Our even more international week...

Our bunch of seven erasmus students was enriched by eight other European students during this week. Together we lived through a well-composed programme under the headline "language and culture". We experienced a mixture of courses about cultural differences, differences in the educational systems and nursery rhymes paired with school visits, an excursion to the Viking town of Ribe and a "Eurovision song contest". Because we often talked and discussed the topic of stereotypes, why we have them and what we can do with them or to get rid of them, I chose stereotypes also as the topic for my portfolio of this week. This is what I brought together:

We are different - we are same

Those are the drawings the students had to make about a person from another country. In most cases the pictures matched with what people from the countries pictured could tell us about their countries. But in some cases one could make out differences between the stereotypes and reality.

Stereotypes (an acrostic)



S tronger than our parents

T ogether as one

E ager to learn

R eady to make a new start

E verything is possible

O vercome boundaries

T ravel the world

Y ou have the choice

P roduce new ideas

E nrich the world

S tay true to yourself

This acrostic came to my mind when I thought about the last six weeks. For me it contains some different points of depatures from which we could start to grow together on a global scale. I learned a lot from the others regarding behaviour, communication, culture, understanding and many other things. I feel more as a European citizen now than when I came here.

Mr. Ifference and Mr. Ame (an allegory)

Samuel Ame was new in town. He didn’t know anybody and sometimes he wanted to be somewhere else. He had travelled the world and seen many ifferent places and many ifferent faces. He was used to be new somewhere, but in this town it felt ifferent. He felt like a stranger and he didn’t like it.
David Ifference had lived in the ame town since the day of his birth. He had never left his town and he had never seen something else than the ame old places and the ame old faces.

One day S. Ame and D. Ifference met in the street. They looked at each other. D. Ifference looked into a friendly and curious face but S. Ame looked into a petrified and hostile face. S. Ame said: “I’m new in town and I would like to talk to you. My name is Samuel Ame.” D. Ifference was surprised because normally strangers didn’t talk to him. But he just said: “My name is David Ifference. I think we have nothing in common, we are not the ame. So what should we talk about?”

S. Ame was puzzled by this remark and thought about it for a while. Just in the moment when D. Ifference turned around to go away he said: “We are not as ifferent as we might seem to be. You are right when you say that we celebrate ifferent holidays and we have ifferent traditions. We might have ifferent opinions and ifferent values. But we live in the ame town and we buy our food in the ame shop. We read the ame newspaper and do the ame sport. We send our children to the ame school and work in the ame factory. And we stand here talking to each other in the ame language.”

Now it was D. Ifference who had to think about what had been said. After a while the expression on his face softened and a shyly smile could be seen. He said: “You know, we both stand on ifferent sides of the road but if we both take one step towards each other the distance would not be that great any more. Maybe you should change your name, what about Samuel Imilar?”

S. Ame answered: “You’re right about the road. And I will change my name if you change your name, too, what about David Iverse?”

S. Ame and D. Ifferent agreed on this and walked away as S. Imilar and D. Iverse.

This allegory is definitely too much coloured in black and white but maybe we can find at least a small piece of ourselves in these characters.


I'm absolutely aware of the fact that the world will not change within days but I like to believe in the possibility that human beings are able to live together in peace and with respect for each other on the one hand but also openness and curiosity on the other hand. For me growing together in Europe does not mean to forget about national culture or to deny national history because these things belong to us and make us special. It rather means to accept and understand other cultures and values that may seem strange to us at first glance but sometimes are not that different from our own if we sacrifice some time to get to know them.