I had already noticed his slight accent on the phone.
As a conversation quickly develops with the friendly man in his thirties on the journey, I dare to ask him about his origins. Daniel comes from Romania. That’s a great opportunity for me.
Outside of the family circle by marriage, I hardly have any opportunities to use my language skills. I switch to Romanian, and after a moment of surprise on his part, our conversation simply continues in the other language. We understand each other. That’s nice. I learn that he and his wife came to Dresden seven years ago. They work a lot and make a good living, but have few connections. He says it’s different here. The togetherness. The way of meeting up. There is probably a barrier that is not so easy to overcome. They don’t know other people from Romania. They tend to keep to themselves and go to their garden outside Dresden in their free time and to visit relatives in Romania on vacation. I don’t remember if the word “cold” was used directly, but it’s the moment when I ask myself whether the feeling of home could also be expressed in temperature units – at how many degrees do you feel at home? Is there a feel-good temperature when you live abroad?
The Romanian community that I know locally is quite large. It has a family core consisting of several siblings who came to Dresden at short intervals and started families here. The Orthodox church is another important means of bonding. But here, too, people tend to keep to themselves, albeit in a larger circle. I would like to bring Daniel into contact with the others, but would that fit? Just because of the common language? I realize that I’m not as confident as usual when it comes to spontaneous bridge-building. It’s not quite my world after all, the one I plunged headlong into many years ago. I love discovering worlds through languages. When a specific occasion arises, there’s no stopping me. In this case, it was people I wanted to talk to and understand.
At the time, I was pleased that my school French, which was closely related to Romanian, was still good for something after all. I also took the opportunity to write over the strange GDR experience of being forbidden to interact with the people whose language I was learning. Twenty years later, this was no longer an issue: communication was expressly encouraged. Bit by bit, the real content of the conversations changed my ideas, bit by bit I discovered similarities and differences – do all roads lead to Rome in Romania too? Yes. Toate drumurile duc la Roma. Are the expressions similar? No. I didn’t know until then that language could be so intense. My playful attempt to transform certain phrases with other vocabulary came to nothing. That was a good thing, because language has an important regulatory function here as well as there. In the end, I was able to gain a lot from the thunderstorm principle: in Romanian, people tend not to hold grudges. What I also learned: a shared second foreign language works wonderfully at home as a secret language if you want to exchange personal information with lots of people. But only within the borders…
As luck would have it, Daniel already knows the pick-up location and the seller. The sale is completed in a friendly atmosphere. For various reasons, it seems to suit everyone, which feels very good. On the way back, Daniel is more thoughtful and says a long sentence when I have to ask: He says that he has never met anyone from here who learns his language.
Uta Rolland
Dresden spricht …
Workshops, tours, writing and printing workshops under the motto “Dresden speaks many languages”
Period
03-12.2024
Porject coordination
Yvonn Spauschus (Projektleitung)
Yulia Vishnichenko · Moussa Mbarek · Nadine Wölk · Rosa Brockelt · Yuliya Firsova · Martin Mannig (workshop leader)
Rosa Brockelt · Rosa Hauch · Falk Goernert · Birthe Mühlhoff (moderation, documentation)
Adina Rieckmann · Lydia Hänsel (tourguides)
Inge · Mahsa · Karin (voluntary help)
Cooperation partners
JugendKunstschule Dresden – Standort Passage, Omse e.V., Nachbarschaftshilfeverein, Stadtteilverein Johannstadt e.V., Malteser Hilfsdienste e.V., Jugendhaus LILA as well as Chinesisch-Deutsches Zentrum e.V., Lebenshilfe Dresden e.V., GEH8 Kunstraum und Ateliers e.V., Umweltzentrum Dresden – ABC Tische and many more
Supported by
The project is funded by the State Ministry for Social Affairs and Social Cohesion. This measure is co-financed with tax funds on the basis of the budget passed by the Saxon state parliament within the framework of the state programme Integrative Maßnahmen.
