We met in person for the First time and spent the afternoon walking around the city. The weather was nice, it did’t rain. We started with the usual small talk — names, where we’re from, what we study — but soon we were talking about everything from culture to language to how different (and yet similar) our countries are.
It was really interesting to compare Germany and Ukraine. We talked about how people live, the cities and where linguistic influences come from. It felt like we were not just learning about facts, but about each other’s worlds.
The most interessting part was when we started talking about languages. It’s crazy how much you can learn about a country from the way people speak. In Ukraine, you can feel the influence of Russia in the east and Poland in the west, while in Germany there’s a mix from Austria and the Netherlands. We also compared the languages with Finnish, which we are both learning at the moment.
We also talked about some “Germanized” words in Ukrainian, and compared Ukrainian and Russian, noticing how close they sound but how different they feel once you really listen. Along the way, we practiced some basic phrases in both languages — like please, thank you, good morning, good day, and even cheers! (Prost!). It was fun to see how similar some expressions are, and how polite habits say so much about a culture.
After all the walking and talking, we ended the day in a cozy café. Talking about the coffe, Food and Drink Culture of our contries.
Marie Gebert, Yevhen Hrechko
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