Slot Art Festival

"Work hard, party hard" is the slogan of a big company as I read recently. On SLOT in Poland I tried to live after this principle. I was part of a team from JFI which was running a coffee bar there (the small tent in the right corner). We wanted to create a place for people to meet and to relax, and of course, to have excellent coffee! Wolf brought his huge professional coffee machine and showed us on how to prepare espresso, cappucino, latte machiato and café americano. It was a lot of fun, sometimes a bit stressful when the queues were very long, but we made a lot of people very happy!

Apart from the coffee Mirko offered a workshop about the history of Jesus Freaks and did a small roundtable meeting in our tent. It wasn't too crowded, but I met some really cool people. For example Osvald and Darek from Czech Republic, who are part of a community called Godarchy (they will be on Freakstock and do a workshop and play with their band Raincoat 34). Or Oksana from Ukraine, who sings in the band Slid and is organizing a festival next year in Ukraine (I hope I can go there!). Or Andrew and his family from Scotland, who is connected to emerging church people around the world. Or Gaby from Hungary, who I met 2 years ago at a Connect Europe conference. And of course all the Jesus Freaks from Germany who were there!

The location of SLOT is just stunning. It used to be a monastery and the residence of a bishop. The cathedral is several hundred years old. Most parts of the huge buildigs are damaged and the baroque facade started to fall apart. But one of the organizers took us into a room which has been restaurated, and so we could get an impression of how awesome the whole palace must have been one day.

And another thing that impressed me was the variety of workshops and contents that were offered. Not just loads of practical stuff to try out (medieval wrestling, juggling of all sorts, DJing, driving lessons), but also excellent arts on display as well as economical, social and justice issues. Some people from Speak UK did daily workshops about activism, fair trade and the state-sponsored weapons industries. Have a look at their homepage.
Let's see what Freakstock has to offer next week.