I noted that this week marks World Youth Day in Madrid, Spain. This event, which draws Catholics from all over the world, is actually a whole week’s worth of activities: worship, seminars and plain old socializing. It is estimated that by Sunday, when the culminating outdoor Mass concludes the gathering, some 2 million mostly young people will have taken part. Back in 2005, my younger daughter, Jenny, and I joined a group from our parish in traveling to Cologne, Germany, to experience the 20^th World Youth Day. The events, while centered on Cologne and its magnificent cathedral, were actually spread across the region, and we stayed in Dusseldorf while others were as far away as Bonn. It was a crowded, chaotic, sometimes frustrating but mostly extremely rewarding week. It started with the opening Mass in an enormous soccer stadium and ended in the Marienfeld, a reclaimed mining area where one million of us slept in the fields the night before the final liturgy with new Pope Benedict XVI presiding. Two things about that remarkable week stay with me to this day. First was the exuberant mingling of so many people from so many different lands. Crammed into overflowing trains as we traveled in and between cities and standing in endless lines for our boxed dinners and lunches, we enjoyed conversations with young Catholics from Australia, Italy, Kuwait, Nigeria, South Africa, Canada and Palestine. Most had worked for more than a year to raise funds to travel here, and these young people relished discovering how much they had in common and delighted in learning about the unique aspects of each other’s cultures. Nowhere else have I observed such huge crowds of people interacting with so little friction and with so much cooperation and good will. Second, the hospitality and grace with which the German people welcomed this hoard of visitors amazed me. I never saw commuters angry at the crowds who undoubtedly disrupted their usual routines and sometimes overwhelmed transportation systems and restaurants. Citizens were quick to offer help with directions and suggestions on what to see or do or where to eat. On a several-mile walk on the last weekend, we were greeted with locals offering water, a cooling spray from garden hoses and snacks. (One proud gardener offered cherry tomatoes in an enormous bowl.) The famous German efficiency clearly conquered most of the daunting logistics of such an incredible undertaking, but it was the memory of that friendliness which I stays with me. Hopefully this year’s participants will take similar positive experiences home with them. — Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor