Munich: Exciting table talks in the Gasteig HP8 – Munich

There are questions with which conversations end before they start. Nevertheless, you encounter them uncomfortably often, not only in Munich’s nightlife. Questions about where you come from, for example, about your job and about the incredibly meaningful information about whether you frequent this club. The questions that 34 strangers asked themselves during a vegan four-course meal on Ash Wednesday in the Gasteig HP8 were more exciting. However, the questions were also pre-formulated for them in a table talk menu by urban researcher and journalist Eugene Quinn. Beforehand, he had divided the guests into as many different pairs as possible. In fact, Quinn wants people who are used to communicating only with like-minded people via online social forums to break out of their own bubble.

The participants in this evening of table talk, which otherwise quickly booked out, were not as different as Quinn is used to in his adopted home of Vienna. He therefore chose the couples rather arbitrarily, who then sat opposite each other at small laid tables in the foyer of the Gasteig and were clearly more interested in the questions menu than in the menu.

The food, delicious as it was, quickly became an accompaniment that merely structured the conversation. Because the menu of questions laid out at the tables, from which the questions were selected together or alternately, was divided into four courses: starters, main courses, dessert and coffee. But since there were two starters, salad and soup, and ultimately no coffee after dessert, the author of these lines will never find out whether his counterpart would have found power or flowers more important. Because the table talk was taking place during the Flower Power Festival, Quinn had adapted his questions, taken from Theodore Zeldin’s book “An Intimate History of Mankind,” accordingly.

One could have asked how one could persuade young people to live more ecologically. Which is funny, because it’s actually the young people who constantly point out in Friday-for-Future demonstrations and with controversial actions that everyone has to live more ecologically. Other questions even allowed for philosophical considerations. Again and again, one’s own life was summed up, which is why one revealed an amazing number of private details about oneself and learned from the other person. Unexpectedly, more than two hours had passed before the table talks officially ended.

How do you reach as many different people as possible?

One could have lingered afterwards, but a general spirit of optimism emptied the foyer quite quickly. One participant explained that she still had to go to Rosenheim. Others, they emphasized, felt satisfied with the good table talk and went home happy. Whether this results in lasting friendships is of secondary importance. Hannah Kienle, who as a volunteer in the Gasteig was allowed to organize the table talks with Eugene Quinn in the house, sees herself inspired by a conversation she once had with an elderly gentleman in a café. That wasn’t flirting, but an exciting exchange of ideas, which she now wants to make possible for other people. For further table talks in the Gasteig, she is considering how she can reach more different people in the future than in the pilot project. For Quinn, an English-language variant would be conceivable in order to reach an international audience. Kienle would also like meeting asylum seekers as part of the table talks. In any case, these are enriching.

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