On Saturday was the last act of the WG Stollen in Ilmenau. Their headquater has been dissolved after more than 6 years. An era ended and a myth became immortal.

WG Stollen started actually on Pöhö, Pörlitzer Höhe, the main ghetto in Ilmenau with Marcus, Marco and Kai. The flat was also located in an original GDR con
crete slab building, but it was pure crap - there weren't even any tiles on the walls in the bathroom. I will need to organize some pictures of it still, so that you know, how it really looked. After about half a year those three people moved to the Stollen, the 'upper class ghetto' of Ilmenau, still a building made with precast concrete slabs, but a freshly renovated flat. The bathroom was brand-new and the ground plan of the flat was modified by adding another w
all to accomodate three people comfortably.

I have been a guest to this flat-sharer community since PöHö-times and on Stollen I became official 'inventory'. It was the usual procedure to go to the WG Stollen after a university day to discuss the world, politics, philosophy, useless shit and whatever came up - and there were as many opinions as participants. Seldom a consensus was found, but every time it enlarged the perspective of the attendees.

WG Stollen was also the place, where I started using Linux for routing and serving and it later on became the place where I kicked windoze completely. After a couple of semesters Marcus decided to stop his studies in Ilmenau and study janitor, err facility-manager, in his home-town Dessau. I was in my practical semester at this point and the people called me, if I would like to move in there. Well, after some thinking I agreed. I had many hours of Linux-hacking with Kai together and we eventually came to the point, where we ditched windoze as a desktop-OS.

Kai then in some semester-holidays vamoosed from the flat after a couple of stressful and communicationless months in which he refused to talk about his iss
ues. Some months Marco and I had to hold up the flat with only two people and then my beloved Püppi moved in. She somehow couldn't be cocked up by us and finished her studies quickly in almost the regular time. Again Marco and me were alone and we kept this state until the final end this monday.

On Saturday we had the final party and it surely was worth of WG Stollen. We had many different people and lots of beer there. ;)
Old friends from the first semesters were there, people we don't know for too long and even my bro luciash (who was already beforehand incorporated as a 'virtual member') came all the way from czech! :D
Though a lot of people (also important ones) were missing, we again had a colourful mixture of people from different social standing and background, philosophies, attitude towards life and even countries this time. There were acrimonious, but thriving and peaceful discussions between people, who never met before. And the last ones of them left long after I already fell into bed (which actually isn't the usual behaviour ;) ). It was a real WG Stollen evening! :)

On sunday then Hillwig (as Marcus is called, just by his family-name), Marco and me cleaned the flat completely. Yes, Hillwig was still there and helping with everything up to handing over the flat. He's still counted as a member of WG Stollen and he acts just like that. Monday then we gave away the flat to three new students, who didn't realize what legacy they accepted.

WG Stollen is not about this special flat, it's about the people, respect and openness. But this flat was the symbol for it all - a symbol, that was hard to give away.