Interkulturelle Erfahrungen reflektieren

It would be easy, if it were easy

Strangers, when we meet …

The Danube Networkers have seen what it means to meet as strangers and to see the other person as a stranger.

We were united by one issue – the Danube. It flows through many countries and does not pay attention to nationalities, cultures or languages.

We were separated by language barriers. In the Babylonian confusion of languages we have lost the ancient instruments of language, of speaking with our hands and feet. Sadly.

Although we were asked to communicate in a “general language – English in this case”, we did not do so outside the official meetings, since it was nobody’s mother tongue.

Whoever could communicate with somebody else in a familiar language, did so – me included. Small language islands as sheet anchors. Archaic behaviour is still victorious.

In this project communication with strangers is an image of the worldwide problems of integration. It is always ‘the others’ who are expected to adjust, to learn the language, in order to belong.

Whether we have succeeded in learning this lesson in the sense of lifelong learning becomes visible whenever and wherever integration is stipulated. What if we refuse, for whatever reason, to learn a common language? For fear of making a fool of ourselves? For fear of losing our “culture” which we are so proud of? What happens if the linking element DANUBE is missing?

Cautiously, in the course of time, the strangers came closer to each other. Attempts to communicate in pictures. The Danube flows in-between. Everybody knows it, one reason or cause to overcome the language barriers? Meeting with strangers is the ‘hidden agenda’ of this project, the secret aim. Because the dream of a united Europe is a political dream. Day-to-day reality shows that we are still light-years away from speaking a common language.

May the Danube, which for centuries has not been impressed by national conflicts, attempts to confine and adjust it to human needs, continue to flow.

Birgit Meinhard-Schiebel
Danube Networkers Austria
Translation: Kitty Weinberger