Interviews
Daniel Casadio (Australien, Juli, 2018)
Nikolas- Hi, I’m here with Daniel, we’re doing an interview for the Sammatz.de website, and we’re making a couple of profiles for the volunteers. Here is Daniel. Daniel is from Australia, he is…18?
Daniel- 20
N- You look 18….Where is your lunchbox?
We’re out here, it’s a beautiful day, a little cloudy but….How are you today Daniel?
D- I’m doing well, man, I’m doing well. Just had to spend the morning in the garden, ate a sh..crapload of food. And so it’s going well.
N- Anyways, we’re here to talk about Sammatz a little bit. So please I’m going to have to ask you to refrain yourself before you use such rude language…
Tell me a little more about yourself, your background…
D- Yeah, ok. I was born in Australia, lived there for most of my life….But I lived in Italy for two years. So when I was 10, to 12 years old, I lived in Italy, and that’s how I got my Italian passport. But that also really sparked an ambition and passion to travel. And so once I once I finished school in Australia, I pretty much bought my first one way ticket…And I’ve been traveling for quite some time now.
N- How long have you been traveling for?
D- In total? About 18 months. But I’ve always made an effort to come back home, spend some time with the family, try to make some money, and then go back out again.
N- How did you find Sammatz?
D- Through Workaway. And the funny thing is, that intially, ideally Germany didn’t really appeal to me. At all.
N- Me neither. I thought Germany would be quite boring.
D- The idea didn’t really appeal to me, and so when I was making a request, I was very half hearted when making a request here. I wasn’t overly fond of it.
–It’s funny how this is the place where I spent most of my time…From not wanting to be here at all.
N- It’s very comfortable, isn’t it?
D- Yeah man, it’s a cool place.
N- …So what do you think is your favourite thing about here?
D- My favourite thing about here…..I think I like the simplicity and creativity that come together. Like, simple life is cool, because you get your hours, you do what you have to do, you love it, and then you get to spend time with the other volunteers, the other Sammatzians. You know what to do, and it’s fun, but…It’s simple. It’s not complex. It’s not complicated or anything. But, and then it also is creative, because, there is so much going on here…If you have an idea, you can pitch it, and then your idea, can become a reality. It’s really cool of them to accept it. And then you get to work on
N- I think, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you for a little bit, is because I think you’re so positive and optimistic. And I think it shows in the movie you made for the website. I think it was really nice. It was nice to watch, and it was nice to get you all riled up for it. I had a good time watching that.
D- Thank you, man.
N- So what is next for you? After Sammatz. If you ever leave…You know
D– If I ever leave?
-Yeah, next is, I think, Italy. I am going to see my sister when she’s in Italy.
N- Where in Italy?
D- Near Rome. And then, after that…Maybe do a workaway in France, and follow the World Cup. I want to be in that area, when the World Cup is going off. And then, my friend is going to get married in Montreal. Then my plan is to drive through Canada with some mates. And then, maybe go from Canada to Argentina.
N- Argentina, really?
D- Maybe, yeah. The interesting thing, is that I get these ideas from people who are here. People who talk to me, people who say ”You get to know more about El Camino de Santiago, you get to learn more about how to travel on more of cheaper budget” from people who have done, and done it well. From these international volunteers, you know? So it’s really cool. Obviously, you have differences and all that…But that’s…That’s what it’s all about, hey?
N- …No. It can’t be.
Can you tell me what your favorite things are in Sammatz, and your favourite geographical location in Sammatz? It’s a small town, but it’s a big town. And you can have a favourite spot.
D- My favourite place? Uhm. Wherever the basketball hoop is. Or the Voleyball court.
N- Ok. Favourite 3 things?
D- The volunteers. The feeling of when they say you’re finished, and then you get to like, overeat for lunch. And, #3…I think is the weekends, when us volunteers go somewhere, for time away from Sammatz. Because during the week it’s always work that we talk about, when we’re working. But it’s also really nice when we can get away for a little bit. And then we can just be with the volunteers and just get to know them on a more….Regular basis, you know?
N- Well. I hope I see you again, on the road. Now you told all these nice ladies where you will be, you’ve shared all your plans. Watch out. Say bye to all these nice people.
D- Thank you for interviewing me! Come to Sammatz! It’s a good time to be alive!
Frederik B. AKA, Future Crown prince of Denmark (July, 2018)
Niko- Well, you can start by telling me your name, where you come from….How tall you are…
Frederik- Yeah, my name is Frederik, and I’m 1.86m tall, and I’m really pretty and handsome…And I’m 22 years old…Yes…
– Are you going to put this on the website?
N- Absolutely, it’s going to be just like this…uncut.
F- Oh $&t….O
N- You’re in Sammatz….How many times have you been here?
F- Just 4 times.
N- So this is the 4th time? So what drew you the first time?
F- Well, the first time, it was because I had a friend who said I should go to Sammatz, because it’s a very nice place.
N- Who was your friend?
F- Rosa
N- Ahah! Rosa La Maravillosa!
F- Yeah, and then I thought it would be a good idea, and so I came. I had a really boring first week…
N- … Planting Tulips?
F- Yeah, planting tulips…and feeling a little lonely with a lot of people. But then, after one week, I kind of settled down here and I felt it was really a good place to meet new people and to meet people who are in the same stage in life as I am. People who are educated, and studying, but also people who are also very open minded. People that are a little bit like me…They just want to go with the wind and they want to see where life takes them. And for me, the wind is always blowing back in the direction of Sammatz. Always planning to go back here. I didn’t plan to be here so many times but yeah…
N- And what was the first time that you were here?
F- The first time that I was here was November 13 (2017)
N- Really? I was here November 28
F- Yeah. You came.
N- What do you think is your favourite part about this place? Obviously you’ve had a chance to do a lot of jobs, you’ve done some milking, you’ve done…
F- Yeah, I’ve done some milking, some gardening, but mostly construction. But I think the moments I enjoy the most are in the kitchen…That you can go directly into the kitchen, and just have a talk….Or just listening to what kind of days other people might have had. Good, or bad experiences, and to share it all
N- It’s very rich.
F- Yeah, it’s very rich, yeah. And there is some really good energy to be around so many people….But sometimes it can be too much so it’s nice that we can always go and take a walk in the forest….And find space to just be yourself.
N- Yeah, it’s a nice thing to do, to go explore the sorrounding areas. It’s a nice way to clear your head.
Do you have anything you would like to tell to someone who is looking to be coming here?
F- Yeah, i just think, just to be open minded, and to be ready to meet a lot of nice people. And….Just do it! Go do something different from what you’re used to. Get out of your comfort zone!
N- Thank your for letting me interview you.
That was Frederik. The Crown Prince. A beautiful man. If you want to come meet him you better get here soon! Or you’ll miss your chance to meet him….For now!
Hamish Gavin (Neuseeland, Juli, 2018)
So I’m going to make an introduction. Yeah.
This is Hamish from New Zealand. He’s 28 years old and he, he’s usually a very grumpy character, but today… it’s in a good mood.
So we’re just going to take this chance and try to talk to it while we still have one.
Nikulas- Hi, how are you?
Hamish- Hi. I’m actually good. Yeah, I’m good. I feel like you intro|d me quite well…Well it doesn’t quite summarize my personality well,immediately after you met me for the first time, grumpiness is not the um, the personality trait I like to put forward.
N- No, it’s definitely crashing cars.
. Hamish is very musically inclined and he also studied film in New Zealand
H- New Zealand, right.
N- That’s where you study film.
H- I’m from New Zealand and all of my education in New Zealand.
N- And how did you, how’d you get into film if you don’t mind me asking?
H- Um. Was a childhood obsession, I probably found out what a director was after watching star
wars episode one phantom menace and-
N- Seriously?
H- I figured that’s it. Yeah, it was like nine years old. I had the book, I was flicking through it, lots of George Lucas looking impressive and then, and, and obviously I was pretty impressed by it. Who doesn’t love films growing up and then you’re trying to pick a career and your dad’s like, what are you going to do when your older son and you’re like, well I’m going to be a director obviously. So then you get to university and you ended up just writing essays on films for four years. That’s pretty good fun.
N- I mean it’s like artistic since you’re a director, you’re also the boss so your family can’t really knock on you too much.
H- Yeah. It’s pretty cool actually.
N- Do you like being in Sammatz?
I do. I’ve been in Sammatz for 12 point five months now. Twelve point five months
N- but not continuously?
H- not continuously, no. I stayed for five months. I went home for two, came back to Germany. I stayed for another five months. My visa ended. I left the country and now I’m back as a
tourist, which is something that a New Zealander to can do. I guess it’s a privilege and an honor to be able to spend this amount of time in Germany.
N- They let you guys be tourists here?
… Slightly struggles with using the word “Tourists” in a Kiwi accent – Terrorists, tourists, terrorists. …
… Slightly struggles with using the word “Tourists” in a Kiwi accent – Terrorists, tourists, terrorists. …
H- No, of course not terrorists.
N- But even if you’re working beside me, your accent is hard to understand
H- I’ll try to speak as clearly as possible. But yes. So is a great place. It has been overall a fantastic opportunity to be here for the summer-
N- Okay. Stop. Stop right there. You don’t have to make a promo here.
H- I thought this is what we’re doing. We are promoting Sammatz
N- but we don’t have to make a promo spot for it. I mean you’re, you’re a super interesting person… And um, so one of the things that I like about you Hamish is that 90 percent of the time I’m going to say 90, not 100 percent because I don’t want to pump you up too much, is that you have something interesting to say or you’re reading about something that’s kind of interesting or you’re watching a documentary about something that’s kind of interesting and I think that’s refreshing because a lot of the people here, you know, maybe they’re a little bit younger and they just don’t have the same interests, you know?
H- Um, they haven’t switched onto the world yet?
N- In a sense. Yeah. So whenever I want to have a refined opinion on something, I know that if I come talk to you-
You’ll get a somewhat intellectual.
Well, no, it’s pretty intellectual. And if it’s not intellectual,at least I know that you’ve put a degree of thought into what you say, you know, even if it’s just in the moment.
N- I think that’s really refreshing. So what have you been doing? What have you been reading? What have you learned in the last 24 hours?
H- I watched a documentary on Bosnia. It’s about the genocide that happened by the Serbian army against the Bosnian Muslims in about 1995. Um, but this documentary debated whether it was a genocide and put some of the blame on the Muslim people, but I researched this a little bit and I think that the documentary is a little bit biased, so, you know, it’s hard to say. It goes against the rulings of the war committee.
Anyways, I also had some jams last night with several other people, we played some music.
N- Like the dancing music?
H- Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was basic folk music. Yeah, it’s nice. It’s fun.
It’s funny. Because now when I hear Hans Michael walking by, he’ll be whistling those tunes,the dance tunes, and they get stuck in the back of my head. You know, it just works on me subconsciously.
N- Do you go to the dances?
H- Sometimes. Yeah, I’ve been to a few…I have to tell people about this.
Sometimes we have dances and it’s just a good time. We play a couple of different songs and we all make one big circle and we’ll dance to those songs. It’s actually a lot of fun.
N- How many times have you been here?
H-This is my third time.
N- Third time. Why do you keep coming back Hamish?
H- I come back for the people that I’ve met.
N- Are you lying right now?
H- There’s no lie. This is no lie. It’s as close as it gets to a home for me in Europe.
A few weeks ago I was in Bosnia. I was lost in Bosnia. I had no idea where to go and you know, it was, it was reassuring and comforting to know that I had my second home in Sammatz, and that I could come back that because otherwise, you know, I’m a New Zealander, lost in Europe without any friends without a flight home.
N- You’ve got exactly one friend.
H- And so now I have one friend, Niko, the person doing this interview and I knew where I can find him, at Sammatz. And that’s what I want to say, you know, it’s pretty unique to have a home like this.
N- That’s pretty awesome.
H- Yeah.
N- So do you have any closing thought? Anything that you would like to say to someone that maybe thinking about coming here?
H- Well, if you’re thinking about coming here, I would say if you’ve got three weeks minimum in Germany and you should write an email, put what your strengths and your weaknesses, what you would like to do, and if you get a reply saying yes, then you should come. Keep in mind that not everyone does get accepted to come here. So if you do get that opportunity, you should take it.
N- It’s true. We have a very tight space here because we have a lot of people.
H- SSure there’s a lot of people, there’s 60 or 70, but there’s also a lot of people applying through work away now. And for me, I think this is the best work away I’ve been to. I would also say that you should come for three weeks minimum. Any less than that, and then you’re not really going to experience it the way you should. You don’t really get to meet people in the same way and, and even a month to two months is better. Yeah. You kind of absorb the culture a little bit…
N- I agree. The first or second week you kind of sort of arrive in a sense. because you start to make friends, you have to start to hang out with them and it’s really tough to do when you are here for just one or two weeks.
H- Yeah. You don’t. You make different kinds of friends if you’re in a work away for two weeks than for a month. Yeah. And so, and that’s the thing like we wish we could accept everyone but we can’t, you know, we just have a lot of applications and it’s a little bit tough sometimes. Some very surprising things have happened because I’ve stayed here for a year such as meeting people last summer, last August, saying goodbye to them, thinking I would never see them again. And then seeing them again and it being even more magical than the year before. So that’s one thing that’s really nice.
N- Anyways, that was, that was Hamish. He’s from New Zealand and um, we love Hamish even though he never stops crashing the cars.
H-To be, to be fair, I drove the cars very successfully for six months.
N- Just not as successfully as someone who might not have crashed them.
H- It was just an unfortunate mistake, but no cars and no people were harmed in the making of this recording. We weren’t in a car, I wasn’t driving when we did this interview. We’re just sitting down in the garden.
Luca “Lucy” Fortany (Ungarn, August 2018)
Nikulas- Lucy how are you?
Lucy- Hi fine thanks.
N- Tell me a little bit about your experience. How long have you been here?
L- Yeah been here for one month. And I’m leaving on thursday. So this is the last day.
N- Will you miss it here?
L- I will miss the feeling that I’ve got. Maybe not specially the environment but that atmosphere.
N- You actually seem like a very different person than when you arrived. You were super shy!
L- I didn’t know anyone. There were 100 strangers around me!
It was really hard to find that first person to connect with and get a little deeper with, because most conversations start the same way.
N- Yeah, most of the time, when you are new, you have to have the same conversation a few times over.
L- Yeah they are just not really the conversations and the connections I want. This is just the surface and it’s hard to let it be deeper.I think for me it was quite important to find just one or two persons around me to talk to. It just made me feel safe. And then after I found those ones, I could open more and I could connect to others easily because I I knew that I found my place and now I can relax more. For that, I needed two weeks, almost half of my stay here.
N- Yeah I was just I was talking to Hamish about this. He said, if you’re going to stay here, any amount of time over three weeks is best, because the first week you’re just getting to know the place and you don’t really know the people. And on the second week you kind of start to arrive a little bit. You can just relax then, because this place becomes a home of sorts where you have your friends and you’re hanging out and you’re doing work things and you lose a lot of that shyness, that most people arrive with. Some people though, kind of take a little bit more of time to open up. You know it can be quite hard, especially when you’ve got the amount of people that we have, it’s really tough have to get to know almost every person. You know, in the winter, this becomes a really interesting place. Last winter at least we had at one point 14 people. You also definitely bond with people differently then.
N- What’s your plans for the future?
L- I’m going back home and I’m going to spend some days with my sister and then I’m going to continue studying. I’m looking forward to it. I feel more motivation to continue my studies..
So I might be a teacher. I’m going to study waldorf pedagogy.I hope that the strength and the power or the motivation and inspiration and I’ve got here maybe can just transfer over a little bit because I can’t really expect that I’m going to be the same at home. I feel very different now.
N- I find that that’s the case for most people, because we have so many people that come back here… In a sense it’s harder to leave than it is to come here.Most people that come here almost always have a good experience. A huge portion of people end up coming back because they have such a good time hanging around here.I also hear that it’s not really like the real world, you know, in quotation marks but in reality, this place is as much part of the real world as anywhere else, even if it is a different lifestyle. It’s one of the reasons I really like it. I couldn’t live here all the time but I really really like it and it really feels like a place of rest, you know, where you come and you hang out and make friends and then you go out refreshed into the real world and then it kicks your ass and you come back…
N- Lucy thank you for letting me interview you. I think you’re going to come back because people come back here. That just happens. So do you have anything to say to someone who might be looking to come here? Do you have any words, or tips?
N- Lucy thank you for letting me interview you. I think you’re going to come back because people come back here. That just happens. So do you have anything to say to someone who might be looking to come here? Do you have any words, or tips?
L- Yeah maybe maybe it’s enough if you just have shorts and a pair of jeans…You’ll be ok.
N- No I just realized that I just have only one. I was very anxious about coming here with so little. It just depends how long you’re here for.
And just for the record so it’s on the record. We have this thing called a magic box. So people bring too many clothes and when they get sick of them they just toss them inside the magic box. That way, when someone comes and they don’t have enough clothes you can also have clothes inside of the magic box. You know you might not find the perfect pair of jeans but you’ll find something so it’s always a nice. And a bit of a surprise!
Thank you. Bye bye.
And just for the record so it’s on the record. We have this thing called a magic box. So people bring too many clothes and when they get sick of them they just toss them inside the magic box. That way, when someone comes and they don’t have enough clothes you can also have clothes inside of the magic box. You know you might not find the perfect pair of jeans but you’ll find something so it’s always a nice. And a bit of a surprise!
Thank you. Bye bye.
