The way to integration is through our bellies

Interview with Marianne Prebio (VHS/Vienna) on her honorary work with GRENZENLOS St. Andrä-Wördern

You have been working in adult education for more than 20 years. I have never realised that you are into voluntary activities, too.

Yes, teaching in Vienna is good fun. However, I actually live in Lower Austria. For the past seven years I have been committing myself to GRENZENLOS St.Andrä-Wördern, which is an organization taking care of the integration of newly-arrived residents. I am a board member of this association (www.grenzenloskochen.at). Furthermore, I am in charge of the GRENZENLOS KOCHEN (“Cooking Without Borders”) EVENINGS. So in fact I look after the heart of this multicultural group.

What exactly is GRENZENLOS St.Andrä-Wördern ?

GRENZENLOS is a platform of people trying to encourage personal contacts within the community. This platform is limitless because it spreads beyond age, social, ethnic and national boundaries. After the production of two cookery books, two calendars, a film and many new projects, we can say that GRENZENLOS actually works.

What do you do with your earnings?

For many of us the answer to this question was obvious even before the first edition of our cookery book “Grenzenlos Kochen” had been published: We organize a German course.

This sounds interesting! How did GRENZENLOS come into being?

At the beginning there was the outcome of the census stating that people of 59 different nationalities were living in St. Andrä-Wördern. Bringing all these residents together in a single kitchen & dining hall was the agenda & dream: young and old, locals and newcomers. Soon, people started meeting up in the Old School in Greifenstein every month to cook in the company of each other. Domestic as well as foreign fellow citizens were invited to present their favourite dishes. As a visible result of this initiative, the first cookery book was published in 2003. What had initially been conceived as a project of purely local significance, caused tremendous and unexpected media coverage. Other projects were created such as GRENZENLOS Literature, GRENZENLOS Playing, GRENZENLOS Football, GRENZENLOS Singing, GRENZENLOS German Course, GRENZENLOS Integration and the GRENZENLOS Summer Festival. It all began with a simple cooking evening. Over the past few years, however, GRENZENLOS COOKING has become a showpiece of integration in Austria.

How have you found your way to GRENZENLOS?

The first time I took part in a GRENZENLOS Cooking evening was in 2004, shortly after I had become a single mum. I immediately felt welcome & at home there. My two sons, Lukas & Martin, had a lot of fun conjuring up some pasta and waffles at “Cooking for Kids” whereas I cooked and baked my favorite dishes in order to share and taste them with my newly-made friends of the illustrious GRENZENLOS circle. Food just tastes best among friends. Soon Dutch Mieke Lipphart-Visscher and I joined forces as a duet in order to look after the GRENZENLOS cooking evenings, because our GRENZENLOS activities kept growing: We played Kalahar with each other, watched our football team as well as the Kurdish puppet show, got some precious advice in the intercultural garden, had our old chairs painted by the chair restauration project (“Sesselprojekt”) and celebrated enthusiastically on our annual summer festival.

Over the past few years GRENZENLOS has become an important part of my life. Whenever I am on the commuter train or go shopping for food in one of the local supermarkets, I meet people who belong to our community. Moreover, my field of work has shifted increasingly to St. Andrä-Wördern. On the one hand, a part of my Shiatsu practice is here. On the other hand, I teach at the local adult education centre.

Upon consideration of all this, would you like to add anything else concerning GRENZENLOS?

Yes, please. I have spent a lot of time abroad – predominantly in the Asian cultural environment. The warm hospitality I have experienced on all my trips to Asia is something special I have found again at GRENZENLOS St. Andrä-Wördern.

Sometimes Shangri-La is not very far.