Heide Kunzelmann

My guest this week is Heide Kunzelmann, German Culture & Language Coach for International Knowledge Workers - largely qualified migrants and expats - based in Vienna. Heide left the University of Kent in 2020 and she discusses transferable skills and how to use them to make a living.

Heide talks about her Austrian background and how she left home to study at the age of 18. She talks about memories that stretch back to moving at the age of four, including a home with no electricity, and she remembers the quiet and having lots to do as an only child.

Heide reveals the importance of her Walkman when she was young and how she would take long walks and listen to Rick Astley. We talk about the notion of instant gratification and of retro and the role of nostalgia as well as how film can be a portal into our pasts that opens up an emotional landscape.

Heide talks about the relationship between the uncanny and nostalgia, and we learn why Top Gun was the coolest film ever when she was growing up, but that she doesn’t necessarily feel the same way now. Things that matter to us now we are bound to think differently about when we are our parents’ age.

Heide studied English and German at university, but wanted to be a musician, and we learn why she didn’t follow that dream.

We learn about her present job for which she draws on texts and helping people understand her culture better, and working with people coming to Austria in search of jobs. She has the freedom to create programmes and concerts in her self-employed capacity.

Heide is doing many of the same things her mother did and she talks about the influence of her parents in her life.

Then, at the end of the interview, Heide talks about why nostalgia can be like a drug and why we glorify the past. She discloses that her younger self wanted to work on an English university campus, and we find out about the novelette she wrote when she was 16.

Please note: Opinions expressed are solely those of Chris Deacy and Heide Kunzelmann and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the University of Kent.