Also, добро пожаловать and ברוכים הבאים.*
You may have come across my name before – I’ve been a journalist for nearly 10 years now. Somewhen in that time I managed to graduate from a Bachelor in Political Science and Mass Media, as well as from journalism school, and after a 4 years’ break I decided to go back to academia for my Masters. Pretty banal so far. Here’s the fun part – the first part of my studies I did in Israel. The second part will be in Germany.
My story with Germany goes back to 2009, when my journalism school announced that they’ll be sending selected students on a scholarship with the Herbert Quandt-Foundation. Trialog of Cultures is an exchange program for young Israeli, Palestinian and German journalists (and if you are one, you should apply). I spent 2 months learning German at a summer univeristy in Bayreuth (the one in Bavaria. No, it’s not Beyruth.), and 3 months as an intern at the Jüdische Allgemeine weekly newspaper in Berlin. A year later I came back again, this time to Cologne, for a Freiwilliges Soziales Jahr (basically, civil service with travel). I worked for Bundesverband Information & Beratung for NS-Verfolgte e.V. (The German federal association for information and consultation of persons persecuted by the Nazi regime), which was an extremely enlightening and enriching experience. I also brought my German up to a level of fluency which allowed me to ace the DSH – the university German exam for foreign students, basically the hardest language test you can take in German. (And let me tell you, Mark Twain was not kidding.) And now I’m back in Germany again, once again to a whole new city, starting my Masters in International Media Studies at the Deutsche Welle Academy in Bonn.
What I realized in all my back-and-forth with Deutschland is that, while I like it (obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t be coming back), it certainly has it eccentricities. They probably don’t seem as such to natives, but to someone with a mix of East-European and Middle-Eastern mentality, they just scream out. I’ll try to document them, and my life in them, to the best of my ability. I will also try my best to make it less serious than this introduction post.
Viel Spaß und liebe Grüße,
Alex
*French is, sadly, the one language of the mix which I don’t speak. I hope to some day correct it. Then again, math was never my forté…
The Other One 