{"id":2989,"date":"2019-06-06T20:06:18","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T18:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.servas-austria.org\/wp\/?p=2989"},"modified":"2019-06-06T20:06:18","modified_gmt":"2019-06-06T18:06:18","slug":"swiss-servas-hosts-with-a-lot-to-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.servas-austria.org\/wp\/2019\/06\/swiss-servas-hosts-with-a-lot-to-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Swiss Servas Hosts With A Lot To Say"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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** von Renee Chinquapin ** <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I once again biked about\nSwitzerland, this time staying with 12 Servas hosts, mostly for two nights\neach, in the cantons of Zurich, Aargau, Bern and Schwyz. Instead of commenting\non the natural beauty and serenity of Switzerland, I focus in this report on\nwhat sort of exchanges I had with my generous, considerate hosts, most all of\nwhom are retired, children long out of the house. Almost all are in long-term\nmarriages and are all extremely active, with grandchildren, travel, volunteer\nwork, gardening, living rich, full lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Servas is indeed about\nexchanging views and experiences, mostly in an intercultural context, then I\ndid manage to share my thoughts about the political situation in the USA and\nAustria with my Swiss hosts, who seemed to know absolutely nothing about\nAustria. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But otherwise I would say that\nour exchange involved them speaking and me listening. I give this some thought\nand came up with the following possible explanations. These were all highly\nintelligent, socially engaged, well-traveled, idealistic people. Thought they\nspend a lot of time involved with others, rarely do they get a chance to freely\nspeak at length to a genuinely interested listener like me (it was my\nprofession, to listen to clients who came to my psychology practice). They\nseemed to love being heard<\/em>, their thoughts and feelings being\nrespected — I didn’t challenge them or disagree; how often does that happen?\nThus, our exchange was genuine and balance — they actively spoke, I actively,\nrespectfully listened, asking evocative questions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it also occurs to me that\nnowadays we elders are no longer the font of wisdom . . . Google<\/em>is.\nNo one asks us questions if they can get the\/an answer online. So our natural\nrole as elders — carriers of experience and collective wisdom — has been\nusurped by a search machine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus I believe that it is no coincidence that my hosts had a tremendous need to speak and be listened to. After all we’ve spent our lives reflecting and learning, it is only natural we wish to pass this on to others as long as we can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Renee<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

** von Renee Chinquapin ** I once again biked about Switzerland, this time staying with 12 Servas hosts, mostly for two nights each, in the cantons of Zurich, Aargau, Bern and Schwyz. Instead of commenting on the natural beauty and … Weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-westeuropa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servas-austria.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servas-austria.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servas-austria.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servas-austria.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servas-austria.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.servas-austria.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2991,"href":"https:\/\/www.servas-austria.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989\/revisions\/2991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servas-austria.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servas-austria.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servas-austria.org\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}