The team
A witness by Meike Rethmeier, volunteer
It has been a few months since the end of the World Exhibition, but there are things that will stay with us even longer than our experience in Wittenberg. It was a real pleasure to be a part of the GPEN-Team and to be able to make a small contribution to celebration of the anniversary of the Reformation. Although there were not quite as many visitors as expected, those that did visit made the experience even more worthwhile. There were a few days were we literally had our own waterfall and swimming pool when the rain wouldn’t stop pouring down on us and then there were days when we couldn’t get away from the heat of the waffle iron fast enough and wished for that same swimming pool. We had a lot of interesting neighbours in our gate area “ecumenism and religion”, some of them were human others were more animalistic. Both were exciting breaks from waffle baking and coffee making. We had a lot of entertaining and enlightening conversations with the human kind, that came to Wittenberg from all over the world, and some unpleasant experiences with the blood-sucking animal kind. There were days when the blood-sucking animal kind’s presence was so overwhelming that we went home with several new bumps on our bodies and hoping that there wouldn’t be as many mosquitos the next day. One of the few more unpleasant experiences we had working outside and near stationary water. But there were also so many upsides to working outside in nature and creating something that will hopefully sustain and bring as much joy to the school in Wittenberg, that inherited the education pavilion after the demolition of the World Exhibition, as it did to us. Being part of such a unique project and such an amazing team was really incredible experience that will probably influence my life even long after I moved away from Wittenberg and we are all thankful for all the people that visited our pavilion and left a little bit of their experience and knowledge with us!