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The Lëtzebuerger Journal is already celebrating its second digital birthday. We have found our place in the media landscape, evolved and are ready for 2023. None of this would be possible without the people who tell us their experiences and perspectives. To mark the occasion, each team member looks back on a story that was particularly meaningful to them this year.
(On)bekannt is one of the first podcast formats I developed and produced for the Lëtzebuerger Journal. Even 13 episodes later, I'm as excited before each episode as I was before the first. The concept is simple: a blind date. We order the host, Jill, into a pub, sit her down at a table and wait to see what happens. Each time she meets a different person. Sometimes she knows the person, sometimes not. To keep the conversation from getting bogged down, beer mats are pasted with topics beforehand, which are thrown into the round every now and then.
As simple as it sounds, the format is unpredictable. As in real life, you never know how first dates or conversations with mostly strangers will go. The additional component here is that the conversation is the actual podcast recording, so ideally it should be interesting and entertaining for the listeners.
"Back home, many things have remained the same, but you are a different person than you were back then."
This episode is about two well-educated women who studied and worked abroad for a long time and have been living back in Luxembourg since a few years. Back home, many things have remained the same, but they are a different person than they were then. The friends from before are no longer there or have other interests in the meantime. Everyday racism, with sayings like "we don't mean that in a bad way", are still very common in Luxembourg, as is the "we've always done it that way" mentality. It takes time to make home feel like home again.
They talk about how they built a new circle of friends, the positive impact Lara's work and colleagues have on her and what exactly is behind the term Zillennial Move. The episode with Lara Dieudonné has remained in my memory. It was one of those conversations where I would have loved to sit down and join in the discussion. Not only did they have great chemistry, the anecdotes from both their lives were exciting, inspiring and feisty at the same time.
