blanc page. Pakistan begins

What kind of pictures come to your mind, when I say „Pakistan“?

Bombed busses on muddy streets with wailing women crying aloud over the loss of their children?

Mountainous little villages without electricity, where children are being taught to be Taliban fighters?

Mullahs with turbans condemning America and the west?

I don't know what you saw on TV or on the news, but... have you ever thought how streets look like in Pakistan or a normal living room? How does an urban city centre look like or a university? Are there shopping malls? And what kind of sweets do the kids prefer? What is fashionable and what kind of music is on the radio? Do they write sms to each other? And what does the taxidriver think about his job? Maybe he's not a poor fellow without education, but recites a poem for you?

My imagination on Pakistan was basically a blanc page. The only pictures produced in the west about Pakistan are political meetings or about attacks on military infrastructure. A good friend of mine put it in very good words in saying: „they report about schools being closed or bombed or women not being able to teach there at the moment, but no one writes about the fact THAT there are schools, THAT there is a normal life and THAT there are women teaching. They're not interested in showing how life is, but on how bad the world is.“

So what happens when you go there and just find out? Come with me...let's try out some months at a university in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan!