WOR(L)DS APART is a book about a friendship across cultures, and the insights it evokes.
It all starts with a blog post from Dorothee Lang on her journey through India, which triggers an unexpected response: “Hi! – I know that you would be really surprised to receive a mail from this “stranger!” Let me explain. My name is Smitha, from Bangalore, India. I am right now in the middle of a teaching adventure in China… and it so happened that I woke up today morning… feeling homesick and longing for a taste of India, my home. I turned to the Net, just randomly searched for “India” and in the middle of it somewhere, I found this poetic diary of yours, and truly enjoyed your Indian travel pages, especially the one about Udaipur….”
Once the first contact happens, there is the instant curiousity of meeting someone who leads a very different life: “How does it feel to be an English teacher in China?” asks Dorothee. “Whereabouts in Germany do you live – and how was your trip through my home country India?” writes Smitha.
And even though they never get to meet, the mails between the strangers who turn to friends continue. Woven into the mails are photos, short stories of encounters, and whole travelogues that cover the joys and fears, and the life lessons they encounter on each of their following journeys: Smitha’s short trips to Hong Kong, Beijing, and rural China, Dorothee’s visits to Munich, Majorca and The Black Forest, and more. The mails also include conversations on:
- Teaching in China
- Travelling through India
- Living abroad for a while
- Trying something new
- Crossing from East to West and back
- Learning a language
Together, all those mails form WORL(D)S APART, a book that was in fact written by life, and by two journeys into different worlds – journeys that moved on in words and mails long after Smitha and Dorothee had arrived back home.
