Luebeck, Germany (DPA) -- Ishtar, a television channel run by Iraqi Christians, is switched on for much of the day in Julina's living room in Luebeck, where she and her husband are bringing up two small children. Iraqi Christians are rare in this northern German city: there are only six families here from their ethnic group, the Assyrians.

So Julina keeps connected to home via a satellite dish. Ishtar broadcasts in her language, Aramaic. She also tunes in to the Arabic channels al-Sharqiya and al-Iraqiya, and phones home, when she can afford it, to check how accurate the news is.

Relatives inside Iraq tell her that recent reports of an easing in attacks are exaggerated. Baghdad seems as dangerous as ever.

"I have been in Germany for seven years now," she said. Her children were born in Germany and attend German kindergarten, but mainly speak Aramaic, or Assyrian as she calls the language.

As they approach school age, and she approaches her 30s, the couple face an uneasy choice: return, settle here in a strange land or move on.

Preserving their own way of life and language seems impossible in Germany, where many politicians campaign against "parallel societies" being established by immigrants. Besides, there are not enough Assyrians to establish a viable community in Luebeck.

Some Assyrian men in Germany have married German women, but the consensus among immigrants is that mixed marriages are often unhappy.

"We knew one case," said Julina. "The German wife wanted to have fun and go out to clubs, not stay home and cook. She heated up frozen pizzas. She wanted to eat out very often. She even wanted to have breakfast in a cafe.

"It only lasted two years and they divorced."

Hanna Younan, president of the Catholic Iraqi community of 300 families in the German city of Munich, confirmed that young immigrant men raised in Iraq felt ill at ease with wives who enjoyed partying, and preferred to marry within their own community.

Because most are applying for refugee status in Germany, they are not allowed to use their German travel documents to revisit Iraq.

By German logic, this would prove that Iraq is safe and automatically invalidate their claims for political asylum. So they instead visit Assyrian refugees living near Damascus or Amman.

"There are 500,000 of our people in Jordan," said Younan. "Young men from here do travel over there, or to Syria, to find a bride. They ask friends and family to recommend possible partners."

Until a couple of decades ago, marriages were often arranged by families, but today's newlyweds have met before marriage.

Explaining the custom, Julina said: "We ask the boy to drop by and see the parents while the girl is there. It's just a brief 'hello, hello.' We act as if it was spontaneous, not planned. Later someone asks him, 'Did you notice the girl?'

"If either of them doesn't like the look of the other, it can all be forgotten, and nobody's feelings will have been hurt. But if they are interested, they can be introduced at a family social gathering.

Father Peter Patto, the chaplain to the Chaldean Catholic community in Munich, says he has celebrated several marriages between grooms living in Europe who met brides from the Middle East this way.

While Assyrian wives in the diaspora are proud of their cooking and homemaking, that does not mean they are submissive.

Julina has learned passable German, has done her share of fighting with German bureaucracy and alertly watches her family's health.

"I don't give up easily," she said.

Her hope is to take the family to Australia, where they have relatives and there is a much more substantial Assyrian community.

Christians, who have been living in Iraq since long before the advent of Islam, make up a sizeable part of the wave of refugees who have fled the ethnic violence there. Many of those left behind try to keep invisible because of threats from Islamists and criminals.

Few would dare go out and about today wearing a cross, the Christian symbol.

The children were brought up to treat the Muslim majority with respect.

"We were taught to always be good neighbours," said Julina.

Iraq's two main native Christian denominations are the independent Church of the East, under patriarch Dinkha IV, and the Chaldean Catholic Church under patriarch Emmanuel III Delly which is linked to Catholicism.

Patto said families in Munich belonging to the Church of the East attended his Chaldean Catholic masses and were welcome. Attempts to officially unify the churches have made little progress, but inter- denominational marriage is common.