wow. what a journey. seriously... here it goes... the ridiculous story, about how i got lost in Berlin, got to camp, slept outside in a tent, wore the same clothes for almost four days, and have been totally out of touch since i arrived.... just wait.
this will probably be long, and too much information, but you don’t have to read it. though i strongly encourage it, it’s a wonderful story, one I will never forget.
i arrived in berlin on time around 1:45 my time (which is 7 hours ahead of your time it you are in the central time zone). we didn’t go through customs, which i thought was weird - they stamped my passport and that was it. i thought there would be more to that process. anyways - moving on... so we talked to information at the airport to find our bus to get to the train station. getting on and off the bus was an adventure in itself, or not really... just a hassle. the bus is where every problem of the day was born. we got off at the wrong stop. there was a subway station, but not the main train station. we called the base, they said we needed to find the hoftbahnhof (main train station) - i think that is how you spell it. well we deliberated for a while and decided to try to ask someone. it took us forever to find someone who knew what we wanted and could help us. we ended up taking two subways and two trains to get to Lobau (Berlin to Dresden - Dresden to Lobau) and then they picked us up and brought us to Herrhut. (side note, it is pronounced herrnhoot... it cracks me up) we hadn’t eaten all day, so we grabbed some dinner/lunch in Dresden. i was so thirsty so i bought two bottles of water, it nded up being bubbly. ew. gross. no thank you.
when we got picked up at Lobau the staff showed us our room and told us to get stuff to sleep outside. I grabbed my tennis shoes, jacket, long sleeve shirt, pillows, and sleeping bag. i missed the opening ceremony, but apparently the scenario was as follows:
we were refugees, who had to leave our home because of war. we went to a camp, which was outside the castle. there was rolled plastic, and we were divided into groups to sleep.
i slept with three other girls, it was a very interesting experience. it was cold and damp, and we were sleeping on hill so we slowly rolled off the plastic that was under and over us. fortunately jet lag was on my side, i was so tired i slept well the entire night. the next morning we were allowed in the castle for breakfast. apparently, we weren’t supposed to bring our stuff inside (i didn’t get the memo), and when we came back inside they announced we had to leave it in the castle, and make due with what we have outside. do i even need to mention how freaked out i was?!
day 2 wasn’t too crazy -- besides worrying about sleeping without a sleeping bag or pillow. we went for a looong walk through the forest and town. they even teased us saying that we could go to the store for snacks... oh hey, everything is closed on sunday. completely cruel joke. we also had to share a bowl of food at dinner with another person. ashley, the girl i traveled with was mine. let me tell you... after the crisis of getting to base and sharing food, we are pretty close. in fact, i’d say she is probably one of my best friends here. night number 2 was pretty much ridiculous. we built tents during the day, so we had shelter, but unfortunately there was a prediction of rain during the night. we stayed outside until 4:30 and they finally let us come inside the castle. there was barely any rain before we went in, but the lightening was really bad.
all this scenario ended last night. it rained all day so they decided to call the the activity off because the weather was so bad, it would have been a health issue.
i could not have been more relieved. throughout this experience we talked about refugees and what they have to go through to get to a camp that might not even have what they need or be able to accept them. this is very prevalent in kenya because of the problems with somalian government and civil war. our base actually has teams working at a camp in kenya that has almost a half of a million people in it. we prayed for them today and the governments.
so that was my first three days of ywam... pretty crazy huh?
i wouldn’t change a thing.
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