"Feeling of Peace"

This time I wanted to take part: have the feeling of how it is to spend a week among vegetarians! For a some time now I have had a rather unpleasant feeling when invited to celebrations or simply being at a dinner with only meat eaters around me. Gisela Tigges. On the plates I did not see the crispy sausage, the crisp and brown roasted chicken, the juicy steak, the roast veal in puffpastries or the tender salmon but the lifelong tortured animal without movement and sunlight, all that for a short moment of delicacy. I saw calves without their mother in veal crates, hogs in single boxes, chicken in batteries, turkey next to turkey or fish in aqua farms, filled with medicines, antibiotics, tranquillisers the main thing being how tasty they were!? This way I never really enjoyed a celebration or meal with animal eaters and it was difficult for me to talk with people happily. Harmony was disturbed. It was totally different at the European vegetarian congress. Right at the first lunch I felt PEACE within me. Despite the many strangers and nationalities at the table I felt a familiarity, I felt harmony. No animal had suffered! With a good conscience I thought of our fellow creatures and of the hungry people on earth. Why are people so indifferent to the suffering? Besides attending a lot of very interesting lectures it gave me a pleasure to ask many vegetarians how long they had been vegetarians or vegans. When else do you have the occasion to meet as many vegetarians in one place? I was especially impressed with an old lady from Germany. She looked 70 but was already 85 years old. She had lived for the past 60 years as a vegetarian and many years vegan. My room-mate from Ireland had already been vegetarian for 40 years and a vegan for 10 years . My other room-mate from Switzerland had already lived after a severe disease for three decades on raw-food only. Of course there were vegetarians from birth or for several generations already. To sum up: the vegetarian congress was a great success and the long journey from Northern Germany was worth it. The fact that I did not feel well for two hours and had to vomit - I had taken too much from the tasty buffet as usual - did not impair the positive experience I had. Merely to have felt this feeling of peace made the congress an unforgettable experience for me. Gisela Tigges Rettiner Weg 25 23730 Neustadt Holstein Germany