Saturday 11 August 2012

Augsburg 2012: Chennai exchange students met expat families from India and Germany


Editorial

In Nördlingen, close to Augsburg. 
For most of us it was the time of our lifes! As exchange students we had a great time in Germany. We are girls aged 15 to 16 from the Sacred Heart School in Chennai (Tamil Nadu, South India). Together with our teacher Ms Swarna Ashok we went to Augsburg in Bavaria on an exchange at the Maria Ward Gymnasium in June 2012. It was not only a fun tour. We worked on a project promoted by the Goethe-Institut Chennai “Living Between Cultures”, where we interviewed Indian and German expats  (interviews below). 

For our personal experiences click our blogs on the right.


Chennai students visited Augsburg.
The project aims at the experiences of expatriates living in a foreign country. We interviewed three Indian families (living in Augsburg and Munich) and three German families (living in Chennai) - and our German teachers, who assisted us with the project. In Augsburg our exchange partners helped us with contacts, but it seemed the Indian famillies where quite busy. So we could only interview one of them face to face. With the other one we had a telephone interview and the third one was not available at all.

So what to do? There was only limited time and our exchange partners did not have any ideas how to find other Indians in Augsburg or in anywhere close by. But we were lucky. We met a nice Indian lady on a train. At first he was not very enthusiastic about our idea but as we told her, that we were really in need she agreed to help us. We could interview her but as she heard that everything will go online, she did not want us to publish her photo.

We thank everybody who assisted us, to make this project possible.

And here are the interviews:

"Our favorite place is Pondicherry"


Andrea Dömötör is a Consultant for Parent&Early Childhood Education, Zsolt Dömötör a Degreed Engineer working for BMW. They have two children, Matthias and Juliane. Before the came to Chennai they lived in Munich. Mrs. Dömötör came to India 1 and a half years ago, and Mr. Dömötör has been living in India for 2 years. More...

"We learnt to be more patient"

Andrea and her husband are from Austria. They have two kids Amin (5 yrs) and Mona ( 3 yrs). Andrea works as a teacher. Both her children are in kindergarden. They went to Bangalore in the year 2007 and in 2010 they moved to Chennai. They definitely fee that Bangalore is much hotter than Austria. They feel India quite noisy and they were overwhelmed by the crowds of people everywhere when they came there.
More...


"India has a huge range of cultures."

Anne Leuken and her husband Eckhard Leucke love to travel around India and the whole of Asia. Eckhard Leucke works for Siemens and Anne is a teacher by profession. they have been staying in India for about 16 months from March 2011. Before that they  lived in Singapore for about 4 years and Saudi Arabia for about 4 and a half years. Anne has a daughter who lives in London and a son in China.
More...

"I miss the Indian food."


Mr. Mahadeva and his wife Prabhavathi Mahadeva have a daughter Spoorthi. They live together with Ms Mahadevas mother Gauramma in Augsburg. When they first came to Germany, they experienced that the weather was cold, the people were all friendly but  it was a different world in terms of weather, culture and so on. Mr. Mahadeva first went to Hamburg and was there for 7 months. He had also been to France and Italy.
More...

"Germany has changed my lifestyle."

Balvinder Kaur has lived in Germany since 2006. She moved from Hosiyarpur, Punjab, to Germany, Augsburg, due to her marriage. Her husband has lived in Germany for 23 years. He works at the pizza shop nearby. She is mothering four children born out of her sister – Kangan Preet (16), Sunny (14), Paramjeet (12), and Gurpreet (9). The students met her on a train.
More... 

"Everything is very neat and clean."

Shambu Nath Mukherjee and his wife Bharati have been living in Munich, Germany for over 50 years. The whole family are happy abroad but still prefer Indian food. They have two sons Rahul and Niladri. The students talked to him on the phone.
More...

"I was wonderstruck by India´s beauty."


Laura Whichmann is a student of German as a foreign language from Dresden (Germany). On her two month visit to India she has been working at the Goethe Institut as a part of an internship. She conducted a German course for teens. Her students interviewed her on her stay in Chennai.
More....

"I always wanted to live in South India."

Senya is a journalist and a teacher. She has been living for over two years in Chennai. Together with Laura and the student's school-teacher Swarna she conducted the "Living between Cultures"-Project with the students of Sacred-Heart-School.
More...
Senyas' Website Mein Madras (German language)