Name: Annika Matilda Elisabet Ahlström
Age: 23
Gender: Female
Country: Sweden

 Name: Johann Benjamin Ulbricht
Age: 21
Gender: Male
Country: Germany

Annika and Benjamin met the first time in September 2004, in the little village and monastery Taizé in France.

Annika thought that Benjamin seemed to be an overenthusiastic free-church freak. And she felt that this person she wouldn’t come along with.

(This was all Annika wanted to write, thanks for the contribution…)

Annika grew up in the real countryside. On an island. nearly most far south. The public bus uses to stop 5 km further north. To the closest city (as big as Benjamins home “village”) it’s about 100 km. She’s the smith’s daughter, so when Benjamin came to Gotland the first time, he used to say that he’s together with the smith’s daughter, then everyone knew what’s up. She is definitely more practical than Benjamin, and she can be a bite more effective (This is Benjamin writing, so that’s self-recognition…). She was used to take long walks all the time, or to do craft or art. She likes to do something productive. First she makes a decision, and then she thinks. Benjamin thinks, thinks further, doubts, decides, changes his mind, thinks, and gives up…..or figures out something. We don’t know yet which one is the better way.

Annika moved out more or less when she was 16, since then the time came to visit the High-school (gymnasium) in the town. She was most interested in history and art, and she did well in both. In the middle of her high-school-time she took a year off and went abroad. She lived half a year in Italy (Milan and Rom), where she worked as a nanny (everyone who knows Annika’s attitude towards kids some years ago wonders, exactly like me, why…). She met an Irish girl and went to Ireland (Kilkenny). There she was a florist and went from one Christian meeting to another. She loved to be there, and a lot of her practical way of thinking roots in her early single-life. She climbed Sweden’s highest mountain and wants to do it again.

After she finished her exams, she went to France, Taizé, just in order to stay some weeks before she and a friend should walk a pilgrim path to Spain. It became nearly 1,5 year, with some weeks Germany (or Bavaria…) in between. In Taizé she made food for 5000 people and cleaned toilets for 5000 people. She worked as well with the decoration for all bigger meetings of and with Taizé.

Benjamin is a pastor’s son, for this he was always sweet and taken care of. Mum worked in a lot of places, as a merchand, a translator, for the local government in the office and is now a pedagogue for religion in Benjamin’s home parish, and together with dad, she has everything under control. A big brother and a big sister are part of the family, as well as some family-friends, which save the family’s live with their knowledge and logistic help. Benjamin thought he lived on the the countryside (in the outskirts of Leipzig, a half-billion city), all until he arrived on Gotland and had to face reality. He was a scout, youth-fireman, choir-singer, museum-bunker guide, school-representative, actor and pop star. Then he became adult.

You can say that he had a happy childhood. Somewhen, he remembers, he prayed to God to have more to do. God listened, and 9 years later Benjamin had a burn-out. Then he went to Taizé in order to ? and become a brother. There he was in the kitchen, on the tractor and in front of the choir. Then he went to Milan in order to get a big-city-shock and to prepare an European meeting in 5 months. (When we had been 14 months together, we had been just half of the time really together, and that even in a monastery. It had been unusual circumstances…)

It took him a long time to figure out who he really was, and so as well a long time until he accepted that this way of living and being with God, himself, and all other people wasn’t his…

Once, on our engagement-party in Germany, we told a short version of how we came together, it took us 50 min….afterwards Benjamin heard unexpected often how complicated and stupid he was. However, everyone who is interested more in this, take time and a boat to Gotland and ask.

We just came over a year in Hjo (a village-town located at the lake Vättern, between Gothenburg and Stockholm), where Benjamin studied music/church music and Annika art and German. As much as Benjamin thought that this was giving and funny, arising and high-standard, Annika thought it was meaningless and boring. Now we are back on Gotland, we work in a nursery home, try to understand the Gotlandic dialect (at least 50% of us) and take swims (at least the same 50 % of us, all the others think it´s too cold)´. We are going to marry as you hopefully know and we look very happily forward to this day with you…

Then we’ll move to Lund, southern Sweden. Annika will study theology and art, Benjamin Swedish and theology, social work and church music. That will be nice, we hope….