Hi, I’m Christina and I’m 34. I was born on the southern edge of Austria, in the province of Kaernten, which is well known for its beautiful landscape, its mountains and lakes. I moved to Vienna to study languages in 1990. Actually, most of my friends moved to a big city after school and most of us stayed there because of work or because of private relationships. However, I love to visit my family in Kaernten as often as I can. And I love nature. There are times when I simply need to “flee” the city, especially in the summer months when it’s much too hot over here.
Let me tell you something about my work: Basically, I love to talk to people with different personal and professional backgrounds. I like to listen to their stories. This is why I have been working as a journalist and a language teacher for the past 8 years. I had already started to teach kids during my studies but as I do not have the pedagogic background you need to teach at schools I ended up in continuing education. My “students” work in the private and public sector and I train them to prepare for negotiations in Brussels or to brush up their English because they participate in EU projects. This is how I got in touch with EU structures and institutions and I realised that what is missing in the EU is a real intercultural exchange between citizens — between teachers and pupils. So I thought it would be terrific to initiate such an exchange and to connect peripheral players.
And so here we are — I think I’m really excited now and looking forward to our discussions!
If you have any questions please leave a comment below in “Leave a Reply”. –> OK, let’s get started!
Christina
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Ueli Scheuermeier
My name is Ueli Scheuermeier, born in 1955. I live with my wife in the city of Bern, in Switzerland. Two grown sons are beginning to take care of themselves…
Bern is a medieval city in the middle of Switzerland. It is a UNESCO world heritage.
But I grew up in the lower part of the Emmental, which is a rural area about 30-40km from Bern.
I have never been a school-teacher, but almost always involved in didactics in my career. My professional background is originally agronomy which I had studied in Zuerich, another city in Switzerland. But then I began to work a lot in organizing rural development efforts for governments and various agencies. I have now extensive experience in working in remote areas. I am a free-lancing consultant on these matters, and my work takes me regularly to far away places in many continents. My work has taken me deeply into the spheres of informal education, cross-cultural issues, social organization and communication.
More recently I have been involved in communication technologies for remote areas. I find it very interesting to see how the new technologies begin to change the way remote people regard themselves. Being in contact is important in the modern world, but there is a challenge to the identity.
I am fascinated with remote rural areas, and the people who live and work there. Even more fascinating I find is to see what happens when remote peoples start to communicate and exchange ideas and experiences across cultural and language barriers. It is this fascination which drives my committment to figure out the practical procedures of our EUdentity project. And working with kids and youths of course is the ideal way to open up new and exciting possibilities.
I am looking forward to making contact with any of you. If you have questions about my person or my situation, go ahead and ask me by posting something below in “Leave a Reply”.
Thanks, and let’s exchange…
Ueli
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Eric Willemsen
Hi, my name is Eric Willemsen, a 38-year-old Dutch journalist and communication scientist currently living in Vienna. I moved to the capital of Austria in the autumn of 2005.
I was born in the Netherlands in 1970 and grew up in a small village called Panningen, in the southern province of Limburg. At the age of 18, I moved to Tilburg and later on to Nijmegen _ two well-known university cities in the Netherlands _ to study Journalism and Communication Sciences. In the meantime, I started working as a freelance sports reporter at Dagblad De Limburger, a regional newspaper in Limburg, which in 1996 became my first employer. In 2000, I moved to Amsterdam as I got an editor’s job with MarketingTribune, a two-weekly business magazine for people working in the advertising, media, and communication industry. I specialised in online communication. After being editor-in-chief of this magazine for a while, I moved to Vienna, Austria, in 2005 and from then on became a freelance journalist. I am now working as a part-time sports writer with news agency Associated Press and as a communication consultant with Dutch agency Centennial. Furthermore, I write articles on a broad variety of topics for magazines and websites in the Netherlands and Britain, und I run my own weblog eWil in Vienna.
Being a frequent traveller, I am very interested in getting to know other cultures and people with different backgrounds. Thanks to the Internet, it is much more easier these days to get in touch with, and stay connected to people, no matter where they are. It is fascinating to experience how online communication can help building mutual respect and understanding, simply because people are exchanging ideas, visions, experiences, and react to these of others. I think, that is what our EUdentity project is all about.
I am really looking forward to building up our project in cooperation with all of you. So, let’s share!
Eric
