“We are heaven sent” was the motto of the German catholic youth movement (BDKJ) last weekend, among them the Scouts of the DPSG Oberursel from the St.Hedwig and St.Sebastian communities.
At 17:07 on Thursday evening they assembled with their leaders on the Feldberg to be handed their task. For the Scouts, it was “organise a party for Sunday afternoon next to Oberursel’s station”.
They began planning straight away. After returning to their room in the old vicarage on the Borkenberg the group became to work out what they needed to organise and what the flyers for the party should look like. After all, they only had 72 hours to complete thhe task.
On Friday they started visiting local businesses to ask for donations for the party. They received support from a number of bakers and shops selling soft drinks – not all of them in Oberursel.
For some items they put out a call for help on the internet and via the official radio station supporting the event – hr3. But would they be able to find a bouncy castle? A mobile climbing wall? Or a crane for beer-crate-climbing? Whilst they did not find a climbing wall, local companies stepped in so that children could have fun on a bouncy castle and it even the Fountain Queen Annabel I. had a go at climbing up the pile of beer crates.
They wanted to have live music, but despite a trying all they could and supported by LOKKI at the station, the preparation time was just too short for many bands. So they were pleased when Marleen Hornung agreed to come along and sing despite having another performance to go to the same afternoon and she was followed by DJ Roger Henry who livened up the atmosphere.
Of course live music, a refrigerated trailer and a bouncy castle all need electricity. On Friday it was discovered that the electricity distribution box on the station side of the U-Bahn tracks did not have the necessary connections to allow an external socket to be attached. So Dr. Joachim-Dietrich Reinking, regional head of Syna GmbH agreed to come along with his employee Bernd Stallmann on Saturday afternoon and modify the box, installing a new power connection in the process.
But where was the money raised going to go? The Scouts quickly decided that they wanted to support a particular project and not just donate to a large organisation. The national DPSG headquarters put them in touch with the “Peißnitzhaus”, a social and cultural centre on an island in the River Saale in the middle of Halle which had been affected by the recent floods. The building is used by families, youth groups and a Scout group and now needs funds to make the rooms usable again.
When Sunday morning came however, there was a setback. The old vicarage had been broken into overnight. As far as they can tell, nothing was taken from the rooms that the Scouts use, but they could not enter them to retrieve things they needed for the party until the police allowed them to. So the party may not quite have started on time at 11:07, but thanks to some of the neighbours at the station lending a hand it was not much later.
During the afternoon the area between the station building and the signal box filled up until at 4.30pm it was time to present and handover the other projects that had taken place in the town, before the countdown to 17:07 and the tidying up began.
The Scouts would like to help everyone who supported them making the party possible, in particular the following people and companies:
GL Verleih Wolfgang Latton (Hofheim), Getränke Müller (Stierstadt), Hüpfburgen Kirsch (Oberstedten), Soylu (Stierstadt), Soylu Express am Bahnhof, Kunstgriff e.V., Syna GmbH, Bäckerei Gangel (Kalbach), Getränke Elzenheimer GmbH (Königstein), Bäckerei Larem (Bommersheim), Getränke Bräu (Stierstadt), Fleischwaren Eckart (Stierstadt), Fa. Irrlicht (Bommersheim), Dirk Hohmann, St.Petrus Canisius und Versöhnungsgemeinde, DJ Roger Henry , L Oliver Lorscheid Veranstaltung + Organisation, Jörg Friedowitsch Veranstaltungsservice, LOKKI’s pieni Haukkala kleine Falknerei, Martin Hett, Edeka (Oberursel), Intersport Taunus, DRK Oberursel, Christof Fink, Hassia Mineralquelle, Getränkemarkt 1A, Marleen Hornung, Bäckerei Nennhuber (Groß-Zimmern), Bettina, the Polag, Goecke, Münkel, Storch, Wietschorke and Windecker families and everyone who donated cakes.
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