A nomadic life in Germany
Friendly Ufo: Petra's yurt in Brandenburg
Like a friendly UFO, the Mongolian nomad tent with its inviting orange-red wooden door stands in a meadow just outside Berlin, about 45 minutes by car from the Chancellery. Here Pettra lives with her boyfriend Joachim, very close to her horses: The four Hutsul from the Carpathians in the morning shoving punctually at seven at the yurt and craving their breakfast.
It's November, and although only two and a half inches of felt and a few layers of fabric separate us from the wet, cold autumn air, it's warm in here. The wood stove crackles; but only because Pettra keeps refilling. The Mongolian oven heats quickly, but does not hold the heat. "There's a fire station with the Mongols, and someone from the family always gives in, even at night," says Pettra.
Searched ...
She knows that from her own experience. In 2000 she lived with Mongolian nomads for four weeks. That had always been her dream until she met the Tuvinian writer Galsan Chintag, whom she frankly said: "I want to live and ride in a yurt." He gave her the phone number of his daughter in the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator, a little later Pettra made the journey to the steppe.
What she was looking for in the Mongols, she did not find. She has found poverty and alcohol, platform shoes and rock star posters, the gods of a globalized world. Archery on horseback, the martial art of the old cavalry nomads, nobody could do that anymore. After all, nature was powerful, the horizon of the steppe endless - sometimes Pettra could see sun, rain and rainbow at the same time. Most of the time, she sat on a boulder the Mongols called the "skeleton of the earth" and watched the herds of her family where she lived: she saw that friendly animals were mirroring, moving identically; she recognized which animals liked and which did not and how they showed it. She has learned to understand the nature of horses better.
Inside, Pettra checks bow and arrow
As Pettra talks, her hutsuls rush by, one neighing shrilly and snorting. Inside, the cat is dozing lazily in front of the stove. Pettra sits perfectly upright on her round, red cushion between furs and rugs, her back stretched effortlessly, her legs bent backwards while I fight office stool with a round back and sleepy feet. Even in the dim light of the yurt, Petra's emerald-blue eyes are so intense that I want to ask, "Do you wear colored contact lenses?" But no, not this passionate rider! After all, her eyes were framed thickly with black kohl. A strong, proud woman, it seems. Is she really called Pettra? She grins: "I wrote the second t in the name, because Petra is everywhere around the world 'Pettra' pronounces."
... and found
Yurt life: spout for humans and animals
Everywhere in the world, that means for Pettra above all Hungary. After the disappointment in Mongolia, she came across the website of the Hungarian world champion Lajos Kassai, who fires three arrows in five seconds in a flying gallop. Immediately she went to his school, trained and knew quickly: That's what I was looking for. When Kassai picked her and asked, "Would you like to do mounted archery?" she said yes. "From then on, this has become independent, my life has turned 180 degrees." Prettra often says this with the self-employed, quite as if she had to just faintly touch fate so that it would take its course in the right direction. She bought a horse, arrows and bows and traveled once a month for six years to Hungary on a night train while working as a riding teacher in the Rhön. Today she is Kassai's master student and the only authorized representative of his riding bow school in Germany.
Paprika in the blood
Horses, cavalry nomads, martial arts on horseback, that has always fascinated Pettra. Even as a little girl, she found the warriors of the old equestrian peoples more exciting than Princess Barbie & Co. The Rhinelander grew up with the Nibelungen saga, and at the Cologne Carnival, they impressed the Hunnen horde. "I always wanted to go there as a child, that's what moved me, horses anyway." My great-grandparents came from Hungary, from earliest days I heard: 'Girl, you've got paprika in your blood!' "As a teenager, she became a youth champion in archery sports in Troisdorf, later she trained as a dance therapist, and at the beginning of 30 she quit her choreography assistant at the theater," because the horse came through again. " She moved to a Natural Horsemanship farm near Bad Hersfeld to learn how to trust horses to work together."Natural Horsemanship is about the ability to think like a horse."
Pettra wants to perfect this ability by living as close to her horses as possible. With success: "We already have the same problems!", She laughs and is happy. With "we" she does not mean herself and her boyfriend, but herself and her horses: "During the Apassionata tour we live in the hotel - it's too hot in the room, and the horses sweat in the heated stable tent."
After two years in the yurt, she knows that living with his horse enjoys a great relationship of trust. "My horse feels, for example, when my pulse goes up, so when I do a breathing exercise to slow my heart rate, my horse's going down too, and as soon as I let go of the reins, that's the moment of truth, trust must be one hundred percent . " Absolutely necessary for archery on horseback. "When ten riders fight together, and ten riders are like one, you are so moved by so much beauty, that has something totally round," enthuses Pettra.
Pettra during a performance at Apassionata
This perfect moment is the culmination of her passion, to which she dedicates her life, even if that is sometimes "terribly tiring". Getting up, cheering on the stove, jogging, shooting, having breakfast, 100 arrows ground training, training on horseback on the competition track, riding lessons, office work, then horseback riding, horseback riding. Once a month, on Saturday, the 15 members of Kassai Reiterbogenschule come from all over Germany and they train together to prepare for the exams in Hungary. In addition to teaching Pettra lives from performances, currently at the horse gala Apassionata, or at medieval festivals, sometimes also stunts in TV productions. She likes that because she wants to show "that there is this connection between man and horse."
"It's more fun to be a hun!"
No cinema, no cafes, no shopping? "Of course, I'm not a drop-out!", Pettra assures, "I go to the internet and to the cinema and shop at H & M, everything as normal." For showering and brushing your teeth she drives in the morning by car to the neighboring riding stable. There, Pettra and Joachim use a bathroom with a washing machine, an office and a kitchen. Pettra is not about folklore; her yurt protects a layer of Goretex to withstand the humid European climate, and her arrows are made of state-of-the-art high-tech materials. She lives as she lives, "because that's her thing," not because she wants to play the Middle Ages or prove something to anyone. Their life is round, there on the meadow in Brandenburg, as well as their habitation. "I like that: there are no corners here, that's an essential difference to the city."
A difference to the city life is also her nomadism: Where Pettra will live in a few months, she still does not know today. Not because she would follow her horses in search of luscious pastures, as the Mongolians do, but because the building department is causing trouble and the hunter does not want her here and shoot raccoons in front of her nose. "We may be expelled," Pettra says, crossing her arms. But what the hell, she's longing for more nature anyway, she would like to buy land and build a yurt camp there for other mounted martial artists. But the money is missing. Pettra takes it easy: "It's more fun to be a hun!", Is her motto - with all the consequences.
