Status: December 24, 2020 3:21 p.m.
Spend Christmas alone, without a roof over your head. This will probably be the case for most of the estimated 2,000 homeless in Hamburg this year. Because many facilities have been closed due to the corona.
Not so that Café moments in Hamburg’s Schanzenviertel. There are goose and red cabbage on Christmas Eve. The café is open continuously until after New Year’s Eve. “This is important to us because this Corona year there are even more restrictions and even fewer opportunities to get a warm meal on Christmas Eve and to be able to warm up a little inside,” says Anke Becerel, director of the Moment Café. “And that’s why we said: We’d like to open Café Moments on Christmas Eve as well.”
There is a Christmassy atmosphere in Café Moments and goose and red cabbage on Christmas Eve.
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The guests really appreciate that they don’t have to be all alone during these times. “I think that’s great, because you could also say, as the policy dictates, that everything is closed,” says one guest.
The midnight bus also runs at Christmas
Also the Midnight bus the Diakonie will be out on all Christmas days. He drives to various places in the city and brings the homeless people warm drinks, bread rolls and fruit. “At Christmas in particular, you often feel alone if you don’t have your family with you or if there are problems,” says Sonja Norgall, director of the Diakonie’s midnight bus. “It is therefore important that we work together, we want to set an example and are therefore there on site.”
Many volunteers help out and make it possible for the midnight bus to roll reliably on the streets even on public holidays – like Werner Pfeuffer. “When you offer tea to a guest on the bus on Christmas Eve and talk to them, those are very moving moments,” he says. “People are just happy that there is someone around on days like this who comes to them and spends time with them. That is our motivation.”
There are gifts on the bus on Christmas Eve
The first stop of the midnight bus is always in front of Saturn opposite the main train station. On the way there, the team picked up unsold bits from the bakery. You are already expected. On Christmas Eve the team from the midnight bus has a chocolate Santa Claus and homemade stockings for everyone. And the next morning he comes back to relieve hunger and loneliness.
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