Not only cards.

Berlin, June 2014. At the lake, EVS seminar.

You guys have seven cards, each one with a different role, explained in the paper which you can find on your table. The first one who will be done with the cards, will win; the winner will change the table. Remember the rules, 'cause you will not be allowed to talk: you can communicate only with nods and gestures. In the air must to be no sound.

We are five at my table, all from different countries.

I

First round, one guy give a wrong card, the play cannot go on. The others stop him, with the hands, and try to make him understand something. The Serbian doesn't understand, he's there, confused, watching three mockingbirds.

I observe him, Jovan.

He's young, 19 years old, probably at his first abroad experience.

I see myself again in France, at my first Erasmus day. Leaving home like who is doing something big, I knew that I was not able to speak any French and I was perfectly aware of it.

I was thinking: In some way I will work it out...

What still I didn't know was the true meaning of it: being lost.

It was around 10 pm of the 18 January 2011. Outside, just snow and wind. In the train that fast was taking me to Saint-Etienne, I'm figuring out how to reach the room that will host me. Suddenly I need someone who can show me the way. We are few in the wagon and the only chance I have is to use my macaronic English:

Sorry, can please help me?

The man look at me and answers in French. I try with other two people, but always with the same useless result.

The last possibility, a girl with red hair and a wool hat:

Sorry, do you speak English?

Yes, a little bit!

Finally a smile! Once we arrived in the station, she explains to the taxi driver my destination, Residence La Cotonne, s'il vous plait.

She say a hurried goodbye and leave. Along the way, I think: it was an effort just to ask an information, how will I communicate?

The answer will arrive after two weeks of solitude, heartache and silence: with patience.

The same patience of whom accept you and listen, making efforts to understand and helping you. The patience of whom is learning a new language, the patience that affords you to observe and to understand.

The patience that is rewarded when you begin to make out the words, understanding the situation, until the moment that you will hold a first meaningful dialogue in a language becoming more and more familiar. As long as the fear of failure disappears, laughing about your own mistakes and having fun in trying, with a smile, a beautiful smile, the same of whom has understood that he has succeeded alone.

In the meanwhile, Jovan understands. The game goes on. The Russian girl throws her last card and ends the game. The 8 is not any card, I have to catch four cards more: over the defeat, the prank.

The first game is over and, where was Nata, comes the new player, Jude.

II

Jude, another English guy: they are now two and they sit close to each other.
He looks at the cards and he seems to be surprised, insecure... after a couple of rounds I see that it looks like that he has no idea of what he's doing, he plays what his compatriot tells him. The solidarity of his country makes him feel calm.

I think that to feel calm it doesn't mean to feel self confident. I think about Berlin, so big, so multi-ethnic, and that it hosts many national communities in which, because of fear or convenience, people remain in their comfort zone. They choose the easiest way by refusing integration and cultural exchange.
They call home what actually is nothing more than postpone the commitment that it has been implicitly taken by living in another country, believing that is right to continue to live as it has always been done.
And yes, you can do it, but this is not to live, it's just to wait.

I'm Italian, but I'm European. I realized it during my Erasmus.
For me Home rhymes with Alone, but that it doesn't mean loneliness. It means independence, to experience directly, to listen and have an opinion. To find again your self-confidence, to know how you can do it by yourself. Accepting new schemes, making mistakes, trying again, having pleasure in learning. Experimenting with new points of view, breaking your habits.
Except the coffee.
This, for now, it remains just Espresso.

This time I throw the last card: it is a 4, without consequences: a new table is waiting for me.

III

I sit on the vacated chair. At the new table I meet Nata who is standing in front of me. She smiles.
The cards are dealt: I watch them all before lifting them, I like to have more surprises in one go.

I take the cards.
I look at what I have now on my hands and... I don't understand... the cards seem completely different from what I had at my table.

Never mind- I think -anyway I can distinguish them.
The Portuguese girl on my right hand throws a 4, and before I can make my move, they force me to take four new cards.
So I understand... So I understand that this game is not just for fun, but it is the metaphor of the stranger, of whom is in a foreign country, where you're not always able to communicate, where what you see may be different from what it has always seen, where you can not take for granted some roles, where the rules change.
Now I understand the anxiety of Jude, just arrived, and the new smile of Nata, a beautiful smile, the same of whom has understood that he has succeeded alone.

I understand that the aim is not to win but to reflect on ourselves, on the reactions that we have facing the unknown, on the determination that makes us invent new solutions to new problems.
It is the metaphor of our stay in Germany!
So I think, which will be now my reaction? The answer is into my hand: the card 8.
If before it had a special meaning, now probably it has another one. It may not be useful to win, but who cares, I will learn how to use it. I throw it with curiosity and...the game round changes sense...now I know: if I had stayed in my rules, at my table, I wouldn't have ever seen!
Only by having new experiences you can learn something new.