On May 3rd, during the European Week 2018, our EVS volunteer Ondrej Holan organised an open language café with a peculiar name “SprachBar” in Roter Elephant, which gathered more than twenty people willing to communicate in foreign languages.
What is SprachBar? It is a form of interactive language cafe, which a solemly based on solidarity. You offered your mother tongue but you got the opportunity to talk to someone in their mother language. And in order to make it more organised there were tables dedicated to certain languages. People were allowed to talk only in that language at that table.
Upon arrival participants registered themselves at the sign-in desk and were asked about their mother tongue, as well as what are the languages that they want to practise. If the requested language was not on the list, the partcipants was asked to join other tables or take charge of the table with his/her mother tongue.
On the event itself we had a great variety of the languages offered. People had the opportunity to speak German, English, French, Russian, Spanish and Arabic, but there were also some more exotic languages like Japanese, Korean and Persian. The participants constantly mixed, switching the tables and mindsets to adapt to a new language excersise.
And when leaving, many people asked for the next date of the same activity. That’s why we can conclude, that there is a clear demand for language practice in Erfurt and we would gladly continute this tradition that bring people from different cultures together and provides a platform for communication. Not only you get better yourself in foreign language, but you simultaneously help other people! What a nice way to be solidar with the globalized world 😉
If you haven’t had a chance to join us on May 3rd, we hope to see you next time! Stay tuned!
