This was peacecamp 2014:
For me, the peacecamp started the minute we landed in Austria.
The warm welcome, the signs, the hugs – there was the feeling of peace in the air.
When we got to Lackenhof, we were divided into our rooms: 1 Israeli, 1 Arab, 1 Austrian and 1 Hungarian.
We put the luggage in the rooms, and immediately went to our first large group. Each participant introduced himself, and said what he came for.
Every morning, we did some "getting to know" activities like yoga, and ball games, with the amazing Lukas and AnnPhie.
After that, we went to the large group again, and talked about the problems that prevent us from making peace. We mainly talked about the problems in the Middle East.
We fought a lot with the Arab participants, but at the end of the day, we were best friends, and they were the participants that we felt closest to.
In the evenings we either had an artist activity (we learnt how to create music, and how to combine different kinds of it) or we had the culture evenings.
In the culture evenings, each country showed its culture – dances, famous places, food, traditions, clothing, etc.
Each evening, all the participants stayed up until 3am (or earlier), we sat in the hallway between all the rooms, played the guitar, sang, talked, laughed.. And around midnight each night, Lukas would come with his guitar and played "Californication" for us. We sang along, and played it a few times and it was great. During the last few days, we built the show4peace, and presented it in Lackenhof. The day after, we went to Vienna and presented it there in front of a large audience.
I met the most amazing people, girls and boys.
They supported me when I had something on my mind and when we found out about what's going in Israel (A war between Hamas and Israel started again), the Arabs and the Jews never felt closer.
So, thank you Evelyn and Ronny, for bringing me here, and give me this amazing experience that I will never forget.
Tsuf Ron, Israel
