C-stories: Aleppo in the team kitchen
Every day our communicators meet new people and encourage them to take part in a dialogue. These encounters often lead to interesting conversations and touching moments somewhere between our historical objects and the numerous interactive stations. Our C-stories will give you a brief insight into these encounters between the museum and its audiences.
On the second floor underground of the museum, where you can still write with a good old quill pen, a group has gathered. All the women are wearing headscarves. Some speak in Swiss dialect, others in broken German. A man and a woman are writing in Arabic characters – they look beautiful. So I ask what they mean: Aleppo, the name of the Syrian city destroyed in the war.
The group moves on because our robot Nao has just been started up. Only one young man remains seated, and carries on writing with quill and inkwell, German words now. I talk to him about the care and patience it takes. That’s when the man tells me he’s only been in Switzerland for five months and is still working hard on learning German. Before that, he had been in Greece for two years, on the run. We enjoy a nice conversation before saying goodbye. When I come by the station next time, I find the sheet with the word ‘Aleppo’ carefully placed there. Now it’s hanging in the team kitchen at the museum where it always reminds me of that touching encounter.
Kind regards, Madeleine
Author
Madeleine Burri, communicator, Museum of Communication, Bern
