My first contact with German language was just two weeks before arriving in Germany. It was a crash course to pass an interview at the embassy. Finally, five years ago, I set my foot on the Teutonic lands and since this time my life has been undergoing big changes. If you are unlucky enough to have a passport from one of the post-Soviet Union countries your world ends at the border to the next EU country. A round trip to Paris for ten days could be the biggest dream that you can afford. I was yet a naive girl and tried to live in Germany without knowing German for the next six months, but I was fortunate enough to learn English to get me by. Sure, I could have been getting by like this, but my destiny said "No!" and I soon found myself in a line to submit my application for a German course.

Continue reading "Do Not Postpone Learning German - A Didactic Story "

[This article is not for those who drink solely tea, or the ones who are certain that a cup of coffee can kill a horse.] When you live in Delhi, you bargain successfully every day with rickshaws on the way to your office and can barely breathe through your scarf in the compulsory traffic jams. Everything is fine until one day you realise, that the supply of “as if it was always there” coffee in your kitchen, that used to be the best moment of your morning, is over. And at this very moment you understand that your day cannot start right, that the sun set and this city had finally got a chance to catch you. If the caffeine-deficiency in your body is not that high and you can still think, you go to the nearest market and try to find something like your favourite Lavazza.

Continue reading "The Last Cup of Coffee – Hunting for Coffee in Delhi"

At Knowledge Must we are extremely delighted to present you our new China office in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province. Located in the very city center of this vibrant city, we picked the most energetic spot for our office: Chengdu's famed pedestrian street Chunxi Lu, a street as well as a contiguous shopping and entertainment district, with thousands of shopping malls, department stores, boutiques, restaurants, bars, cafes, street stalls – you name it.

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I had never made the experience before of how it feels to guide somebody in a place that is so well known to me. On the 28th of May 2011 I held my first guided tour of my native place Old Delhi – and it gave me such a fresh feeling of being a representative of my culture and not just a sheer local of the place I have been living in for almost all the years of my life. If you ask locals of Delhi about Old Delhi, their first reaction often is a feeling of discomfort. It is a place which is mostly considered by people as a cobweb of streets that are overcrowded and where you can get lost easily if you walk alone and don’t know the place well. Even for me living in Old Delhi, before preparing for this walking tour, my locality was just so humdrum and tiresome – everything was so fatiguing to me.

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Lately Knowledge Must had the opportunity to interview the distinguished Swiss interculturalist Hans Durrer, author of articles and books, teacher and coach, theoretician as well as practitioner. His pioneering works on intercultural and visual communication offer a very innovative approach to the study of culture. One particular field of interest for him is photography. According to Durrer photographs are nothing else than shattered fragments of the broken mirror of reality, which force the viewer to reconstruct their meaning. Depending on the upbringing, interests, and also the mood of the viewer, the photographs’ meaning will be read very differently.

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Jesús from Madrid, Spain, is a true devotee of everything Chinese. When he, with the help of a government grant, finally went to experience life among the Chinese people in Taiwan, he got hooked to the culture and now plans to build his career there. From starting out as a language student to working for national radio and lecturing at universities, in the five years since he made the move he never regretted his decision. Not least due to the high demand of native language teachers in Taiwan his future looks very promising. The enthusiasm he expressed in our interview will be an inspiration for many.

Continue reading "Building a Career in Taiwan: An Interview with Jesús Trapero"

I have been two months in India already and I thought I have seen crazy things, chaotic traffic, and incredible scenes. I didn´t realize yet that I didn´t know anything about cricket. I noticed that they were broadcasting several matches on TV, but I didn´t pay any attention really. Suddenly a Cricket World Cup semi final was taking place in the north of India and everyone was just crazy about it. Two days before the event everyone was talking about it and asking me who did I support: India, for sure.

Continue reading "India Celebrating Cricket: Foreigners Witnessing the 2011 World Cup"

When I first applied for an internship in India all I could think of was: chaos, dust, traffic jams, smells, and millions of poor people. That was my preconceived image of India. Much of what I had in mind was basically negative, but at the same time all the people I know that have been to India told me that India is an amazing country, that I will enjoy it a lot and that making an internship there will change my life. I did not understand that completely, but as I like my life to be uncertain, as I love not to know what is going to happen tomorrow and as I truly believe in CARPE DIEM: I thought I should just do it.

Continue reading "Culture Shock: Arriving for the First Time in India"

In Delhi friends of the arts, music and entertainment have marked 16.10.2010 to celebrate an interplay of artistic diversity. At Max Mueller Bhavan (how the Goethe-Institut is known in India), followed by an after show party around the corner at Aqua (in The Park Hotel New Delhi), the Sound Tamasha family will release the first of its kind electronic music compilation of Indo European artist collaborations: Sound Tamasha – Spectaculicious House (Creative Commons Only).

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I recently read an article in the New York Times entitled “In India, Castes, Honor and Killings Intertwine”. Over the six years or so since I made my first journey to India, I have recounted to friends and acquaintances at home some of the anecdotes (I wince to use this word – as if abuse of women should ever be relegated to a mere anecdote) I have encountered in first, second, or third person regarding the ways in which women are abused, maimed, or sometimes killed, as in the case of the young girl in the aforementioned article. I always want to defend or make excuses for the country that I love. It’s true, there hasn’t been a case of sati [immolation of widows on their husband’s funeral pyre] in years (though I hasten to point out, there has been in my lifetime), but I recall reading of daily “kitchen fires” in the police blotter in the Bangalore newspaper years ago; and discovering that this was a twisted and polite allusion to an intentional act of violence often resulting in homicide, not an indication that the country needed to examine safety standards of stovetop ranges.

Continue reading "Love Beyond All Barriers"

As a result of stronger ties between Germany and India, cultural relations between the two countries have found new impetus drawn from a longer tradition of German-Indo cultural exchange. Foreign cultural policy experiences multiple incentives and support on both sides, which makes it useful to establish sustainable structures of cultural dialogue. However, a number of factors could be listed to shed light on the still asymmetrical nature that marks cultural relations between India and Germany. Among them are: different conceptions of foreign cultural policy, different stages of the respective art industry and cultural infrastructure, a historically determined imbalance of financial and infrastructural resources and the sheer ignorance in the way both countries have perceived the other.

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I used to be a passionate cyclist in Berlin – now I cycle in Delhi. People have told me that Delhi used to have separate lanes for cyclists. Back then when South Delhi was still a conglomeration of villages, cars were the more exceptional mode of transportation. Sometime back the space was taken over by cars and planning was taken over by those who thought a modern city needed wide streets for cars rather than lanes for its inhabitants to walk on, or ride on their bikes – often affectionately referred to by Germans as their “Drahtesel” (a ‘donkey made out of wire’ in German language).

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I recently found myself on a cross-country, East to Left coast, train adventure on Amtrak, the national railway company in the United States. We were a group of twenty like-minded artists, journeying to a conference together and intent on spending three days talking, ideating, and drinking whiskey together. Amtrak is the transportation of Amish families who eschew automobiles, elderly couples, and young vagabonds; there’s a curiosity surrounding train travel in the United States. How quaint and old fashioned (!), we think. One of my artist companions fully expected chandeliers and an elegant service in the dining car for dinner and was disappointed when Tony, the waiter, shouted the dessert options to the entire car en-masse between off-key snippets of Elvis tunes. It was a disappointing and high-priced meal, with an atmosphere only notable for its similarity to crass and cheap small-town diners. (I should note that seven of us, gratefully not including myself, fell ill after this meal; apparently a lack of sanitation standards for train food is an international phenomenon).

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"Medieval mayhem, opulent metropolis, stately maiden aunt: give it a chance, and this unruly capital will capture your heart. Yes, it's crowded, aggravating, polluted, extreme, and hectic, but hey - nobody's perfect."
- Lonely Planet India, 13th edition

These were some of the first words I read about Delhi. A city officially of 15 million inhabitants, but in reality more like 20 million. A city of djinns and city of dreams for the capital's millions of migrant workers. Mega malls and glittery condos take root next to fields of marigolds where sari-clad farmers lay out their produce on nearby roadsides, hoping to attract Delhi's middle-class suburbanites on their way home from work. One of the world's most polluted cities, it boasts more parks than most Western capitals.

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I came as a woman to India, my choice of destination for fulfilling the next endeavors…

… and guess what, I’m still in India and believe or not: I am still a woman!

What is it like to be a woman from Germany living in India? What a simple and complex question at the same time! Let’s begin with the daily routine, pulling the bicycle out of the garage, preparing for the regular ride to work. This seemingly not worth mentioning act is today welcomed by a burst into heart full laughter of the by now well-known neighbor. Shortly after he asks in Hindi at least for the third time, what in the world I’m up to. Despite all the attempts of the most obvious explanations, ranging from the enjoyment of riding a bike, exploring the new city, saving money, looking for an exercise - to mention a few - he still seems to bang his head on what to make of this shockingly awkward picture. I will come across this almost paradigmatic reaction several times more on my way to work. I don’t mind, not the least, because it adds a significant amount of entertainment to my daily routine. I am grinning over some of the ones out there, bumping into each other or on good days crashing into street lights while staring towards the cycle lane.

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