By Alexika Managing Director, Mark Robinson
I love to travel to new places and experience new languages and cultures – but also being surrounded by my second language is something that I love (need?) to do. It is great to watch the German news every day from my UK home, but I love (need) to come to a German-speaking country regularly to top up the language skills and just be surrounded by the culture. So, thank you to my lovely wife for coming with me to Cologne this time! It was great to catch up with old friends and visit their delightful home town of Ratingen, and we had a wide-ranging debate about politics and the state of the world – but I also learnt a lot from small interactions and everyday chats with people as we travelled.
Despite a sign explaining that it was not the case for another week, a bus in Leverkusen was setting off from a temporary bus stop. A local lady explained this and walked the extra few metres with us and we joined her on the bus – we talked about her children and grandchildren, the cost of living crisis, her fears about the war in Ukraine and how she just wants to live in peace, the poor state of museums in Cologne, and the lack of infrastructure to support all the new housing in the area. A train from Leverkusen to Cologne was delayed by half an hour – a chat with a retired couple revealed that they had plenty of time before their steak lunch in Cologne, they had moved up from the Stuttgart area to be near family and were enjoying being near the Rhine-Ruhr cities … and these train delays are very common. A group of men at a bus stop were wondering if they would still have jobs if they behaved like railway workers – giving poor service and constantly going on strike. The check-out lady at the local Edeka supermarket enjoys having people of different nationalities living in the area. A final evening spent in a local bar in Hitdorf taught us more about how the famous Karnival celebrations vary from town to town, and are a source of community pride and engagement.
So, what have we learnt this time? People are the same everywhere. The Cologne public transport system was most definitely not running like clockwork this time – aside from the state of the train services, the app was very difficult to navigate but the in-person service at the ticket office was great. The modern art museum in Cologne is fantastic. I didn’t hear as much local dialect as I expected – that could be coincidence but my friend did say that it is spoken less nowadays as the population is more mobile. Translating and interpreting, even ‘just’ for my wife on holiday, is very enjoyable – I am so lucky that it is my work too. Speaking in another language is great fun – which means that this introvert will suddenly chat to anyone when in Germany. Danke, mein Schatz – das nächste Mal nach Wien?