Volunteers for Chemnitz 2025 publish reports on their experiences, assignments and adventures around the European Capital of Culture.
Maria is Italian and has lived in Chemnitz for around 6 years. Since her daughter worked at the Natural History Museum, she got to know and love the city. The family moved to Chemnitz in 2019 because they already saw the city's potential back then, true to the motto "C the unseen". Maria has been working as a volunteer for the Capital of Culture since 2023 and makes guests feel welcome with her native language, but also with charm and good humour.
I would like to emphasise that we as a family immediately recognised the potential of Chemnitz, so I was not surprised that the city was named European Capital of Culture. Even then, we were able to "see the invisible", the title of the project.
My adventure as a volunteer with the European Capital of Culture began in 2023, and the first people I met were Dirk Zinner, Head of the Volunteer Programme, Delfina Zdebel, Assistant in the Volunteer Programme, and Mareike Holfeld, Head of Press and Communications. Dirk has the challenging task of coordinating around a thousand volunteers. I have to say that he fulfils his task with a lot of patience and professionalism.
However, I would now like to talk about my experiences and describe how I feel about my volunteer work. First of all, I like the meaning of the term "volunteering", which literally means "working with honour". This word has a deep meaning.
I like this project not only because I can contribute to enhancing my beautiful city, but also because I get to do something different every time, meet new people and improve my German language skills in the process.
Now I come to the tricky part. My daily difficulties lie in understanding and speaking this language, which I like very much, but which is extremely difficult.
Before I came to Germany, I attended a "survival German course", 20 hours, to learn the basics: the alphabet, numbers, times and some useful verbs for travelling, such as arrive, leave, get on, get off and change.
Today I'm learning online, but that's not enough as I'm learning standard German, of course, but here in Saxony most people speak differently.
My colleagues are very nice and above all patient, they know my difficulties and help me to communicate, of course leaving me the task of communicating with my compatriots in Italian. So far, I have had many opportunities to welcome them to this beautiful city. But I will tell you about that in a later article.
Speaking of misunderstandings, I would like to share a funny incident. On 25 October 2024, a photo was taken with all (or almost all) the volunteers on the occasion of the inauguration of the Hartmannfabrik. Unfortunately, I had an important commitment that day and couldn't be there. But we were told: "We'll take another photo with everyone together." When I received a call at the end of November inviting me to a photo shoot the next day, I immediately thought it had to be the group photo.
It was a very cold day and Valentin, the costume designer, had advised me to dress warmly.
When I arrived at the meeting point, the theatre square in Chemnitz, there were five people present: the photographer, the lighting technician, the director, the costume designer and the photographer's assistant. My first question was: "Where are the others?" The answer was: "There are no others here. You're on your own until 12 noon, we're doing a full photo shoot and video." I was confused and asked: "But why me? Why didn't you look for someone younger and more beautiful?" The answer was surprising: "Because the project is being done with authentic people of all ages and nationalities." Jörg, another volunteer my age, arrived shortly before 12 noon. I admired his courage. I never found out whether he, like me, had fallen for a misunderstanding or had deliberately signed up for an individual photo shoot. As you can see, our photos are part of the European Capital of Culture online shop and have been published on social networks. I almost forgot the funniest part: I got to choose which T-shirt I wanted to wear, and despite the cold, I didn't catch a cold.