What an event! None of us had a idea of what was expecting us when we arrived in Freiburg on the skirts of the Black Forest in the most western part of Germany. We did not know that we ran into a very work intensive weekend with lots of success trailing along. The Konzerthall in Freiburt offered the perfect place for such an festival put on by two young German men, both adventurers and professional fotografers. They invoted many famos people like them to show their best slides, pictures and films to entertain thousands of visitors that stormed the halls. We had a wonder place for our stand: outside a beutiful view across Freiburg, inside a perfect glance over all the stands and halls.

 

Our stand in the shadow of the twin towers...

View across the stands and halls

The many visitors started crowding our stand on Friday at 17 hrs and the flow did not stop until Sunday night. We handed out 1100 German Flyers about the work of Ladakh-Hilfe, talked to uncountable people, met some of the nicest people in Freiburg and Germany. There are so many wonderful people around! Sometimes we had the impression that all the Physiotherapist and Occupational therapists of Freiburg were at the Festival and came to our stand.

On Saturday we had Claudia and Jule helping at the stand together with Johanna, the woman that found Rigzin in Lingshed in 2001. She has her own baby now.

Karola, Claudia, Johanna and baby, Jule

Saturday afternood we had Sarah Denlöffel visit us. She will travel to Ladakh the end of February to help as a volunteer and Occupational therapist with our children. We had a happy get together with many talks and exchange of information. Since Jule wants to come to Ladakh in November 2010 again for the second time, they took a lot of time sharing and planning.

Claudia, Karola und Sarah

We recieved many compliments about our stand: Impressive, informative, magnetical, strong message, tasteful, great pictures. Well, actually we took great effort to put up a nice stand and also showed a film about our work in Ladakh with the help of a laptop continually.

Our banner in front of our stand

On Sunday there were even more people and we had a lot to do and to talk. We actually ran out of flyers, even though I had packed an extra package for reserve to take along in my car.

Team on sunday: Karola, Jule und Johanna. The baby was sleeping.

Sunday evening we were pretty tired....but happy

Alltogether we can pass on great compliments toward Tobias Hauser and David Hetterich for putting on such a wonderful MEGA event. We were happy to be part of the festival and hope to participate again next year.

Karola Kostial, Director of Ladakh-Hilfe e.V.