Started in a church ending in a bar ;)

07.11.2010
Aachen

I like Aachen except the weather; it has been raining the last few days not giving us a lot of time to just enjoy the beauty of the city. The last few days in Aachen were somehow relaxed than the ones in Koln and the schedule was a little flexible than before.

Day started later than planned :)  in a beautiful church called the Dome of Aachen, it was an optional visit to the church and attending the mass. Many people joined though with a good mixture of Europeans, Turkish, Palestinians, and Egyptians. A mass was running for around 2 hours with several hymns and choirs in a very organized way. Even though, I am Christian Orthodox, I can still relate several movements and songs to the mass back home. This means that if it not because of the language barrier, I could have joined them in some parts. Some people took communion and my question after this to the organizers: Does this church believe that the bread and wine changes to the blood and body of Jesus (which is a strong believe in the Coptic orthodox church) and he said it does have the same believe (which shows that even they are from different culture, some churches still have the same believes…

From Gender Equality to Misunderstanding and Respect: this was my title for the morning session. Our focus in this was not anymore the gender issues but rather the internal way of communication of the whole CST teams. Relating this back to management and organizational evaluation technique, this was a good approach to refresh the main values in this conference; which are intercultural understandings and ways of communication.

Aachen team did a great job, trying to make sure that they do the right things and at the same time tried to make sure that the CST participants are happy. The city tour was great-Thank you Andre. You can be a tour guide as a side job ;)

Later in the day after having lunch that was prepared by Aachen organizers, we went to a Mosque and we had a good but long chat with an immigrant family over there. Several interesting topics were brought to the ground however; we did not go in depth in most of them. Later in the evening, we went for a drink to celebrate the last day in Aachen.

We never stop learning

07.11.2010
Aachen

9. 00 AM : Check who wants to go to the church? We have to leave at 9.30 AM.
9. 10 AM : better checking again…
9. 15 AM : Maybe tell them to hurry up.
9. 20 AM : They said they’ll need 5 more minutes, fine.
9. 28 AM : Where are the people?
9. 30 AM : We have to leave now.
9. 35 AM : Guys, we really have to leave now!
9. 40 AM : Let’s go… all who are here.
9. 45 AM : Come on, you’re the last ones, RUN!!
9. 50 AM : *breathing heavily*
9. 55 AM : There we are… finally 
9. 59 AM : Mass starts. Germans… 1 minute earlier..

For many people it’s a weekly spiritual and religious event but for most of us it was the first time to attend a Sunday mass in church. Those of our group who were willing to get up before 10 AM went to the beautiful dome of Aachen this morning and listened to the words and choir. Although it was held in German and therefore not understandable for everyone it was still an impressing and interesting experience for both our Christian and Muslim members because we could see both differences and similarities between Coptic masses, prayers in a mosque and a so to say German mass.

What a nice warm up for the day.

Our morning program got a little bit changed and so not gender equality but another challenge became our topic: how to get along with cultural differences and misunderstandings within a group of people who all want to share their ideas and are following different aims?

Respect, that’s what all of us see as the most important base for a good working group.

But we found out that there is not a lack of respect in our group but because of our backgrounds and cultures we sometimes see behavior in another way. For one person it might be the most normal thing on earth for another one it’s disrespectful.

During the last days the groups got to know each other and had a lot of fun. You can say it’s a team. But of course sometimes there are different points of view. We just have to respect all of them. As we said on the first day, we have a lot of things in common that connect us with each other, such as same aims, fears, and expectations. On the other hand we’re still all different which makes everybody special and interesting. As long as we keep on being tolerant and open minded we will for sure spend one more great week together!

For not letting us starve our great Aachen people prepared a nice lunch for us: homemade lentil soup. Thanks by the way to these organizers who really do a lot of effort to make us feel comfortable and welcome here!!

30 happy tummies later we went to visit the second oldest Mosque in Germany and met its representative and his family who were so kind to answer all the questions people had regarding the Islam and told us about the mosque and their life.

Also this family reminded us of our first topic, migration and integration. A perfect integrated family with migration background in Germany!

This visit was another chance to compare how Muslims in the Arabic world and in Europe live and follow practice their religion.

Bilal mosque 2
Bilal mosque 3
Bilal mosque 4
Bilal mosque 5

In order not to ignore our current topic, gender equality, we used our free time we had afterwards to talk about that… e.g. the question if women can walk as fast as men, who can carry heavier bags or is there the same amount of meat in kebabs for men and women?

Again our German organizers prepared food for us and after dinner and the reflection/ complain/ discuss/ find solutions groups the highlight of the day waited for us.

Andre  from the AEGEE Aachen Team took us on a city tour which was really interesting and funny thanks to the stories and legends we were told in a very nice way!

We were shown the beauty of this city and also learned about its history. At night Aachen's sights such as e.g. the Elisenbrunnen, “the needle people statue”, different fountains, the market square with its town hall and of course the dome looked even more beautiful and impressing at night. We can say that Aachen is a wonderful charming city which is totally worth to visit it and a great place for our CST.

Let’s enjoy our last day here, keep in mind what we are talking about regarding the respect and look forward to all the other activities we are going to do in this week!