A few years ago, at the meeting of restaurant volunteers, a friend reported this phrase, which perfectly describes my relationship with the Meeting.

For one of those circumstances, that to most seem random ones, which instead are Providential, I found myself 21 years old at the first edition of the “Meeting for friend- ship among peoples”, today better known as the “Meeting”. I had gone there a few days in a tent with my sister from Trento to attend a concert held by the Zafra group.

Through that hint a world opened up: Russian dissidents Bukowskj and Maksimov, Testori, Pastro, Congdon, Beloradsky, Le van Mao.

So I entered the great history of the Meeting and I never left it, making it one of the decisive and essential points of my life (I think I have not missed, even for a only a day of presence, any edition).

For years I came to the Meeting with my family, my parents as long as their health allowed, my friends, accompanying people who had been invited.

The key moment happens in 2006: adults are required to accompany the young uni- versity students during the Pre-meeting. For the first time an imposing question arose to me: “But what really prevents me from adhering to this invitation”? So, I decided to suddenly answer to the request and at the beginning of August I show up at the workbench to start the adventure. I end up working in the secretariat, where there are no boys, but only adults and yet begins a great story of relationships, of volun- tary meeting that has never stopped and that sees me 62 years old every year more enthusiastic and grateful.

The following year, and for four years in a row, I found myself with a large number of friends from Trentino Alto Adige to create the Trentino Restaurant, a magnificent enterprise that left a deep trace in those who made it and also in the people of the Meeting - after more than ten years there are still those who remember it and ask “When do you come back”?

Since then I have always returned, giving a catering sector with Renzo, Gilberto, Peter and all the friends with whom we meet year after year, building solid friendships that often born in a surprising way. With Alessandro in the secretariat, with Renzo at the catering warehouse, with Lucia for a place that was not there at the guests’ restaurant, with Javier at the restaurant table and many others until this year, in a totally unexpected way, with Mimmo, accompanying himself all day for six days in serving the great work that is the Meeting.