When you work for an international or supranational organisation, in a team with people from three or more different cultural backgrounds, you might from time to time feel like you are in a jungle. Not only do different cultures have different work ethics, a work environment by definition creates its own do’s and don’ts on…
It’s 1987, summer holiday, the start of six weeks of endless days under the French sun. My brother and I, and my parents are leaving the house at 4AM in our brown Volkswagen Jetta. The trunk is filled with a gigantic tent, two suitcases we share, a badminton set, a cassette player with tapes of…
In the article on cosmopolitanism I introduced the concept of the cosmopolitan mind-set, in this article I will elaborate on that topic by relating citizenship to the concept of “being at home in the world”. As I mentioned before, the term “cosmopolitan” comes from the ancient Greek kosmopolites, of which the actual meaning is “citizen…
Let me start by explaining my choice to start with the topic of the cosmopolitan mind-set on a blog that focusses on intercultural (mis)communication. Don’t worry, over time I will share plenty of daily examples of awkward situations where various cultures come together and total miscommunication and chaos arises. For a start though I think…
Hi there, welcome! I am a Dutchie. One with a passion for communication and miscommunication. For both work and leisure, I travelled to over 50 countries in the past years. It was on one of those trips, I was working in South Korea at the time, when I started an online conversation with an American guy from…
Dialogue with the Dutch 