An Experience Called Erasmus

source: https://goo.gl/images/N5vdD3 Time to reflect all my experiences so far... Since I am here for three month now, it is time to conclude my developments and my success in some areas as well as the difficulties I had and may still have.  At the beginning I could have never imagined the situation in which I am now.  My english improved a lot, but that's not all.  More important is that I improved many of my soft skills and gained a new perspective about different topics and thoughts.  I really have the feeling that my personality here changed a lot, in a postive way. I appreciate the smaller things more than back at home, it's easier for me to make new friends and talk to strangers, my self-confidence is better, especially when it comes to presentation skills.  But of course there are a lot of  things I can still improve, for example expand my english vocabulary when it comes to special expressions and business topics, handling my ho...

Since we are in Budapest for three month now, most of us already had their friends from home in town.  My conslusion here again is, that the success of communication between different cultures and nationalities is highly related to their ecperiences and to their character and motivation.  Some visitors of friends did not tried to communicate with us at all, because they were afraid of the language barrier.  Others tried all their best, even if there were a lot of misunderstandings betwenn each other.  And some were really good with communication even without good english knowledge.  Also it was great to talk to everybody as it also gave me a lot of new soft skills, like trying to communicate in every kind of situation and also with peolpe, who maybe have more difficulties to talk to me. 

Last week I talked with a hungarian girl about the Media and Advertising situation in her country.  She told me that since Viktor Orban's politics the situation of freedom of speech and the conditions for medias of the left wing is really tough.  In 2016 a man named Lorinc Meszaros bought 12 of the 19 regional newspapers. Lorinc Meszaros is a close friend and ally of Primeminister Viktor Orban. This act caused a lot of discussions, as there are many suspecting political motives behind this move.  Since then there were a lot of changes in ownerships with the solution that almost the whole media is pro-government covered.  Currently Social Media is an important source for news since the tradiotional media channels are not longer trustable, especially for the young generation.  But many people of the older generation still use the televison as their source of information. This is really shocking for me. In Germany we can read almost all newspapers and ...

Last Saturday me and a friend met a stranger in the tram. He, an old man (78), who can't speak english, and us, who can't speak Hungarian.  Sounds like it was a stressful and boring conversation?  Not at all!  To describe the situation and surrunding a little bit bettter, we were on our way back home from a day festival. He was standing in the tram 4 next to us, with his old speaker listening to music from the radio. Thats how we got into the converation. My friend came up to him and said: "Nice music man!" He was staring at us like he had no clue what we were trying to tell him. But he still had a big and interested smile on his face. So we tried it again and used our hands while pointing on his speaker. With the nonverbal communication, for example the thumb up sign, it was so easy to understand each other, at least for a small talk.  This was a beautiful heartwarming experience. He told us that he is still participating in city runs and used to be a rea...

Last weekend I was in Prague and spent the nights in a Hostel with 8 shared beds.  It was not my first time in a Hostel but this time I realized a lot more differences between the cultures and that adaption and dealing with cultural shock is not easy for everybody and some people are more frustrated and some are more blessed.  So here are some examples I experienced.  The japanese girl was quite calm and had no big problems with adapting when it came to sleeping time or who is when showerig in the morning. But she was also very introverted. She used her towels to cover her sleeping area and get more privacy. The girl from France did the same. I had kind of the feeling that she was more shocked about some things, like the way the others used the bathroom, so about hygienic standards and the day planing in general. Also we talked to the Japanese girl and she told us that it is her first long backpacker tour through Europe and sleepinf in Hostels with a lot of diffe...

In our spring break, 14 friends and me did an roadtrip through 3 countries - Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia.  In each country I experienced some cultural shocks, some were little some bigger.  Lets start with Croatia: The first days of our trip we stayed in different citys in Croatia while it was rainig a lot. Also the temperature was quite cold. So we stayed in our Airbnb's most of the time. The houses there don't have a real heating system, only air conditioniong, also the water was after 5 min in the shower totally cold.  Another thing that lead to a kind of frustration was the food. As I experinced before in my life, the croatian food is not really tasteful.  Montenegro:  The biggest issue here was the infrastructure and the hygienic standards.  The sreets were in a quite bad condition as the restrooms too.  We had difficulties driving in the cits without traffic lights and people who drove aggresively.  Bosnia: In B...

This post is about my kind of cultural "Reentry Shock" I had this weekend.  Gullahorn & Gullahorn are describing that shock in their theory as a shock you suffer while moving back to your home after a while abroad.  your well-known envorinment changed and your personality as well, you have to adapt to it again, a second cultural shock, a process in life, which is happening over and over again. This weekend was kind of a reentry cultural skock, not a real one, because I wasn't back home, but my family was over here. My parents, my sister and my grandparents.  This was a really suprising experience for me, because I did not believe that the habits and the thinking and all the things taken for granted could really be that unfamiliar for me just after 2 month being away from home.  But when it came to plan breakfast and dinner, or the so called "relationship to time" and the "relationship to peple", as well as the Monochronic or the Poly...