Three of us arrived in the Schule mit Herz
("school with heart") yesterday,
while the others are still up on a mountain catching goats from Hof Allne Wind
Today Aris from Solvenia arrived here to meet up
and make an interview with us for an article for Slovenian newspaper and for Euro 26 (a European "stupid" as she sais travellers newspaper that sometimes does have some useful stuff in it also and that is published in almost all European languages).
We met her through couchsurfing and she also wants to travel with us for a while later on,
but first she'll have to go back to Slovenia for a while.
When we arrived here in this beautiful place in nature,
far off from any towns and cities,
we had big expectations about this school,
that is influenced by the ideas of Sudbury Valley School.
But first thing we had to realise is,
that is is a school without any pupils up to now.
The idea to built up a free school in this area came up 2 years ago,
since then the people have put a lot of effort in organising money and support for the school, setting up conceps and getting permissions.
They have everything now, nice school building, money, permissions ... but no pupils yet.
Irene, who is something like the leader of the school, explained to us
that many people were interested in the beginning
and there is still a lot happening, like parents visiting the place, etc...
but that many people are quite afraid of letting their children be in such a pioneer-project,
as one -of course- can't really tell if their concept will work
and especially if the children will ever have the right exams to go to universities, etc.
The concept os Sudbury Valley School is nothing new and unproved:
there is around 30 or 40 schools worldwide that work with the concepts of this 40 year old school in the USA and define themselves as Sudbury schools.
Sudbury schools are based on the idea,
that every child knows exactly what he/she wants like any "grown up" human being-
and should have the freedom to chose what and if it wants to learn, to play or do something else.
The idea, that children should be given all the time they need
to develop interest in things in their own speed...
Children WANT to learn and don't have to be forced to do it, their natural curiosity makes them want to learn anyhow...
So well, even though the experiences of other also called "democratic schools" already proved
that it can definetely work to let children learn whatever they like,
the Swiss people in this region seem not to be convinced yet and
this school will need some more time to get going.
But Irene, Lena and the other people here are quite optimistic about the future:
It's all just a question of time.
Til then they are livin in this big building as an age spanning community of women
and preparing for the kids to come...
We are spending lots of time in the bureau
enjoying to have as much internet as we like
and be such a small group for a while
- int he meantime having some nice discussions about indigo children
and the new learning and living life-
that has to and that will come, slowly but surely :-)
sudval
sudbury
summerhill uk 
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Schule mit Herz
Searching lost Goats in the Mighty Swiss Alps
It has been three weeks exactly since we have been on our tour – surfing for skills and sharing experiences. Looking back it feels like we have been with our ideas on the move for so much longer already as so many places are visited, so many people on our way met and so much experienced…
This particular morning we were ready for new adventures – gaining new knowledge while getting involved in a pretty unique and extreme for us activity – searching for lost goats in mighty Swiss Alps… Though none of us had ever done it, all of us were full of passion, and we started to climb up the mountains as brave as we could, though Hans Peter / Hausi was far in front of us, laughing at us coz we were to slow :)
We got better and better as we spent 3 days searching for goats – listening carefully in sounds of Alps with a hope to hear a goat’s bell sounds. We also froze a lot and got wet till our underpants, slide a lot on muddy, steep paths, crossed rivers and waterfalls and while spending night in 300 years old hut (with no insolation, no nothing, just a simple fire place in the middle with pot hanging over it) surrounded by mountains from all sides we greeted first snow of this year and coming winter.
After 3 days we succeeded just with a 3 out of about 25 goats :/ Wishing it could have been better we still needed to move on as our friends were waiting for us already in Schule mit Herz. And even though we didn’t succeed too greatly with the goats, the experience was amazing and our adventure spirit was awakened in these mighty Alps. Leaving and saying good bye to Hausi we wished all the best for finding the goats,,, With the big smile and calm mind (while all dripping from rain water being out in a cold rain for many hours) he answered: “But of course I will find them, that’s not even a question, question is only when”. And he went on! And we went on.
Taking and Giving
Personally I found it really great that we are not only visiting different cool places and projects and learning about their way of being, gaining experience and theoretical base but also taking active part in one place’s everyday life and giving some input from our side – no matter how can we help in each particular case and each individual place – whether we are painting wagons, making mosaics, searching for lost goats in Alps, building stove, cooking for seminary, making beds for cows or doing something else, and who knows what is waiting for us in the future :) it definitely helps us to integrate better, it feels good to be useful and be in a role of givers, not only takers, plus we can honestly admit that we truly are a traveling school of live by this - each day gaining some new and practical knowledge which at the end builds up whole wonderful spectrum of skills learned from this tour.
-Sani
Hof Allne Wind
Hof Allne Wind www.hofallnewind.ch is an organic farm and community in Birmensdorf near Zürich.
9 people live there at the moment, including 5 children.
Hausi, the owner, inherited the place and built it up again after it burned down totally about 15 years ago.
They are living there self-sustaining and also selling what they produce (vegetables, meet, eggs, milk) on the local market in Zürich.
The community (that doesn't really define as one) is open to guests in general,
who are expected to help with the work on the farm and follow clear rules,
but when we came there with ten people it was getting too much for the wife of Hausi,
who is mother of 3 children, and she told us we could not stay long.
So we spent one night in the hay house... freezing a bit but enjoying the smell...
and me I felt quite sad about having to leave this soon,
as I met the boyfriend of an old friend of mine there,
who comes from a neighbor village of mine (in Bavaria)
and knows lots of people that I know...
for me a circle was closing....
But still it was good to have been there anyway
and so 7 of us left with Hausi to go catch the farms goats
that spent the summer running around freely on a mountain
in the Italian part of Switzerland and are brought back to Birmersdorf in winter.
(See entry about Alps (soon, it was so amazing were still trying to write about it!!)
The rest of us -after trading some of our nice pumpkins and SoWell for some selfmade goat cheese and eggs -went on to Schule mit Herz already.
Ludmilla in a rut!
On the way to Hof Alle Wind we got slightly lost and ended up going up one small farm road on this dark rainy night and so it happened that the bus drove off the narrow road and into a very wet and muddy ditch and promply got stuck there despite the efforts of 10 people to try and dislodge it! So we spend a few hours contacing ADAC (emergency roadside assitance) and trying to figure out if the bus was properly insured otherwise it would be way to expenisve. in the end we decided to leave it there overnight all alone (since prolly all it really wanted was a night along in the forest!) and in the morning it happened that Hansi had a large truck and pull her out!
(no more posted ;) )
Casa Cristallo / Aura reading
ABOUT AGE SPANNING DONATION BASED COMMUNITIES AND AURA READING
At the travelling school of life workshop in Glarisegg we met Evelyn, an amazing person who is an aura reader and very interested in travelling school of life and free education in general (her children are also going to the gasser school in Glarisegg)
She invited us in her generation spanning community in Steckborn, Casa Cristallo, with 8 people living there in between 12 and over 70.
This house was about the most beautiful house I had ever seen
with a lot of mosaics and paintings.
The house is also used as a social centre, people can use the shower, the massage room and wireless internet for a donation.
Though some of us were sceptical in the beginning, it was an amazing experience to see all of our auras and Evelyn also told us that the combination of those auras have lots of potencial :-)
In exchange for this tsolife-lesson, 2 of us were making some mosaics in the bathroom and living room of this beautiful house.
working on the wagons
In a place with some great trees about 10 or 15 km from Steckborn
there is strange things going on:
there are some lonely circus wagons there...
and a guy called Frank is painting them, putting floors in them and renovating them...
and sometimes a bunch of hippies come to help him with that - well, that happened one time at least ;-)
And what for?
Frank, who is a quite crazy teacher (that I would have definetely liked in my school time)
wants to build up a wagon place where "difficult" children can come (with or without their parents, depending on the case)
... to hang out there, sleep and play in the wagons, play and climb in the trees
... to get away from their daily stress
... and learn about their feelings and wishes again...
It was really nice taking and giving:
for helping Frank to realise this colourful place
we were allowed to stay in his holiday house in Steckborn
that he is renting out to tourists in summer time
Sunday, October 26, 2008
say goodbye to bodensee
After celebrating a real
ly great brunch with our new friends from Steckborn and Kesswill
we are leaving Bodensee where we spent almost 2 weeks
with one eye lauphing, one crying...
We were going through first group processes here
getting first impressions of how it will be to visit projects and people
and spending an amazing autumn with lots of sun and warmth
nuts, pumpkins, apples and other nice plants... :-)
Learning about yoga, maya kalendars, flow pedagogy and auras,
baking bread and putting floors in wagons...
learning also how to do tsolife-workshops...
dumpster diving lots of cool stuff...
learning that some of us are crazily addicted to internet...
and that nights can be pretty cold... :-)
bye bye lake of Konstanz
Monday, October 20, 2008
trying to update this blog!!!
Right now we are ssoo busy in our mobile bureu trying to organize where to go next and what to write online etc etc etc, so this blog might be a little disorganized for now...
And here is the rest of it.
Z.E.G.G. @ Glariseg
About skillsharing, networking, community live and "free love"...
After we had visited the Gasser school (next post)
we accidently came across a presentation of the Z.E.G.G.-community in the Schloss Glarisegg:
2 people that are living in the "Zentrum für Experimentelle GesellschaftsGestaltung" (centre of experimental society creation) in Belzig near Potsdam (that exists since 1991 and is one of the biggest communities in Germany)
were telling the Glariseggers (and us!) about their experiences with community live in the last 17 years...
skillsharing as it should be - and we were surfing it :-)
What was quite interesting to me is that the roots of Z.E.G.G. community
(and it's sister community Tamera in Portugal that we are propably goin to visit later on our tour)
are here in Steckborn, where the "spirit fathers" and founders of those two projects lived in another community before (that went through the media as a strange "sect" and was quite known for this).
Moreover - as the Glarisegger told - the community of Glarisegg maybe would never have come into being without the community experiences of the people in Z.E.G.G. and Tamera.
So we felt it was quite an important and inspiring meeting taking place there
and hopefully the beginning of a friendship in between two communities that are so connected in their histories anyhow.
The main idea that is connecting the 'bout 80 people living in the Z.E.G.G.
is mostly the wish to experiment with different forms of loving and with nonviolent forms of comunication - and creating peace in this way by working on themselves and raising consciousness...
A grand part of the conversation with the people of Glarisegg was circling around the topic of "free love" and around how people in the Z.E.G.G. are living it - propably as it is a theme that is interesting for everybody and that you don't get to talk about a lot in "outside world"...
To prevent misunderstandings: "free love" doesn't mean that having sexual relations with more than one person is a dogma in the Z.E.G.G. - even though it was more like that in the beginning of Z.E.G.G, but people there learned from their experiences
and found out that there is thousand ways of loving
and that everyone has to find for him/herself the way that feels good for him/her.
"Free love" just means that everybody is free to chose his/her form of loving freely,
from not having any sexual relations at all, monogamic relationships to having several relationships at the same time
and that people try to support each other in their relationships and loving without judging over the form of loving...
They said that this form of loving and living feels much more "normal" than most of the people who don't know it might think: open communication about sexuality and problems coming up in relationships help a lot - that's the same thing in monogamic and polygamic relationships.
"If there is no peace in love, there cannot be peace on earth... "
They also said that the ways of how people live their love and relationsships in this society mirror the big problems of human history:
people believe in possesing people they love in they same way as they believe in possesing land and other ressources... wanting to keep control about everything and for that reason coming up with "moral", laws, borders, wars ...
To confront yourself with letting go of your fears to loose somebody (something)
and to realise that you do not in general loose someone (something) just because you share with others
can help to raise consciousness about what is happening on this planet
and how we could live something else...
Most important in this (long and difficult) process of changing one's mind is to speak with others about the problems coming up,
so that information can float freely through all the relationship-networks and there is transparency about the feelings of all people that are involved...
Interesting topic -but well, let us come back to the meeting and Z.E.G.G. in general:
The Glariseggers and Z.E.G.G.ers were also talking a lot about organisational questions, like what forms of organisation people in Z.E.G.G. chose, how about finances, etc ... :
Most of the people in Z.E.G.G. are working outside of the community and similar to Glarisegg they also have a seminary and guest business going. We did not talk about self-sustainibility.
There are some "leaders" in the working groups, which is the people that engage most or have most skills about something. The people normally decide together who wants to and whom they want to be in charge of something.
Organisation structures are changing from time to time, but at the moment it is like this:
There are
*working-group meetings (like the cooking-groups meetings, etc),
*"forums" (where you have a platform to talk about things you want to promote, like new ideas etc or emotional things) and
*"plenums" ( to decide in concensus about important topics that cannot be decided about in smaller circles)
When you are living with 80 people, you cannot always be in contact with everybody
and know how everybody is going, so normally the people you are sharing your flat with or the groups are the people you know best and you got to do most with.
There are various forms of communication in the Z.E.G.G. , from group meetings to emails... to keep transparency about all the processes going on
To get a community member in the Z.E.G.G. doesn't need as much money as in expensive Switzerlands Glarisegg community, but about the same time and process:
You do an introduction course of 5 weeks, then you can stay there for up to a year as a guest to see how it feels for you and the community. After this time you can become a full community member.
There would be space for up to 20 or 25 more people in the Z.E.G.G. buildings.
There are about 10 children in the Z.E.G.G., for whom the parents don't have to pay rents and food, but those costs are carried by all the community.
One of the last topics we talked about was the relation in between Z.E.G.G. and Tamera, which is still strong even though there is some "family fights" every once in a while...
People from Tamera are always welcome in the Z.E.G.G. and the other way round.
As we already had contact with people from Tamera also,
I am right now really curious about how this community looks like.
---Anja
Gasser school
We met Marianne Fischer, the teamcoordinator of this privat school, for the first time to arrange an appointment when to have a guided tour through the schoolbuilding. This was already an impressing exchange about our ideas and we were couriously looking forward to met her again, to get to know more about her way of teaching, being and learning, which is based on the ressourcive padagogy, the flow pedagogy.
The whole idea of their way of working with children is grounded on the groth and greatness of every single person, so as on one hand everybody is great, on the other hand everybody needs to learn something, if as grown up or as child. While stateschools mainly work on the level of notes, thinking, pressure, success, knowledge and work, freeschools include the second level of personality, individual needs such as learning rhythm, interests etc. The Gasser school mainly works on the third level, the energetic level, that which tries to reach above human beeings - divineness in the here and now, happiness, life power. This means, that they communicate on an energetic level with the children. To insult others or to hit others is taking their energy, so always when this happens, it belongs to the schoolculture to give this energy back by finding something great in this person and tell it to him or her. It is not a discussion at all that there is something great in every person. Following this "rule" no teacher is scolding pupils or telling them what to do or not to do. One good example of this is that when they meet in a classroom to work together everybody who feels ready to start, is present with his/her mind, feels serene enough to start, just lifts up his or her hand. So slowly this readyness spreads and when everybody has lifted up his or her hand, to say that he or she is ready to start, including the teacher, they start. This ritual enables everybody to decide by themsemelves when they feel ready and are not manipulated by others.
...
to be continued...:)
...Read the rest here!
Travelling School of Life-Workshop in Glarisegg
Today we made our first workshop on education networks /travelling school of life in the Schloss Glarisegg.
There were 6 people - 2 community members, one aura healing therapist from the nearby village and three people working in the Gasser-school in Glarisegg.
We started with a little game - everybody should write down 3 skills (s)he has
and 3 things (s)he wants to learn.
There was a lot of different skills, from healing to project management, from photography to Spanish...
It is always amazing to see that even in small groups there is always interests and skills fitting together... and that very often you could just off from the workshop start a learning group with someone...
They were all quite interested and open and we will propably meet up with the aura therapist woman to learn from her. She also gave us a contact to a friend od hers who also wanted to build up a learning network but never started as there were no people with him...
We also talked a little bit about the Gasser school
and discussed about alternative education and economies...
When asked what possibilities of selforganised learning there are and there could be in Glarisegg, the community members told us that living in (this) community anyway means learning and having to learn a lot :-)
But up to now there is not a lot of skillsharing groups in the community, as there isn't so much time for it in the daily working life and routine...
When I asked them about possible low budget learning for visitors in this expensive place,
they said there is not a lot going on yet, although this kind of learning does happen sometimes (e.g the instrument builder had someone learning at his place and helping him).
This also might change in the next years, as the community is still building up... so in a few years there might be more possibilities for travelling school of life as well...
---Anja
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Schloss Glarisegg
Their Website > Schloss Glarisegg
Since 3 days we are in the area around Schloss Glarisegg,
a community in an old castle nearby the lake of Konstanz.
When we left at Antonios (humanshope) place in Keswill
we knew that we would get a whole house (in exchange for helping the owner with his project) in Steckborn nearby Glarisegg from Sunday 19th on.
But in our decentralized organisation chaos we had made a date with Kathrin (a Glarisegg community member) to show us around the place on the 17th,
why we had to come 2 days earlier
and so there was another 2 nights to spent somewhere else than in the house...
We thought that it propably wouldn't be a problem to stay somewhere in Glarisegg for those 2 nights,
as it is such a huge area: really beautiful nature with the lake and a forest, several houses (like living houses, guest houses, seminary spaces) and a campside with tents, a yurt and a tipi...
But first answers we came across in "the community" (when asking if it would be possible to stay for low)
was that it would at least cost 10 Swiss Franks per person
just using the toilets and showers (even staying in an our tent/bus)
and the excuse "if you would have asked earlier maybe it would have been fine
but I cannot decide to let you stay without asking the community".
So we -dissapointedly- decided to spend the first 2 nights on the beach that belongs to the Glarisegg community
and felt a little bit strange among those rich "yuppie-hippies"
living in a big castle with own beach and not wanting to share with us poor idealistic travellers... ;-)
But when we came to talk to Kathrin about the project and community
we also learned to understand about the financial and commercial situation of Glarisegg (I will tell more later on)
and when we joined a celebration taking place in the yurt in the first evening
we saw that there still are lots of open, helpful people around there - and we were allowed to stay in the yurt in the end.
The community exists since 5 years and is based on 5 main ideas/projects:
a) an own school (GasserSchule, flow-pedagogy)
b) seminaries and guests
c) therapies
d) arts and culture (Kulturlabor) and
c) the community itself.
There is no common "religion" /... , but everybody can live however and believe whatever (s)he wants. Also, like Kathrin said, they are always trying new methods and structures of organisation.
(For such a young community it seems to be quite well organised anyhow... )
The community consists of around 30 members and some children, there are always lots of guests and guest workers around. Most of the people living there are around 40, there are only few young people and children there.
The community members meet 3 times a week to talk about organisational and emotional stuff, which is the main communication plattforms and keeps information circling.
Kathrin told us that there shouldn't be any destructive talks in the circles
and that people would try to talk only about their own feelings without accusing each other,
whereas Marianne Fischer of the Gasser school (who is not a community member any more)
told us that she stopped going to these circles
as she felt depressed about the way of communicating and complaining about each other in there and that it was too tiring for her and just taking too much energy.
Some of the community members rent workshops or seminary spaces within the community and work there, some work "outside".
The community is financed mostly by renting space out to guests. There is also a shareholding society to finance the place, in which people can invest their money directly in sustainible living and culture by supporting the community.
The people in Glarisegg are not self-sustaining, there isn't even a vegetable garden at the moment, but interacting and trading with local organic farmers.
It seems there are a lot of spiritual/"esoteric" people there and so are the workshops, seminaries and therapies offered there (e.g. schamanic healing, spiritual sexuality, Tai Chi, Tibetan Tantra, coaching in relationships, family therapies, contact improvisation, trance dance, ...)
To become a community member you have to live in Glarisegg for three months as a guest worker, which means you pay 15 Swiss Franks a day (including organic food) and work 5 hours for the community. After this time the community decides if you can stay longer, after half a year they decide if you can come to their circles/meetings.
After one year you have to start to invest into the community, which is 21.000 Swiss Franks within 3 years (500 Swiss Franks a month) - payable in work, goods that the community needs or in money. Plus you have to rent your room and any other rooms like workshops etc.
This prices and strict conditions are only understandable if you know that this beautiful peace of land with all the houses costed 3,3 million Swiss Franks to buy (which is actually cheap for the region!)
and that e.g. heating the old buildings (which is mostly not living space but guest and community space!) is 600 Swiss Franks a day!!
Even though deciding to move to this mega-project seems to be an expensive decision for live there is at the moment lots of change going on. Many new people are interested in becoming a community member and some of the people who started the project are moving out for different reasons...
Some more impressions and pictures in my mind:
People still seem to have time to talk while working...
people walk slowly...
people do Yoga at the beach...
many of them seem to be amazingly passionate with their work...
and they are open towards you if you are open as well...
To come to an end: in general Glarisegg seems to be a quiet and spiritual place,
that -in it's own quiet, slowly and spiritual way- brings inspiration, healing vibes and changes to the people of the regional area...
at least to those who can afford...
---Anja
Friday, October 17, 2008
Kesswil / Humans Hope
www.humanshope.ch
We rested some days in a nice horse-farm which belongs to friends of anja.
There we had a skillsharing-circle to see what we want to learn and what we can give further to others and built up a little learning plan for ourselves, which means that we founded learning groups, for example different language learning groups, a yoga group, a photo-workshop and lots more...
We also organised a financial meeting and met in the circle to exchange our expectations and our visions of the tour.
The father of the farm family is working on a map-tracking-software which enables you to track your way on a google-map with mobilephone and GPS to reconstruct your route. He offered us to use his invention on our way and gave us 2 GPS-mouses where after we tracked the first route to Switzerland.
After two days we left to find a nice place to stay over night at Lake Konstanz.
On our way we picked up some interesting components in the form of a beautiful pink chair, a mattres and a wonderful blue pillow.
As the sun sat down we stopped in a little village at the lake and parked nearby a park.
By strolling arround we collected some firewood so that we could start a nice campfire nearby the lake to cook dinner in it.
The night was beautiful dark and the big fullmoon was rising up on the other side of the lake which we left behind us, reflecting mysteriously in the dark waters and symbolically shining us the way in the direction of our next level of the tour: SWITZERLAND.
So nice, the first time that we slept outside in the wilderness.. being just for us.. enjoying the fullmoon.
In the morning we were surrounded by fog and after some morning-yoga and swimming in the icy lake we had jammjamm breakfast,
while the sun broke through and a beautiful day began.
The next challenge was waiting for us at the border in Konstanz.
One of us was secretly filming the border-policeman. When he recognized it he got angry and made us deleting the whole film material which took a lot of time as we weren't very used to use the camera. ;)
But all in all we were allowed to pass by without car-check.
After passing 18 roundabouts (WOW) we finally arrived in Kesswil.
The nice family which was waiting for us, created a network called humanshope.
In the moment this network includes thirty persons and it is mainly based on a webpage which presents their ideas and links to many other different projects, which seem to fit in their flow.
The basic idea is that all the "problems" of our world cannot be solved seperately anymore, but need to be looked at from an all-encompassing point of view, so all the different aspects such as spiritual (f.e. the Maya calendar), economical, political and social are included.
So they developed a concept of how it could be possible to reorganise and reform the world system.
Their main idea is based on a bee cell structure which can already be found in very old cultures, and as well in recent sciences, such as RAUMFAHRT, where they found this form in the asteroid-belt which surrounds Saturn.
According to this proposal, the world is split in many hundred cells, of which each one is independent,selforganised and is able to live out of its own capacities. Of course not every unit has all ressources, as oil, specific plants etc.,
so this is where the network of a bigger territory, seperated into six cells, takes care of each other. If there are any problems which can't be solved on one level, it is carried up to the next level.
For more information have a look at www.humanshope.ch .
As the Maya calendar builts an important aspect of the concept's background, mainly the whole group works with it and tries to transfer it into their daily life. They even have a learning group in which they meet regularly every month to exchange and deepen their knowledge.
So we had the great chance to take part in a short introduction and later on in a workshop about more details of the Maya philosophy, which is a lot more than just a calendar, and even more than a horoscope, but a whole life philosophy including a new understanding of time and the complexity of the universal cycles in its past and in its future as well as the humans' role in it.
www.lawoftime.org (official 13 moon calendar website)
www.tortuga.com (planet art network-"time is art")
Before meeting us, Franziska, the mother of the family, was really sceptical about our whole group and expected us to be wild long-haired people covered with wool all over ;), but when we left after two long days she even cried and she and Antonio, the founder of the humanshope-network, didn't want to let us go. We felt incredibly at home at their place and it felt like leaving family. It was such an open minded place, where we could share all our ideas, enjoying ourselves and the whole atmosphere. So one evening we had a workshop of the humanshope project with Antonio, whereafter the evening slowly grew into a wonderful sharing of sound, dance and meditation.
All in all it was absolutely touching to realize, how different people have the same or similar ideas at the same time, and how they get connected in a flowing way, exchange their ideas and dreams and explore ways to cooperate and work together to be stronger and move on.
And we knew it was good that we came.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Exiting the EU!
We left our lovley horse farm + biggest bureu ever on the evening of the full moon and went to a small town on the shore of the Bodensee / Lake Konstanz and spent a relaxing evening making a fire in lakeside park, waking up while old people are going for their morning walk past our food circle on the steps to the lake, and taking the opportunity for a fine cold swim!
In the morning we packed up with our new pink chair we "dumpstered", grabbed another nice folding couch on the way out and headed for Konstanz to make some last purchases before leaving Europe!
The last couple days weve been staying in a small village house with some very nice people, one of whom is working on the project Humans Hope.
More Post later, right now we have to leave to visit a school project in the next 5 minutes!
More Post later, right now we have to leave to visit a school project in the next 5 minutes!
.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Switzerland, here we come!
I am sitting in the biggest and nicest bureau I ever had,
in the horse farm of some friends of Anja,
tryin to figure out what happened the last days.
Our busses are down in the garden...
there is some fire, three walnut trees and a big hammok.
we can choose between hay to sleep on, a trailor and a guest room...
It's only 5 days since we left Munich
and since then we were not even really travellin
but only hangin out in the place of Anjas parents in Sigmaringen, in there nice garden and the cosy livingroom...
preparing and getting to know each other better,
chilling, climbing, organizing ourselfes and the next stops and contacts, painting, cooking, ...
catching a hitchhiker who directly wanted to come with us, getting to know her a little bit and processing through the realization of not feeling that its good to take her with us on this tour.
Yeah! the first real groupprozess was born here
... and during all this : drinking soy milk... and feeling SO WELL!!! ;-)
After this first stop we finally started our way in the direction of Lake Konstanz
which borders Switzerland
It already feels like we've been years together on the road
and I have a really good feelin about the group
and the tour in general :-)
Switzerland here we come ! :-)
painting psychedelic lovely pictures all together
in the first evening we spend all together...
( making plans for exhibitions after the tour;-) )
juggling, meeting, watching turtles and chillin out in the garden of Anjas parents in Krauchenwies
hanging around in the livingroom
climbing in the "Hochseilgarten" where Anja worked for some years...
helping each other through exercises...
keeping eye on each other to ensure safety...
giving hand if needed...
inspiring each other...
trusting each other :-)
painting our nice new trailor (that is full of soy milk;-) !)
and helping out with art exhibition organisation stuff
in the nice workshop and living space of Michl and Dorle,
of their daughter Camilla and Bayu from Indonesia,
some artists (ironartist, musician, painter)
living and working in a very small village near Überlingen
They also told us a little bit about their association for arts, youth and culture named satu
and about the youth congress in Indonesia and existing and possible connections!
Thursday, October 9, 2008
On the road at last!
The big night! The beginning of dreams that have been waiting to become reality for months, and even years, and its finally here! Like the moment when after a long climb to the top of the roller coaster and it slowly starts it rapid decent and you realize, oh wow here we go!!!
After several last hour/minute changes and fixes to the busses we rolled out of munich in an almost dream like state and headed for our first destination in south germany, where we are now spending a couple days repacking the bus, planning routes, and generally getting more organized!
