A lonely journey; overcome through TWR broadcasts
Have you found language barriers can make people seem unfriendly and distant? “Making friends beyond acquaintances was hard for me,”says South Africa born Ivan Bam, looking back at his time in Germany in the mid 1980s. “In those days there was no social media to make connections back home or with friends when it seemed like life there had moved on without me.” Bam felt his biggest barrier to integration was the German language and learning it was a process. “It was really difficult at first. I was trying to fix my loneliness by looking back to my home country. The feeling is often magnified by struggles to learn a language, form deep connections, and generally integrate into a culture. The loneliness that expats experience comes generally with a sense of alienation.”