Tag: switzerland

Switzerland +++ EU unemployment support +++ job hunting +++ Absolutely Intercultural 308 +++

A battered Danish postbox
One of the 1500 remaining dilapidated Danish postboxes waiting to be removed by the end of 2025.

Welcome to Absolutely Intercultural, the podcast about all things intercultural, even unexpectedly scented toilet paper! My name’s Anne Fox and this show is coming to you from Denmark, where Mia, who we’ll be hearing more from, also originates. We’ll be talking to Mia about how she was able to get some financial support to go to Switzerland to look for a job, what it’s like looking for a job when you don’t speak the local language and finally some of the little differences that she noticed between Denmark and Switzerland, like scented toilet paper.

 

absolutely transferable
So we’ll start by talking about a scheme that has been going for decades but which I have a feeling very few people know about and which may not even have an official name. And that is the EU scheme that allows you to transfer three months worth of unemployment benefit, if you are entitled to it in your home country, to another EU country. But how does it work in practice? It is clear that it is not easy dealing with the bureaucratic rules in two different countries at the same time. You may have spotted that Switzerland is not in the EU, but since it is in the European Economic Area, the scheme also applies there.

absolutely job hunting
Having worked out the administrative challenges to be part of the transfer scheme, Mia’s next challenge was actually finding a job. So how did that go? That point when Mia started networking in addition to sending in job applications was key and she is now working for a global company where the working language is English.

absolutely intercultural
We’ll end by asking Mia about the little differences she’s noticed between Denmark and Switzerland. The iconic Danish post boxes are disappearing at the end of 2025 so the digital way of life is totally embedded.

Have you tried job hunting in a new country? Maybe you have some tips? If you have a story to tell on this or any related topic then don’t hesitate to get in touch or leave a comment on our website where you can also listen to all our previous shows. We are also on  Apple podcasts and Spotify where you can give us a rating. And if you enjoyed the show, please like us on Facebook too. 

Our next show will be coming to you, as usual, on the first Friday of next month.

Until then, stay tuned!

Produced by Anne Fox

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absolutely intercultural 152 +++ China +++ Nigeria +++ Switzerland +++IELTS +++ Orphelia +++ Koleade Odutola +++ diaspora +++

OrpheliaI wonder if you can tell where I’m based just because of what I produce online! This is one of the questions we’ll be looking at in this show. We’ll also be asking whether non-native speakers of English can be examiners for a prestigious English qualification and how you can use your multi-cultural background to start a business

So we won’t be mentioning Australia in this show but we will be visiting almost every other continent. Starting in Europe, I was very honoured to be asked to be a judge in the 2011 European Podcast Award and I can’t tell you how difficult it was to decide. There are so many different types of podcast, long and short, fly on the wall documentary to fictionalised reality. Dogme-style, what you see is what you get to expertly produced with delicious sound. By the time this show comes out you’ll be able to check out who the winners are in the different categories and the different countries.

absolutely native?
Enough on Europe, let’s start the show in China where there is a huge demand for English qualifications as young Chinese look for at least part of their training abroad. The two main exams which will show you are able to tackle a university course in English are TOEFL and IELTS. Both of these have a spoken part of the test and in the IELTS exam this is done in the presence of a real live human being instead of on computer. So does the IELTS examiner always have to be a native speaker? I spoke with Tinting Yang who now counts among her many other activities that of IELTS examiner. Let’s find out what went through her mind as she decided to apply for the job.

absolutely digital
What is the value of internet chatter? Can you tell where someone comes from by the way they communicate online? Can you even speak about nation building as part of that online dialogue? These are some of the questions which Koleade Odutola tackled in his doctorate which has just been published as a book. The title of the book is Diaspora and imagined Nationality, and looks mainly at how Nigerians around the world define themselves and their country in their online dialogue. Koleade is himself Nigerian and has lived in the UK but mostly in the USA where he teaches at the University of Florida. Let’s go absolutely digital and find out whether online dialogue helps Nigerians define what being a Nigerian means.  The sub-title is USA-Africa Dialogue and Cyberframing Nigerian Nationhood and you can buy from it the publisher as well as from the American version of Amazon.

absolutely beautiful
Our final guest on the show today is a great example of how you can turn your multi-cultural heritage into a sound business proposition. Alexa Kovacs was brought up in Switzerland and is of Hungarian and British parentage and has recently started a business selling beautiful clothing and accessories which she sources in a surprisingly direct way. The business is called Orphelia and it’s really well worth a visit for the visual beauty alone. So let’s go absolutely beautiful and hear more about how Orphelia works. I really do recommend a visit to Alexa’s site as a feast for the eyes.

Our next show will be coming to you from Dr. Laurent Borgmann on April 7th so stay tuned!

The host of this show is: Anne Fox

 

absolutely intercultural 41 +++ intercultural weddings +++ conventions for accepting food +++ my big fat Lebanese wedding +++

In this show we are going to look into which parts of our culture we have to re-think or even leave behind when we get married. We have entertaining stories from Lebanon, the United States, Hungary, and Spain and even from our own lives.

absolutely Swiss-French-Lebanese
Our first guest is Stéphane Bazan, lecturer at the Université St. Joseph, who is French and got married to his Lebanese bride in Biblos near Beirut. He tells us about the cultural conventions preceding his wedding which turned into a happy cultural mix for him and his French and Swiss family but also for his new Lebanese in-laws.

absolutely prepared
Jennifer is an American university lecturer who got married to her Lebanese husband in the United States. She remembers thinking about what cultural clashes could arise from the different customs and attitudes of her Lebanese and American families. She even went as far as giving some private intercultural lessons to prepare her family and her Lebanese in-laws for the happy day.

absolutely Mars vs. absolutely Venus
Agnes Dús, Laurent Borgmann, and Mathias Knops had a round table discussion about “leaving one’s own culture behind” where they tell their own stories about how difficult it can get when two persons from different cultures decide to stay together for life. Finally they had to admit that sometimes it is not the national culture which creates problems, simply the fact that men and women come from different planets: men are from Mars and women from Venus.

absolutely Big Fat Wedding
In the last part of our show we will get back to Stéphane, who tells us what cultural challenges he had to face before his “Big Fat Lebanese Wedding” with 800 guests! During the process he sometimes felt a considerable cultural gap between his families, as if he was not from France but from the other side of the world.

Our co-host today is Agnes Dús from Budapest in Hungary, student of the Corvinus University of Budapest. You may remember her from the interviews she made in Ireland for show number 25. She will co-host the shows from Remagen until Christmas.

The next show will be coming to you on the 19 October from Anne Fox in Denmark.

So long…stay tuned!

Host of this show: Dr. Laurent Borgmann
Co-host: Agnes Dús
Editor: Mathias Knops

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