There's a place in Bochum called Max Kade Hall, which every Monday afternoon turned into the "Sprachcafé". To give a little bit of context, the German word "Sprache" means "language". Basically, the idea behind it is a place with beverages and maybe snacks where people can practice their languages' abilities. When I first heard of it I though "Wow, why is there nothing similar in my hometown? It's an amazing idea!"
This is how it looks on the outside.
From this perspective it seems a lot smaller than it actually is on the inside.
The first time I heard of this Sprachcafé was during the orientation days, when the chief of the international office gave a speech to welcome us all. Either me and my friends thought it would be great to at least go and have a look. They gave us pamphlets with the exact address and date of the meetings. Here it is.
It says "every Monday, while it's classes period, from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. in the Max Kade Hall - Laerholzstraße 82 it's the address - free entry". So it was set, we were to go on the following Monday.
To arrive there I had three choices: go with my friends from the UniForum, take the bus in front of my dormitory or cross the forest next to it. The third one was the quickest for me, but since I had classes near the UniForum on Monday, I often ended up going with my friends. We usually arrived there not earlier than 6 / 6:30 p.m. so it was already dark - and really cold - outside.
The first time we went inside we found the RUBISS (Ruhr Universität Bochum International Students Service) guys at the entrance. They asked everyone what their first language was and which languages they wanted to practice. They also gave us a sticker with our name and first language on it. I looked around me and saw a lot of tables, couches and chairs with flags from different countries on them. The RUBISS guys explained that each table had a different flag, denoting each table's target language. There was a Spanish table, a Portuguese one, a French one, a Chinese one, there was a table for Arabic too, an Italian table, an English one, of course a German one and many more.
You could choose whether you wanted to practice a language or be a tutor for your native language. Since it was our first time there, we all decided to practice a language. My target languages were English, German and Arabic. We wanted to stay all together so, since our lingua franca was the English language, we went to the English table. There we met other people from all over the world which, like us, wanted to improve their English speaking skills. Once we introduced ourselves a guy came to us saying that if we wanted we could choose to play some board games, in order to keep practicing in a more interesting way. Personally I think having conversations with strangers is always interesting, but if you talk while playing some board game all the awkwardness vanishes and people are more at their ease. Which is a fundamental prerequisite in order to learn how to use a language. We ended up choosing a game - of which I unfortunately don't remember the name - which involved questions about the United Kingdom and the English language. Oh, and someone took a picture of us.
Meanwhile, one of my friends had discovered the "food and beverages" corner. There was plenty of warm coffee, a wide choice of teas, biscuits and sweets. Of course we decided to take something - tea and biscuits, since we were at the English table. In the end we had fun that day, we met a lot of people and practiced one of our target languages while enjoying ourselves.
For these reasons we decided that going there every Monday would be a good idea.
And that's pretty much what we did. At least until late January, when the exam session started. After the first times, when we needed to feel like we fitted in, we tried going to other tables too. I remember that once we decided to sit at the German table - my friends' German speaking level was way above mine, but still I tried to catch up with the conversation that was taking place. I could understand almost everything they were saying, but when my turn to speak came I had to put a lot of effort in order to say something that made sense. A guy started talking to me and I discovered that he was Egyptian. The fun thing is, one of his target languages was Italian and one of my target languages was Arabic. So we thought that it would be perfect to be language partners, because one could teach the other his native language while learning the other's.
One thing I regret a bit is that I never dared to sit at the Arabic table. I was afraid that I wasn't good enough and none of my friends had the same target language, so I decided not to go and that was not a particularly good idea. Maybe if I had more time I would have gone there, even just to have a look, but that's just a thought.
Toward the end of the semester they hosted a semester closing event in the Max Kade Hall, but unfortunately me and my friends couldn't take part in it as we were overwhelmed with exams and paperwork. Here is a picture they took during that event.
I wish I had joined them because it seems like a really nice thing to do and many people told me they had fun.
In conclusion, I literally loved going there each Monday. It felt like an inclusive space where no one judged anyone, because we were all learning something and that's the best environment possible for a language learner. In fact, I wish more universities had a place like this.
- All the pictures I've posted here are taken from the AKAFÖ website or the Sprachcafé Facebook page. -
