Jürgen - FREE SPIRIT

Jürgen, a version of the name Georg, named after his grandfather. My boyfriend calls my brother Giorgio. If he lets me, I still call him by the nickname I gave him when he was 10 years younger than my sister and we lived in the same house. He is one of the few people who immediately agrees to talk to me about my project. At our parents' house, we talk about serious topics for once, as my brother is usually more in the mood for a joke. I realize that he finds it difficult to give concrete answers and learn that it is not equally easy for everyone to talk about themselves.

Nevertheless, during our interview I learn a few things about Jürgen that I didn't know before. For me, this was precisely the appeal of this conversation: I wanted to hear the perspective of someone close to me on things that I had experienced, in part, together with him. As he talks, I become nostalgic. My brother talks about a time 20 or 30 years ago. He talks about a happy and emotionally rich childhood, about an extended family, two houses that were connected by gardens and a courtyard and felt like one. Above all, he talks about harmony and security, about love in every possible form. In terms of smell, the scent of freshly cooked food at home that always tasted fascinatingly good. We also have a shared memory of the tiled stove, which we both love to this day and whose cozy fireplace smell was and still is a defining feature of wintertime at home.

"We were kings as children and could move around freely," says my brother, and in my head I have the asphalt in front of me, on which I rode scooters, drew street chalk and scraped my knees. I think of the apple tree that no longer stands, where my brothers taught me to climb, of my grandma sitting in the sun knitting and of my grandpa's plants. Both of them are no longer alive and our always noisy family rarely spend time together in Traun. Jürgen and his twin brother Stefan have moved out, I commute back and forth between Salzburg, Innsbruck and Upper Austria.

My brother didn't love his time at school, he struggled through a few years of hard training in a small village in the Salzkammergut and is now proud to have found a profession that he enjoys in a roundabout way. Above all, he is happy to be able to move around in his job, deal with people and not sit in front of a computer screen. Jürgen loves sport and is passionate about selling equipment for anyone who wants to go cycling, ski touring, hiking or climbing. In his free time, he prefers to be outdoors or in the bouldering hall. When I ask him whether he could feel as comfortable in a concert hall as I do, he answers with a comparison from the animal kingdom: while a greyhound always has to run, a Chihuahua prefers to relax in the sun. Jürgen argues that as humans, we always have our own personality and should live by it.

My brother likes to share his passions with other people and talks about his ascent of the Grossglockner last summer. Jürgen spontaneously decided to climb Austria's highest mountain, setting off in the middle of the night. He is convinced: "Each of us can achieve this goal in stages", according to his estimation we need a maximum of four days and then we can all stand at the highest point in our country.

When climbing and in nature, the journey is the goal for my brother, strength and tranquillity set in along the way, it's not just the arrival at the highest point that counts. For Jürgen, the most beautiful places in the world are mountain ranges, where he intensely experiences elements such as wind, earth and water. He reinforces his statement: "Man comes from nature, he belongs there and wants to be there."

Finally, up on the summit is freedom for Jürgen, he only hears the wind there and also seeks peace and solitude on his tours. For my brother, sport is not a competition, but an outlet to relax. When he thinks of the word safety, a climbing rope and his family, who always catch him, appear in his head.

Jürgen sees the world as a cycle - he says that people come back to earth as animals or plants after death. In addition, according to my brother, happiness radiates out of people and is comparable to a circle. We carry energy outwards, but also receive it from others. The positive energy goes from one person to another and from the outside to the inside. A thought that should accompany us all and also serve as a warning - after all, this equation applies not only to positive energy, but also to bad energy. We all have an influence on each other and need to pay attention to this.

In the end, I would like him to tell me what life with a twin brother is like, as I don't think it's possible to understand this experience as a non-twin. Even as small children, my brothers had their own language in which they communicated. Jürgen confirms that they still feel a different connection to each other than to anyone else in the world.

My wish for my brother is that he can always find his cheerfulness in nature and that we can always laugh together. I don't know anyone who can put me in a good mood as quickly and as intensely as he can - not least because Jürgen thinks he's funny and likes to laugh for minutes at little things.