad already.

We’d like to thank you once again for listening to us, for your support, for your comments and emails and basically for everything you have done to make this podcast what it is.

The next show will be coming to you on the 12th of January from Anne Fox in Denmark.

We are very much looking forward to the next year and hope that you will…stay tuned!

The Host of this show is: Dr. Laurent Borgmann

Edited by: Karsten Kneese

oedbAnd this came in last minute: ‘absolutely intercultural!’ has been named a Top 100 Education Blog by the Online Education Database. Wow, thank you very much! Now we’re really under pressure to live up to all the expectations. =)

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