Topic: World Youth Day 2005
I finally have the pictures ready to go up on my blog from my experience in Koln. These are just a few of the pictures. I don't have enough memory to put them all on my blog.
Here is the "first among equals," "el Papa," "Papa B."
This is a picture of the cathedral (dom) whose two steeples can be seen all over town, literally. If you look in the back ground of the picture on the right, you can see the dom which is about 5 miles from where I was standing taking the picutre.
Here is a picture taken at the volunteer Mass where everyone is wearing their red volunteer shirt and/or rain coat. In all, we were told there were 20,000 volunteers working this World Youth Day.
We hosted groups from France, Italy, and the Ivory Coast at the school that I was stationed. One morning while they were waiting to group up and leave the school, the pilgrims from the Ivory Coast gathered and started playing the drums and dancing. This, a typical World Youth Day activity, serves to praise God and bring everyone together, because others begin to join in the circle and follow the movements of the others.
After big events, mainly those in the evening, everyone decends upon the train stations to catch the train "home." With an overwhelming number of people on the platform, when the doors open everyone rushes for a door and tries to push their way on, making each train car like a package of pilgrim-sardines.
One day we were waiting in the que (line) for food near a basilica when its doors opened and a newly married couple emerged from the church to thunderous applause and cheers from us. They were grinning from ear to ear.
The pilgrimage on Saturday, though we tried to make it as close as possible, it ended up turning out to be about 13 kilometers. We thought since we were volunteers we could minimize this hike, but reluctantly we set out on the pilgrimage. However, once on the road, I was glad to be amongst the other pilgrims as we were being gathered into one flock by the shepherd of the Church Militant (us on earth) in order to join our voices in praise of the Good Shepherd of us all. As you can see in the picture on the left, the path set before us led us down community roads. A nice gesture these people offered, was their presence by leaning out the window or siting along the road waving as we went by. Some even gave out little treats and water to help nourish us on our journey. They were exemplifying what it means to be Christian. The picture on the right shows the goal the sight (white dome-like object to the rifht) just across a pasture. Here you get a sense of the number of people present.
This is a time exposed close up of the cloud that was the sactuary for the weekend Pilgrimage destination. There were candles set all over the hill that added to the prayerful feel of the area. Off to the right of the Sanctuary was a cross and a Marian icon prsent during the time we were in this sacred place.
Meet my team...the whole team. I work with a small handful of this big group over the week, but still got to know the other members before and after the pilgrims were there. My team was comprised of Americans, Germans (one local of Koln), Polish, Hungarians, Slovanians, one Kenyan and one Lithuanian.
Now you know I can't go to Germany without partaking of the food and refreshments. The chunk of meat set before me is basically a leg of pig slowly roasted where the meat is juicy and tender and the skin is perfectly crispy. This was served with, whatelse but, German potatoes and Saurkraut. Delicious! The beer is a Kolsh. Everyone in Koln produces their very own Kolsh, so there are sign everywhere advertising the infinite brand names of this local recipe.
This last picture has nothing to do with World Youth Day, but shows a bit of the culture of the area. These are small adjacnt plots of land where poeple who live in the city have a garden. There is a maze of small ally ways that the owners walk down to get to their garden. This was the view from our window of the school at which I was stationed.
Posted by Big Mike
at 5:30 PM CDT
Updated: Tuesday, 13 September 2005 10:04 PM CDT