A New Home

Spooky stairs

Yesterday I had the chance to visit the new residence of the Thoma-Wiser-Haus Refugee Youth Group. The home is a quirky antiquated place, built into a rock façade, and has been partially renovated to house the 10 teenage boys and their supervisor. Each bedroom is now modern and sleeps either one or two boys. There is also a large community room, a washroom, an office, and a garage with an assortment of bikes. The dining room and adjacent kitchen are in the old style with the original wooden- beam loft ceilings, and a spooky winding staircase at the back of the house leads up out of the cliff wall and to a lookout terrace on top of the house.

Happy in his new room

I drove to the place just outside of Regensburg with Felix and Armin from the running team and five of the boys agreed to go for a run with us. After the first 500m, Felix and the boys were off, leaving Armin and me to a comfortable jog. The two of us turned around after 5 km, and headed back to the house, constantly looking back to see when the rest of the group would catch up to us. Then out of the blue two of them came out of nowhere and caught us by surprise; they were thrilled with having scared us and then kept up their speed as they laughed and sprinted forward, coming back at us again after another few minutes, still laughing and dancing around. 

Our running group minus one

After just about an hour we were all back at the house and, once showered and changed, we gathered for coffee and chatted about the run, the new house, the Run4Refugees project and about all going to an ice hockey game together before Christmas, with the tickets sponsored by EVR.

The atmosphere in the home is so peaceful, friendly and open. There is music and laughter. They talk about their hopes, dreams and plans for their futures. 

Although they are thousands of miles away from their families…at the Youth Home they have all found a second family where they feel safe and are able to thrive.

I feel blessed to be a small part of that and for this reason I am so excited about the Run4Refugees project.

Dining room and adjacent rec room