Day 3 SPoR in Europe

How surreal is it to be in different culture, when you are the to facilitate learning about Culture. Of course the first and most obvious difference in culture is language. Not easy for an Aussie to be understood by an Austrian.

There is a funny poster in all the tourist shops, ‘There are no kangaroos in Austria’! This Meme summarizes such simple difference in language which is the foundation of culture.

So what is the best way to understand Culture? You have to be in it, experience it, walk it, absorb it, feel it, not try to engineer it, control it or measure it.

I had a step counter on my mobile phone, and the day we did 19673 steps, walking absorbing and learning Austrian culture

How can you measure the artwork we saw in the National Museum? How can you measure or engineer the feeling of being in a country with such a rich history? How could we know the importance and power of Mozart to this city (Just voted the Most livable city in the world).

As we watched school children going to school it seemed every second child had a violin on their back. Not like my kids going to school in Adelaide.

One of the curious things about walking the streets with Rob is that religious semiotics are like a magnet and so before I knew it on our walk we were inside Karlskirche. As we stood in front of this church with the most remarkable carved columns swirling upwards that looked like that they had been carved in Egypt. My mind could go to only one word, -awesome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlskirche

So we went inside and I discovered something I had never seen or felt before. There is no cathedral like this in Australia. And, it seems like one of these is on every corner in Vienna.

But, something special happened for me in that moment that was larger than the cathedral. That was larger than the columns out front. That was larger than anything I could have imagined.

For those that are reading this journal will know about Dad.

So, as we stood at a side chapel, I felt the need to light a candle for Dad. There is a part of this story that you need to know is that I am the only sibling that continually holds to my faith, I felt the need to light a candle for all of us.

For Dad.

This was a poetic moment. My mind was full of memories, stories, song, love and knowing his presence.

This is no measure for anything of this.

You can’t count what counts.

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Matt Thorne

Executive Director at Risk Diversity

Risk Diversity coaches and mentors Companies and People to understand Leadership, Culture and Risk, helping them to humanise and harmonise their systems.