After taking part in her first migrantour, Crossing Borders volunteer Margaret Maged Maher from Egypt wrote the following piece on her experience:
On my second day in Denmark 15 November 2023, I had one of the best experiences I’ve had in learning about a world I wasn’t aware of! How can one neighbourhood contain all these landmarks that highlight so many cultures?
I never thought that when I came to Denmark, I would see so much diversity and different ethnicities from many cultural backgrounds from all over the world.
On this migrant tour I was one of 23 international students from various countries including Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Japan, Korea, Mexico and Vietnam. After coffee and croissants, we were taken on exciting tour of NørreBro starting from the Cultural House UNION and through some 5 landmarks in the Nørrebro neighborhood which ranks as the coolest neighbourhood in the world in 2021 according to Time Out magazine.
Each landmark has its own story about the cultural background those immigrants brought along with and how they integrated into this new world while maintaining their own identity. The neighbourhood has both been shaped by as it shapes the new cultures.
At the end of the tour, I discovered that the migrant tour is one of the most important activities that emotionally affect a person and make him more connected to where he is.
Organised by the Anna Lindh Danish Network, the event was a collaboration between Crossing Borders as Head of the Network and International People’s College as a member. The purpose of the Migrantour is to train and empower immigrants to tell their stories and the stories of the neighbourhoods they call home from their perspectives. The guides of the tour were Furkan Akay from Turkey and Maryam Alaoui from Lebanon.