Living as an Afro-European has it's ups and downs just like every other situation. In this blog, we try to document some highlights in our lives, telling stories raw but with a touch of lemon.
The 26th of July was determined not to end as every other Sunday. So after mass, our priest Hermann Glettler called my sister and I aside and asked if we would by any chance be interested in going along with the church to a 5-day christian forum that is annually held in Altötting, Bayern, one of the biggest and most important place of pilgrimage in the whole of Germany.
Given that we are by far the most notorious stay-at-homers or "Nesthocker" as the Austrians would say it, it took a lot of persuasion (mostly me trying to persuade Obum on some days and Obum trying to persuade me on other days) and the fact that the last school year had been without question the most stressful and time-consuming school year for both of us, we organized 3 sleeping bags within the last two days (bless you Miss Hodschar!) and were officially going on a 5-day holiday to Germany (so we thought).
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| The flyer that played quite a role in our persuasion game |
Because Obum and I (with emphasis on Obum) are the best and most efficient bag packers you will ever come across, we just were no bothered enough to find a suitable suitcase to travel with, let along, pack. Until a few hours to midnight.
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| For the sake of it, here is Obum with a few of our luggage |
"The church" eventually turned out to be just our priest, his "assistant" Robert ( or so), Obum, Barbara - a fellow mass servant who also agreed to come along, and of course myself.
After a few minor complications, we were good to go. At 11:15 am, we hit the highway singing along to country music, banging our heads and yodeling. Jokes, though the priest yodeled a bit, operatic music, the radio and the occasional throw-in of inquiries about our present condition of well-being and whether or not we were enjoying the music (which to be honest, I actually was) were all that could be heard for the next three hours.
Obum insisted on taking a picture of taking a picture of how fast we were traveling on the highway.
After we'd all had enough of sitting, singing, eating, drinking, reading, talking and sleeping in the car, our driver decided to take a coffee/ice cream break at Upper Austria, directly at the borders to Bayern Germany, before finally getting to our destination.
Robert seemingly enjoying the attention of the paparazzi
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| They weren't even looking directly into the sun and were squinting already. The power of ice cream! |
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Barbara here was kind enough to display her skills of "spooning" an apparently drunk bee out of a stranger's beer glass. The paparazzi stood in awe. We made sure to leave an imprint, in other words a picture of our pretty selves,before leaving the beautiful state of Upper Austria. (I don't think I'll ever get tired of my "Tomato Jos" hair) |
Finally in Germany, we got lost every now and then just to stir things up.
One of Bayern's many traditions, the maypole "Maibaum". We were officially in Bayern.
Once again, Obum takes advantage of a situation and turns it into a photo shooting session. (yess, she is only standing on one leg)
At this point it is clear who is in charge of our trip.
Apparently we had arrived at our destination. Where else would you find wax figures of Mary and candles and crosses and rosaries and suchlike?
The "Stiftspfarrkirche" in it's Gothic-style instantly became our aid of guidance as we had to stand under it's shade for over an hour to register for the long-awaited forum.
We would later find out that the insides looked just as splendid and historical as it did on the outside:
After a good while, we were officially participants in this year's "Forum Altötting" YEAAAH!!
Our stay came with a 4-night luxurious accomodation in an elementary school gymnasium, not too far away from our glorious Gothic church. (We were told it would be a 5 minutes walk, it eventually turned out to be three times that long, but after the first day we didn't mind since we needed to keep fit anyways)
Luckily for us, the last these massive gym mats was lying around in a perfect corner next to the window, so we thanked the Lord "made our bed".
Fortunately for us, I had taken note of the restaurant "Gockerlwirt" on our way to the luxurious gym, simply because of the illustration of a chicken on the building. With that, we had gotten ourselves a new orientation point. Our was going to be fun!
Next on our schedule was evening mass, which was held outside in the burning sun because almost a thousand people were gathered there which meant no one church could fit in that much people and just because God works in wondrous ways. A lot of prayers concerning a perfect summer tan were answered in these 5 days.
Immediately after mass came the best part of the day after the long drive and ice cream and the getting there and the excitement of being there and the atmosphere... pretty much everything was on point!
After freaking out a bit about forgetting our food tickets at the now locked up gym, we eventually arrived at the place where food was to be served. We literally went through all the worst case scenarios (not getting any food that night :O) till it was finally our turn and the lady at the entrance told us it wasn't even a problem and that it happened pretty often.
Long story short, we had dinner like every one else.
At 8 pm there was to be a musical "MOLOKAI" at the open air arena just in front of the church. This, we was looking forward to!
Whenever all groups (toddlers, kids, teens, youths and adults) came together for a program, toddlers and kids always made sure to press forward and conquer all the seats and grounds at the front. It even got to a stage where some of them were sitting on the stairs leading to the stage and almost made it to the actual stage until their unsaid plans were breached by some adults that had had enough.
The musical which was AMAAAZING and like no other I had seen or heard lasted till about 11:30 pm. Right before the closing prayer, we were told that the actors in the musical did ESM and that in the next few days they would be wearing T-shirts and buttons that look like this:
"I did ESM. Ask me why"
I did not only ask them why, I went out of my way to make friends with most of them(okay truth be told, circumstance introduced us to most of them). We got to hear lots of stories about their lives and why they decided to join ESM.
They explained that ESM (Emmanuel School of Mission) is an opportunity for young people aged between 18-30 years to take out a year(actually 9 months) of their lives for God.
Many said before ESM they were lacking something in their lives, relationships with friends, and family. Something they could not pinpoint when asked about it. When everything around them was in turmoil, they found refuge in the one that gives peace and rest of mind.
There they lived together with other youths as students and were taught philosophy and the theology, living a very intense life of community and prayer.
To loosen things up, they organize musicals each year and tour all over Europe sharing, evangelizing in the best way to appeal to the heart, through music.
What amazed me the most was the diversity of the students in the ESM and the participants in the forum altogether. I was surprised to find loads of Czechs, French people, Dutch, Spanish but only a handful of Austrians and English people with languages overflowing from every corner. It was nothing short of pure bliss!
At the foot of this statue, we found shade from the scorching sun and played UNO, which is definitely one of the best was to make friends and I speak from experience. We got to know a girl called Anna who always knew when to be at our UNO meeting point. Sadly we didn't get to say goodbye to her before leaving.
And whenever we could no longer be bothered by UNO or talking or marveling at how much the forum was filled with grace, we read.
Right at the entrance of the square, a chapel, cloaked with about 2000 votive tablets (we didn't count, we were told) painted at about 1500-1520 is situated.
Bless! This well-tap-thingy saved us EVERY SINGLE DAY!
As the amount of youths attending the forum grew drastically with the years without any hope of decreasing, it was obvious that they sooner or later would need their own space. So 2011 the town of Altötting felt the time had come to grant their youngsters this wish. Thus the "Kultur + Kongress Forum" was established.
Here lectures, presentations, workshops were held and at chill times, we would come together to get to know at least one new person a day. (We spent our chill times playing UNO and the one time we actually went to the KKF, we almost opened a salon)
The lucky guy with the hat got his hair braided within five minutes and wouldn't stop smiling and showing off his hair.
Enough with the outsides of the building, lets's get to where the fun took place.
The presentations were held in this hall called "Raiffeisen-saal" and some afternoon workshops also took place here. I remember our very first workshop called "Jewish Dance", which was obviously about various Jewish dances.
And yess! They got an actual bishop to sing and play the guitar for us. Bless!
For all those who might be interested in what he said, he talked about being in harmony with the soul and understanding your vocation (both in the sense of occupation and spiritually). He used music as a motive, teaching that everyone has a specific tune playing in their being or soul if you like. And if your tune harmonizes with that of the Lord, then you both can dance to the music being made and he surely will let good people and things cut in and dance along. However, if you force your tune to fit with another not designated for you, then the tunes might blend for a split second and nothing more. This way you would be locking yourself and your future in with confusion and frustration because you took a vocation upon yourself that wasn't even meant for you in th first place.
To sum it all up, he advised us to have enough trust in the one who made and keeps us that has a bigger plan for us and that with him we won't make just one summer hit and fade afterwards.
One sentence he burned into my memory was this: "Das Große steht mit dem Kleinen auf dem Spiel". Which means so much as: before you can achieve big, you have to have started small.
On one of our plenty trips to the restroom, I found this poster that not only advertised a concert but also my birthday. This year.
I would have loved to go to a concert to mark my 18th birthday but my prom is planned to be on the next day so tough luck with that!
At night we groove.
There were songs, dances, poetry slams, smiles, screams, laughter. And for the weak, there were drinks and snacks. Until half past midnight that is.
A priest way too old to be in the youth group managed to sneak his way in just to play his strings and sing "Der Mini-Rock Blues" (The Mini-Skirt Blues) to us, only to forget half of the words. His improvising game was strong tho.
The very next day he held a presentation about candles. Literally.
He explained that a priest could probably take up a hobby as a vendor any day, given that they receive candles as gifts on almost every occasion.
After letting us believe we were going to get a lecture on candles, he made it clear that he had only used the candle as an example. One of many, we would later observe.
To make his point clear, he went further to explain that most Christians were like the cheap colorful candles he would get during the festive days of Christmas. Outside, designed with bountiful colors and patterns but inside fake wax that tend to stink once they begin to melt. These type of Christians are only believers on paper. They do not read the bible nor pray, but believe their occasional exclamation of "Thank God!" whenever something good crosses their path will make up for their slacking in belief. When it comes to doing that which is right and pleasing to the Lord, they always find something to make more important and serve as an excuse. They are what Angel Haze refer to as "fallacies" in her song "Battle Cry".
Then, he spoke about the candles he got during Easter time.
The ones that are hardly ever painted and if they are, then with motives of Bunnies and suchlike. He explained that these were the types that didn't come in big sizes because they were expensive, made thoroughly of bee wax and worth burning. Conveying this example to Christians, he stated that these Christians are the ones who answer shamelessly to the calling of the Lord, who deal with the word and will of God on the daily and spread his message even where they aren't welcomed and don't want to be heard.
He, like the bishop also branded a sentence to my brain, "letzendlich ist der Mensch nur das, was er vor Gott ist", which means: in the end, a person is only that, which he/she is before the Lord.
The last lecture we had in this hall ended with the people called out to the stage wiping whipped cream from their face!
Just outside the KKF was always the place to be during afternoon workshops.
You could not only get some snacks and drinks, but you could also admire the artworks of those venting their emotions!
Let's try something completely new. Comment below if you liked this post and feel free to let us know about what your summer looks/looked like!
Nur im Krieg und in der Liebe ist alles erlaubt!
