On-Arrival Seminar in Weimar 29/10-04/11/2018

Waking up at 5 am it’s not exactly my favourite thing in the world, but I decided to fight my laziness for one day. In the dark and foggy air, I take the bus to meet with Miguel and Nicoleta, the two other volunteers from Ravensburg, and together we take the train. Two other volunteers, Anna and Malorie, would have joined us a few stops later.

Direction: WEIMAR, On-Arrival Seminar.

After almost 6 hours on the train, we arrive in this lovely city. To be honest, I only heard it before because of the “Republic of Weimar” and I had no idea where it is located. We arrive in the European Youth Education and Meeting Centre, the hostel-like building which was going to host the group for the next week. The whole week was a variation of workshops on EVS questions on one side, and of free-time for games or a visit on the city on the other side. The approach of the Seminar was the one of non-formal education, which consists (in extremely few words) in giving to the learner the lead to what/how/when to learn.

The first two days were mostly focused in breaking ice and get to know each others and remember the names of each of us. “Xylophone”, “Jung”, “Arbeitslos” and “Normal” may sound like totally random words for you, but they were extremely effective to remember names.  What came out is that we were 21 volunteers, from 11 different countries, with 16 different spoken languages. The projects were taking part in all germany, from Berlin to Aschaffenburg, from Osnabruck to Regensburg, from Jena to Bad Wurzach.

Our different backgrounds had a crucial role on determining the success of this week. On my point of view, “diversity” is what brought the surplus value on this experience. The different approach of each of us on solving situations inspired me and offered me inputs on how to solve my questions.

The second night we had a “passion night”, which at first may sound like some red light district thing, but it was definitely not. :-) Each of us had 5 minutes to talk about a topic/hobby/place/anything that really passionate us. We find out that Vlad has some special superpowers correlated to informatic; that if you are eager to learn to sew, you can easily find it on youtube; that theatre is not only the one of the stages; that meditate can be a helpful habit. These are just a few of our passions.

In order to understand better what happens with the phenomenon of immigration, we got involved in a small “social experiment”. It came out that not anybody find interesting “to drink squirrels”, especially when there is no “glass” available. We learned that it is indeed hard to understand a language/culture that nobody explains to you. It is indeed easier to make contacts with those who don’t understand it like you. It is also easier for who’s part of the “majority” to explain and make one step close to the “foreigner”, instead of the opposite.

On Thursday night, some of us went to a bar for a beer (ok, maybe also two or three), we played “never have I ever” and we enjoyed the night.

The next morning we had a truly touching experience. Some of us went to visit in the concentration camp of Buchenwald, which is settled just a few minutes from Weimar. The guide was an ex-volunteer just like us and she offered to show us the restoration lab. We had the chance to see and touch with hands some daily objects used by the inmates. It was impressive to see an engraving of the figure of a man on a plate, and we tried to imagine who could have it been. Such a small sign of art could have meant the world for them and also a way to gain again the dignity that was taken by the Nazi.

On Friday night, we went to the “Deutsches Nationaltheater” and we enjoyed the play “A Clockwork Orange” reinterpreted by Anthony Burgess. The soundtrack was with the music of Rammstein. I only knew two or three songs of Rammstein, but it was amazing anyway. I really had fun and the time passed so fast. They used an alternative approach to deal with the themes such as violence and misogyny. It was lit!

After the play, we went to a bar which was located on the main square, and, in particular, just next to the Hotel were Adolf Hitler used to stay overnight when in Weimar. This fact gave me kind of a weird and mixed feeling, but it’s mostly “positive”-weird. I thought something like:“hey Hitler, look, 70 years ago you were hanging around here talking about white supremacy, and now 21 young people from 11 countries are having fun together in the name of interculturalism. Not bad, eh?”

The last night we had a karaoke party in the disco of the youth centre. Almost each one of us sang song from its country, like the italian “Bella ciao”, turkish “Şımarık Kiss Kiss”, another russian and also the very popular finnish song “I wanna dance with somebody”, by Whitney Houston. ;-) We danced turkish wedding dances, macarena and limbo. It was a fun night even though the day later I could barely move my legs after the crazy dances and the limbo.

In the end, I can say it was totally worth it! I think that what enriches myself for real and make me grow as a person is not the experiences I make themselves, but rather the stories and the human beings I get in contact with, while having those experience. I strongly believe in this and I’ll do my best to keep this approach for the future.

Thank you to everybody who took part on the seminary, and to our two educators Götz and Wolfgang.