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Opportunities are everywhere in the world. But some of them are better in certain places than the others. That is why people go to other places from their hometown: to seek opportunities. Many times they are driven by the situation that is not going well in their current places, for example war, famine, and corruption. Looking at the situation in Berlin, Germany, there are a lot of immigrants from all over other nations. Berlin attracts many immigrants because the geographic location of German as a country is near middle-east country that have a lot of problem within themselves. Meanwhile, there are not a lot of people choose to migrate to Indonesia, as the condition of the country is not as stable as other popular destinations.

Back from 1990 until now, Germany steadily receive many immigrants who seek better place to live. According to Indexmundi website, net migration rate is 1.5 people / 1000 people, that can be taken as more immigrants than migrants. People are attracted to move to Germany because it is one of the nearest country to move. Not only that, but also because people who migrates from their countries seek liberal lives that is offered in German, but not from their home country. For instance, in some Arabian countries women are owned by men in their families. There are some occurrences where women are killed by their families with a base of embarrassing family name, simply just because they show a little part of their body. However, those problems do not occur in Germany, which is why many people attracted to the freedom offered in Germany. Some of them also move out because of the civil unrest in the country, which is why many people from Syria migrate to Germany as the situation is not safe back in Syria. Other reason to move out is because of the salary. When people from third world countries work in Germany which is a first world country, they tend to get higher income than before. Especially considering that one of the most high level currencies is euro, which is the one that Germans use, those people can exchange the euro to their currencies, which is a lot.

Meanwhile, in Indonesia there is no immigration problem like Germany has. Looking at migration policy website, Indonesia migration rate is -1.2 people/1000 people, which means there are more people leaving the country than people move into the country. The problem with migration rates in Indonesia is mostly salary and type of work. Most people from rural Indonesia are farmers. I have been lived in among them, and there were a lot of those farmers’ kids who left their family to work either in the capital city or outside the country. Most of them left to become a servants and when I asked them why, it was just because they did not want to farm their lands, they want to be servant, as it does not require as much effort as farming. As for the salary, working outside Indonesia can tripled their income than if they work inside Indonesia. With less required effort while getting much more, the appeal of migrating to other countries seems to be a reasonable choice for Indonesians.

Citation:

Germany Net Migration Rate.” Germany Net Migration Rate – Demographics. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2016. <http://www.indexmundi.com/germany/net_migration_rate.html>.

Indonesia.” Migrationpolicy.org. N.p., 08 Nov. 2016. Web. 06 Dec. 2016. <http://www.migrationpolicy.org/country-resource/indonesia>.

Many kinds of border whether physical or mental borders divide people from one another. Language is one kind of barrier that makes people do not understand each other. Many places have their own traditional languages with their own accent. But most of those language can be easily understood because the sentence structures are more likely the same to one another. This language barrier and language structure comparison from Jakarta and Berlin is what I want to emphasize in this blog post.

In Indonesia, there are a lot of different languages spoken in every area, every island, and every tribe. However, there is one official language to unify the myriad languages in Indonesia, which is Bahasa Indonesia. Jakarta, as the capital city of Indonesia, is home of people from vast different ethnicity. A lot of people from Borneo, Sumatra, Papua, and Java islands move from their home island to Jakarta in order to take their chances to succeed. Therefore, although they understand Bahasa Indonesia, their accent are so thick that some other people might not understand what they say or misinterpret the point. From my experience, I do have East Java accent growing up. One time I met someone who is not from East Java, sometimes they said that I am kinda rude towards them, but that is just my accent. However, mostly other people just chuckle on me because they can easily identify where I came from.

In Berlin, East German people have some differences in their accent and their dictionaries than West German people. People who raised in East Germans were taught high German dialect to embellish their identity as East Germans and they still carried that accent till this day. They also have some objects’ name altered in order to avoid similarity from the Western culture. For instance, according to Oxford dictionary blog, people from West German call a convenience store “supermarkt” supermarket, while East Germans call it “Konsum” cooperative shop.

Sometimes, in Indonesia when a person talk to another people from different ethnicity, they can understand what they are saying as long as they do not speak different vocabularies. The main reason is the sentence structure is easy to understand. In their sentences they only put in subject, verb, objects, and description of place or time. The vocabularies do not have alteration whether they are past, present, or future tenses. People can differs those tenses just by listening to the description of time. Similarly, German people also understand other German with different dialect based on their mother language. However, the sentence structure in German language is not what I am familiar with because it adds words or alters the vocabulary when saying in different tenses, as “haben” or “sein” can be added in perfect tense.

In conclusion, Indonesian people and German people have different accents based on where they came from. People from different islands or regions in Indonesia speak differently with their dialects, and the same goes with people who raised in East Germany or West Germany. However, some words for German people are altered because of the past teaching. In sense of sentence structure, Indonesian language does not alter any vocabulary based on the tenses, while German languages does alter and add extra words based on the tenses.

Citation:

”  The Future Tense (das Futur).” The Future Tense (das Futur). N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.

@OxfordWords. “Do East and West Germans Still Speak a Different Language? | OxfordWords Blog.” OxfordWords Blog. N.p., 26 Feb. 2016. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.

A lot of different aspects can be compared and contrasts between every cities around the world. Berlin, Germany and Surabaya, Indonesia are two metropolitan cities that has many different aspects between them. I visited Germany five years ago for a vacation; therefore, in this blog, I will emphasize on the entertainment and culture as I have witnessed the popular food and the traditional dress in both places.

One of the most popular dish in Surabaya is called “iga penyet”. The combination of fried ribs and “sambal” (chili sauce) over rice makes everyone goes crazy. No one can resists the crisp beef smell and the crunchy hot sensation from every bite of it. Sounds delicious right? That is basically the description of “iga penyet” that can be translated to smashed beef ribs. Doing a comparison to Berlin’s dish, I cannot get bratwurst hot dog out of my head. I tried that on a restaurant in Berlin, and instantly, everywhere I go like in Stuttgart or Munich, I was always looking for the same dish, even though there is no match for bratwurst from Berlin. According to magazine based website, Thrillist, the bock wurst: curry 36 is the heavenly dish that I ate on my vacation. That special bratwurst sausage bathed in an ocean of butter added with sauerkraut and mash potato makes it so satisfying to eat. However, they are two different types of food. The smashed beef ribs is an Asian cuisine because of the rice and “sambal” inside of it, while the bratwurst hot dog is a Western cuisine as it is cooked without any complicated ingredients.

Moreover, the citizen of Berlin likes to drink beer. Beer itself is already became a culture in Germany. So many places, if not all places, serves beer. I wonder how overly crowded is the brewery when a festival where everyone drinks beer called Oktoberfest gets started. Whereas in Surabaya, there is zero brewery available in the city. There are some restaurants that serve beer, but there is no place that dedicates itself solely to sell beer. The main reason is Indonesia is a Muslim country and beer is one of the many prohibited item to consume. Therefore, the permission to open a brewery is almost impossible to get as also there will be many fronts doing strike to the place.

Talking about my trips in Berlin, I cannot forget the colossal feeling visiting the Victory Column. According to Wikipedia, the golden monument was erected to commemorate Prussian victory in Danish-Prussian war. Meanwhile, in Surabaya, there is a heroic monument to commemorate battle of Surabaya. The battle happened when Indonesia was still colonized by the Dutch, they give people of Surabaya an ultimatum to leave the city as soon as possible. While the ultimatum still had not reach its due date, a Dutch general was killed in an explosion. At that point, the Dutch army began to assault Surabaya from November 10 for three weeks straight. From that moment, Surabaya acknowledges the heroes by building monumental statue for them.

Western and Eastern cities are hardly the same. Even though the type of popular cuisine, the beer culture, and the purpose of monuments in both places are different, both places will give tourists their unique taste of the cities.

Works Cited