That was 2012, the first time I flew to another continent,
Europe. Yeah, I went to Germany with my friends, now we are not together
anymore. So, I think it is lame I write this in the middle of nite.
Since we won a scholarship from DAAD, we went to Germany for
2 weeks in April. So much experiences. Nevertheless, Europe is totally
different with Indonesia.
doc: writer
Now, maybe I don’t wanna share about my cool experiences
there. Everybody knows Europe is better since its urban planning. I wanna share
about being Moslem in a Country which is most of the citizen aren’t Moslem.
Well, I grown up in Indonesia, a place where maybe 90% of
citizen are moslem. Islam education is easy to find. There are a lot of Masjid
(ok, I write it as its called usually, I don’t want to make an ambiguition if I
write Mosq, it’s like I wanna say mosquito).
So, had a journey in a non-moslem country is kinda lil bit
difficult for us. Moreover, all of my female friends include me uses veils. We
had a silly experience when in Dubai. People thought we are TKW (Indonesian
Female Labours who work in foreign but sometimes unskilled labour, they usually
work as maids). Yeah, we can handle that.
The best part in prayers room in Dubai airport was place to
wudhu. It was acomodated we as women who want to wudhu. Very clean, neat.
Something different when they did sholat, the women didn’t wear mukena like us.
They just wore what they wore at that time.
Arrived in Germany, it was so hard for us to know when we
have to wake up for doing subuh praying and because different time zone, made
us lil almost a lot jetlag, we are so surprised that we can do subuh praying in
the 08.00 am in the morning. Which is in
Indonesia, we have to do this at 05.00am in the morning.
The other difficult part was….found a place to do dhuhur and
ashar. Because sometimes we still in the outside and there are no masjid in
Germany. Although finally we found a masjid when we were in HannoversMuenden.
We just walking around there then we met Turkish family who gathered in a kinda
building, which was a masjid and some rooms inside. So we did praying then they
asked us to stay a little while. They served us some cookies and coke *believe
it or not, the cookies like nastar, famous Indonesian cookies which are served
when idul fitri and christmas*. I still felt that way, when being minority and
finally we found people who are in the same religion like us and we were like
family. Even if we were different race, country, and language as well.
The next place who we visited then we met Moslems was in
Kassel. We had a lot time to spend time walk around their campus. OMG, their
campus was so big. My little feet was just need to do more effort to finish
that journey. Then, when we walked in the student’s dorm, we met a girl wore a
veil, and said “assalamualaikum” to us in the crowd. Smiled to us, like no fear
and like an old friend. Touched.
Still in the same city, when we walked around the city park,
we met a man drove his car, and he waved his arm to us and said
“assalamualaikum”. He stopped by and asked some of my male friends to come
visit a Masjid near its neighborhood. Me and my female friends didn’t go to the
invitation, buth my male friends. They told us that they did maghrib praying
together and after finish solat, they had a dinner. The menu was chickens.
Please resize Indonesian chicken 3 times bigger, maybe it was the menu’s size.
Every body got 1 chicken for dinner. It made me envy that time :D
I thought Kassel has some moslem inside, beside I always
found some cathedral. In front of our hotel there was a big church with its big
bell. Every morning after we did subuh praying the bell rang. I opened the
window, smelled the fresh air and remember the things about meeting a new
family here. Maybe it is an ukhuwah islamiyah. I felt how we didn’t know each
other but they served us like their family well. May Allah give them his
blessings, so do we.
Salam,
Resti
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