{"id":4286,"date":"2022-07-20T09:47:24","date_gmt":"2022-07-20T05:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adventure.auroville.com\/?p=4286"},"modified":"2022-08-29T10:43:02","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T06:13:02","slug":"adding-to-the-puzzle-sigrid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adventure.auroville.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/20\/adding-to-the-puzzle-sigrid\/","title":{"rendered":"Adding to the Puzzle: Sigrid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

They said: Why are you asking all these questions? We\u2019re not your teachers; you\u2019re not in university here. Just go and see for yourself, observe, look at nature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI always wanted to come to India. On my first trip I was 21, and I spent four days here. It was in 1985, a very difficult time for Auroville. There were just a few huts in the bushes at the time. I met Otto in the bakery, scraped some cement in the Matrimandir. And then the girl I was travelling with said, \u2018Why do you want to stay here<\/em>?\u2019 So I travelled through India and back to Germany, and continued my studies. I was telling all my friends for weeks and months that I\u2019m going back to India, but then I just stayed in Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I studied mathematics and didn\u2019t know what I\u2019d do afterwards; my major was pure mathematics, not teaching. What do you do with that? Either you stay in university, or you calculate insurance for people. That was certainly not going to happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then always, something happened. Again and again, I met people by chance in Germany who were from Auroville. The man who was leading AVI Germany at the time, J\u00fcrgen Axer, was living in Cologne, so we decided to hitchhike there in winter, with snow and ice, and we stayed with my cousin. In a city of over 1 million inhabitants, the AVI Center turned out to be just on the next street! Two years after my first visit, I felt I\u2019m really leaving Germany. I made a big goodbye party and left for Auroville with just a backpack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n