Oral History – Second day

 

The second day of the Workshop zooms in the Portuguese migration to Nordhorn in the sixties and seventies. The German students of the Erasmus-course inform the international guests about the Portuguese migration: where they came from, where they lived, what about the intercultural problems between the Germans and the Portuguese.

Together all the students discuss the possibilities to interview migrants from Portugal. They develop a questionnaire which will be used the next days. Will it be useful to ask directly or will it be more interesting to offer the interview partners an open-end question?

The group in the garden of the Portugues Center

At noon, the group takes the bikes to ride to the Portuguese center in Nordhorn. The center offers two typical Portuguese dishes. They prepare fish or chicken, baked potatoes or rice and salad. Yummy!

In the afternoon and after a strong coffee the interview partners come to the Center:  Mrs. Maria da Palma and Mr. Antonio Carvallo. Very open minded and friendly the two inhabitants of Nordhorn who were born in Portugal answer the questionary developed by the students in the morning. The German pupils present the questions and transmit the answers to the audience in English. Mrs da Palma who is very pleased to live with her family in Germany gives a resumé of the migration: "Nobody leaves voluntary his homeland". She links the former migration to Nordhorn with the actual migration of the refugees from Syria and other countries and she expresses her disappointment about the actual success of the right-wing parties not only in Germany but in Europe.

Maria da Palma

Antonio Carvallo