Of Traum and Trauma, Integration and Integrative

Traum (Dream)

Vienna, Austria.  On a personal level, the recent visit to refugee camps in Vienna reconfirmed that I am on the right track regardless whether it is easy or not to actually provide service considering that I do not reside there; it feels right:  The service I have been offering during three trips since October 2015.  It is because of the many little encounters with displaced children, men and women in these camps.  Every human being deserves to live freely, to be themselves as a Honduran asylum seeker was quoted in my previous post (as seen on the Forced from Home website) as much as we all deserve clean water, fresh food, shelter, clothes, health care, education.  It all sounds very utopian given the current climate.

Traum vs. Trauma.  The German word Traum (as seen in the above photo taken in the hallway of a shelter leading to the cafe) means dream in English.  As far as the root of the word is concerned Traum does not seem to be