Colourful journey across cultures

Beating drums, exotic dresses and delicious food: The very first International Day at Hochschule Heilbronn has been celebrated! Students, professors and guests from all backgrounds took us on a journey to various countries and cultures.

Ten different stands offered delicious food and shared information about their prevailing culture. You could have an African Beignet as a starter, continue with Baba Ganoush from the Middle East or Russian Piroski and end with some typical Swedish Kanelbullar. Does this sound to you more like a pub crawl than an International Day? Well, it was probably the tastiest experience we’ve ever had at Europaplatz. This day, you could see how stepping out of your own comfort zone can lead to new interesting possibilities, Therefore, it wasn’t surprising how spontaneous jam sessions and people dancing in traditional clothes in room V002 attracted everybody’s attention. Nawar, who took the initiative and started playing the Darbaka: “I just felt like playing, so I thought: ‘Why not do it?’” Next-door, students could find out about mobility programs or career possibilities all over the world. Especially Dr. Schnakenberg, who leads the asylum law department in the Foreign Office, inspired many students to think about going international in civil service. Unfortunately, it seemed like sometimes there were only few people attending the lectures. And of course, our student’s band “Sommersemester” provided some thrilling tunes between the talking. How can we ever forget their dynamic song about our beautiful town Heilbronn? Being unofficially declared as the possible anthem of Heilbronn, it’s going to last a long, long time in our ears… Despite all the positive feedback, some students claimed that they weren’t allowed to play music outside. More precisely: They were already jamming with their guitar, Darbaka and Cajón but have been interrupted and told to stop. Now you could question why playing music in the open air on a nice day in spring is not allowed at such an event — it maybe went a little bit against the relaxed international atmosphere we had that day. Nevertheless, after all, it seems like we can rightly assume that the first International Day has been a real success! Anna Polkovska and her student colleagues from IBO shared this positive perspective: “We really like that people from all cultures are coming together to talk, eat and celebrate. We are definitely looking forward to a second International Day!”

Text: Mira Reichenbach
(Fotos: Laura Fuchs)