:: European Meetings ::Zagreb 06/07
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Ici Zagreb!I remember this moment so well. Milano. I stood in the Fiera, somewhere between hall 21 and CISI, it was quite at the beginning of the meeting, I was tired, cold, annoyed, bored, not happy. And I said to myself "you're never gonna do this again!".
Now I find myself happyhappyjoyjoying because I worked hard for the last two months to leave this country for nine days with good conscience. I am going to Zagreb. People ask me what I will do in Croatia. I have no idea. Or where I am going to stay. I have no idea. It will be the first time I step on any eastern European country, I do not speak one word of Croatian except for Sto oko ne vidje i uho necu (which means 'what no eye has ever seen and no ear has ever heard'), I have no idea how I should ever get to the school that I am supposed to go to, I don't know where I am going to sleep for the next nine days or what I am going to do except for praying once in a while. But as I step on the plane I know one thing: Things will be fine, I am flying home. Actually, this stage of the Pilgrimage of Trust didn't start with too much trust for me. Taize said I can change money at the airport. I was afraid I wouldn't find the excahnge office so I went to my bank here. But anyway they didn't want to give my kuna at this time of the year. Taize said as a citicen of the EU I don't need a passport to go to Croatia. The day I read this I called my mom if she could look for my passport in my room. And above all, Lufthansa didn't trust me that I could fly alone to Zagreb. They asked if I don't need someone to accompany my during the flight. I answered I am 21 years old. I turn out to be lucky. Benjamin could arrange to pick me up at the airport which is actually too small to get lost and the Zagrebacka Banka cannot be missed. I get a stamp in my passport and 218 kuna. Benjamin makes the bus driver stop at Sopot, "opposite the INA building", and shows me the school in Siget. I get welcomed, my accomodation, and my work. I live in the Učenički Dom Graditeljskih Struka, together with most of the other helpers and ex-permanents. It's the neatest students' home in Zagreb. I will share a room with Antje - Lisbon rivial! Indeed - Lisbon is my first thought when we enter. These buildings look more like barracks (military, not Taize) than the sergeants' quarters in Sacavem. We go to see a lady of the administration. She is a bit older and apparently many of the older Craotians speak German. A girl tries to speak to her in Russian or Polish and she keeps replying in German as she wants to be welcoming and friendly. So somehow we get everything arranged. We are four people in our room. They put an extra mattress because there are normally just three beds. Plus two little tables and a big closet. We have a room with a shower, the others don't even have a sink. There are toilets and showers on the corridor, toilet paper seems to be private property. I think a German student would feel degraded if he had to share room with three others. I even get pittied here sometimes when I say that I live in a students' home and that I share the appartment with seven others. And I am astonished how the students there just let us sleep in the beds and rooms while there are on holidays. Božić u Lidlu i girta Spŏk
For Christmas I am supposed to work in the Corridor Room in the school at Siget 23. Somehow it seems like this whole quarter with all streets in it is called Siget, right next to the big area of Sopot.
Everywhere on the big streets there are big advertising posters - Grohe fitting, T-Com, Head skis, FIS World Cup. Lidl came to Coatia in November and you can see there advertisement really everywhere. Big, small, always yellow, saying "Božić u Lidlu" - Christmas at Lidl. It's the first piece of Croatian I can say and I say it a lot. But back to the Corridor Room. I think this is something like Lufthansa's online check-in. Either corridor or room. But not corridor room. Lucie and Laetitia decorate the Corridor Room for the Christmas celebration in the evening and they write signs in every language and put them on the door. They give birth to the Christmas greeting Girta Spŏk. Brother Adam is convinced it is Hungarian. Maybe it's Swiss - so where shouldn't forget it for next year! The Christmas prayer is in the gymnasium of the school. I like it a lot even thought it is a bit strange to have this basketball basket in front of me. But life in Taize is always about improvising. After the prayer we share Polish wafers and wish everyone merry Christmas and girta Spŏk. It is so great to have so many people around that I have missed so much for the past months. After the meeting the singing contest by countries starts. The Germans decided to sing Macht hoch die Tür. Talented as we are we don't manage to write down the text of the second verse so we sing the first one twice, hoping that no one will notice. The big family reunion is continued the next day when the busses from Taize arrive. Now the meeting gets serious. The 26th I start working in the stock. Meeting br. Lutz I say "I left it to the sisters" and they could not have made a better choice. We serve about 75,000 meals until the meeting ends and I am still amazed that this works with a forklift truck, ten transpalettes (to use this word in English is also a Taizeism!) and some people running around with papers - plus a good team. It is getting a very physical meeting. My feet are screaming all morning and evening, Antje and me stagger home as soon as Kutak closes, there is no time for workshops, I fight to stay awake during the prayer, my arms get tired of pulling between 60 and 600 kg the whole day. Pretty exhausted I tell Laura that Benjamin taught me an important lesson in life. While streching, you always have to pull the roll. Then it also works up 2 m high. Yes, sir. But it also makes you feel dizzy. I like streching. When I see Benjamin driving the forklift truck I wonder why I sit a university. Transpalettes, streching, safety shoes, whatever, I can delevelop so much enthusiams for details of practical work. So this meeting gives me a great break from my life back home. Sisters' Express
The stock is a lot of work but also a lot of fun. Over and over again we smile about the 'atomic, biological, and chemical cheese' (the ABC sir), one morning we learn that Hall 1 is bombproof. During a briefing Ferenc points me out as the person who should learn to drive the stacker. I become the proudest stacker driver in the whole wide world! I love to visit the infirmary (to bring vegetarien food to Ines and go to the toilet!).
The stock's drawback - how to do you want to keep incredible amounts of yoghurt and cheese cold? There is no fridge so we just create one, after all it's winter. So Hall 1 is not just bombproof, it's also never warmer than something like 4°C. Cold places and me - ah, this very special relation... But Kutak is warm. I love to deliver the food for Kutak. We call it the Sisters' Express because whenever the teams asks what food we are actually preparing there, we tell it's for the sisters. Our team members must think the sisters eat a lot. No...but they smile a lot when I carry the stuff up there. I feel how that makes things weighing a lot less. Prayer in the big white factory
This meeting has very nice moments and very nice faces despite this little central thread of exhausting. We visit the market in the city (which is really great I think) and we go to bed at quarter past ten. We discover that the really old trams have heated seats and we love to say Zagrebacki Velesajam. And we discover that creamy cake must be quite popular in Croatia. We had a lot for Christmas and Frumentum gave us boxes with samples of every kind after we had to tape their thermo boxes for the tins.
There are always so many details about these meetings that make them so very special - a piece of creamy cake, a name of a place, a very special way things are organized. This always shows me that it needs so little to make the time we spend somewhere or with someone worthwhile. New Year's Eve is approaching and with it the end of my work. There is "wishing each other a happy new year" organized in Kutak. I feel kinda dead in the prayer before but eating the yummy Taize Christmas cookies helps a little bit. Nevertheless I have a bad stomach ache and I just want to go to bed. I have a very low-level-conversation with Ines - I am not aggressive, I am tired. But not only I seem to be confused, somehow nobody knows where they are going to the prayer at 23h. But many say they will join the prayer in the church nearby - we refered to it as the big white factory. It's looking a bit strange from the outside... Kutak closes, everybody prepares to leave. We sit in front of Kutak waiting for someone. I say to Ines "there, look at the ladies. They're somehow cool aren't they? And they look just like a bunch of ladies..." Ines replies "yeah.. like they went bowling together. Although.. with this intelligence they would probably play trilingual 3D-Scrabble." We stagger to the church and find our way in a huge hall. There is a big Jesus on the cross hanging in the middle (really big!) and a big screen on each side of the hall where theorder of the songs are displayed (during a normal mass they show the songs' texts). The last song we sing is Gloria, gloria, the canon. At 23h55 the screen display a countdown. This leads to the people speeding up the song because they want to get into the rhythem with the seconds that are displayed. At a certain point the poeple stand up. They start to schunkeln, to sway with the rhythem. I can neither sing no laugh without pain in my stomach. Then the Gloria passes into a countdown of the last ten seconds. My year ends and starts a lot of pain. Somehow we are just speachless at the stupidity of the last five minutes but it makes us laugh so much! Happy are we all because we are all invited
On Jan 1 there is a mass in the halls. These masses have something very special. I the middle of an chaotic fairy hall a place of prayer is created, in a very simple way - this leaves space to concentrate on the essential. But there is something even more special about this mass. So many times I have heard the words before: happy are those who are called to His supper. This morning he says "happy are we all because we are all invited to his supper."
My flight back home leaves in the afternoon. I eat my last bread with ABC sir and carrots at the airport, my last apple and a Mikado (my last Mikado I would eat during my biology exam in the middle of February). I have quite melancholic flight back home - the clouds, the sunset, a heart with with joy, love, and communion. Zagreb is over but the pilgrimage continues. |
 Božić u Lidlu the Germans singing Macht hoch die Tür the place of prayer in Siget How was it on this icon...? hall 7 looking for the way on a market in Zagreb The lines are prepared. working in the stock distribution |