Alice Wonderland...

We had a wonderful stay in Alice Wonderland.
Though it was not like we expected - similar to SomaHaus - we had a really nice time with the guys and their various "pets" in Alice. Finally we had some time just for us to relax and plan our next steps..
Besides relaxation and long hours spent in computer worlds we enjoyed the lovely town of Lausanne in a nice walk around city in Davide's guidance and had lots of fun. He brought us to this amazingly freaky playground near the lake. Three different platforms with toys not only for children...anyway special tip for Lausanne...as well as the lakeside at night with all the floating lights you see from France...



One evening Salim showed us some magic and one can decide whether it's just illusion or reality...
We also got to know a little bit about hypnosis and NLP (Salim told us about the "NLP-toolbox") and later on from Alex about Reiki.
The evening before we left we had great dinner - mainly Noemi created a lovely cheese-fondue...yamyam...wherafter we built great yenga-towers just to destroy them again..great fun...







Ouh ja, we may not forget to mention the Alice-pets. They have many of them. Marie, for example - very useful. She cleans the dishes without complaining, you only need to feed her with the dirty dishes and after a while she spits out the clean ones...
Sundzay is also quite a cool guy - he keeps the food cold and furthermore he gives shelter to all characters of Djungle-Book.
Esteban is a littly slow and tired - originally he was ment to communicate about time...inform about the precise minutes..
these days he might be too old - every hour he loses the 37th minute....but as he's a good guy, Alice will keep him...
Not to forget Alice's passion for Kinder√úberraschungsEier. These supersweet chocholate-eggs with a small orange egg inside with lots of strange stuff inside.
All around the flat there are those orange-eggs, they once want to be filled with candle-lights to give warm orange atmosphere...all around the flat there are as well those things like against-penguin-demonstrating monkeys from Madagaskar-movie or magician-carussels or little stamps or well-known flying objects...
Alice...wonderland...




watch out: http://www.couchsurfing.com/people/penthouse

Sani & Anna

...Read the rest here!

Don Camillo

Finally we were on the road.
With Clos du Doubs being a place where we figured out that we should aspire for more structure, that it might be senseable to find a common rhythm, a sorrounding structure, just to find together as a group, find a common point which we can use as a base;
we (Peter, Sani, Anna) left with some more or less concrete plans in our minds. Plans such as being organised during the ride to Lausanne, arriving there before three o'clock (because if not, there would be noone to let us in) and therefore leave at nine. I myself at least was really convinced we would be able to make it...
Well, almost.





We were ready to leave at half past ten, when we started the motor.
Not enough motor oil. So, Anja fed Ludmilla the bus, with some excellent synthetic motoroil, whereafter we said goodbye again and started to drive when we realized we forgot our map of Switzerland. Motor off again, all of us running inside the house, chaoticly walking apart, looking for the map, not finding it, going in the bus again and finally we left.
Wow, what a feeling. We made it to leave this beautiful farm in the beautiful region of Jura.
Great.
Already late, if only some hours.
Without the map we needed to stop somewhere to find out the route.
Which we did after eating up 2 bars of yumyum chocolate.

The ride itself was good. Two deathly ill people next to me, coughing, suffering, sweating.
But I felt they were becoming better slowly while passing by wonderful landscapes - lake Neuchatel, for example.
(For the reason of illness noone could take any photos...)
After more than two hours ride we spontaneously stopped in Montmirail, a community were Peter has been over 8 years ago.



He stayed there for one month, living and helping to renovate old buildings.
So, after this long period, he wanted to have a short look at this special place, his first European experience...
We parked Ludmilla in between sunbeshined autumntrees, opposite some babybuffels,
walked up the little hill to the entrance gate and slowly strayed in.
Somehow it felt a bit strange to just stroll in without having told them before, without really knowing who they are, what they do and so on, but luckily Peter had this great reason to go there.
Entering the gate you see some pretty buildings, there's a guest house, a big reception building, a beautiful old church and a square in the middle - all in all this place feels a little bit like a small medieval village to me...
Suddenly a women exited the guest house, saw us wandering around and walked straight towards us.
First I wondered about her intention, but then soon it was clear that she was very happy to meet us -
she even recognized Peter almost immediately. That felt so unbelievably amazing - over after 8 years she remembered Peter, his name, what he did...
For me this was such a magnificent human moment.
After talking for 10 minutes, meeting some old friends of Peters, she invited us to lunch and we went to look around the place while she went to arrange something impromtu for lunch. So we started wandering around in their colourful garden with that stunning view over fields, rivers, mountains...where we found a brightly shining Gingkotree, climbed swings, ran through rustling leaves, just felt happy about the friendliness and warm behaviour of these people here...



And went back into the guest house were we found a nicely decorated table with Swiss chocolate on each plate...
The woman and her husband had prepared some pasta, fish sauce, salad, bread, apples and juice. As the three of us didn't eat the fish sauce because each of us once decided to live vegetarian, they even brought a big plate with a various selection of Swiss Cheese...
We almost already began eating when she asked us to hold on for a moment to say a little prayer,
Which was rather pleasant, as she thanked for us coming by to visit and blessed us and them.
Now the time was right for asking them to tell us something about their community.
Their basic intention is to live, work, and pray together.
They started 31 years ago in Basel and till now they grew up to 18 adults. Their children are not members of the community as they say they are not yet mature to decide if they want to. Three times a day they pray together.
As true Moravians they share everything - finances, space, ideas, decisions...
For every two years five persons are elected to develop ideas and make proposals for the future.
These five people also make decisions concerning every-days life or special fields, the guest house, for example.
Really important decisions are made by all community members together.
One of such decisions for example some time ago was when they had to figure out if the community would be able to carry two families moving to Berlin, living and praying there. They looked at the financial, the social aspects and finally decided that the families could move.
So by now there is the biggest part of the community living in Montmirail, two families in Berlin and one in Basel.
Also when one person plans any changes concerning job, this person talks to other members of the community and in the end they decide all together.
Some work outside, some work in Montmirail, in the guesthouse, for example.
Afterwards we told them about what we do, about travelling school of life and some places we already visited.



Suddenly at one point we realized that we had to leave immediately to arrive in Lausanne in time.
So the goodbye was rather short but warm. We thanked each other and went away with a big smile and shine in our hearts.
It was a wonderful oasis in every-day life, we went there spontaneously without having a plan and were warmly received.
This felt like real Christianity. They just give us a simple, but unexpected and lovely meal and some nice conversation.
Enlivent we continued our travel to Lausanne and of course, althoug we were quite late now, everything worked out perfectly in the end, we found the place in Lausanne surprisingly fast, got a parking space and again a warm welcome in Alice, the flat we are now.

- Anna 'n Sani

...Read the rest here!

stove building workshop

As we arrived in Clos du Doubs, we met Krishan an old and wise clay-oven-builder.
He was there visiting Niccolas and build with him the new oven for the upstairs-rooms.
The oven should be used to heat the upper rooms and for baking food and drying fruits.
We came totally to the right time,
they already build up the fundament for the oven and made some skizzen,
but they already were at the beginning.
Some of us were very interested in learning how to build an oven made of pure nature clay and sand.
so we started to help them to build up the oven brick by brick.
While building up Krishan told us about ovens and we learned in practical way.
In the evenings he gave us lessons in oven-building-theorie and how he started to build up clay-ovens.


Here you can find an instruction for building the oven that we built:




Chapter one: chimney


A chimney is a rope or a duct which normaly goes through the house vertically up to the roof or sometime just go out the oven self.the chimney has the function to suck out the air and the smoke of the oven and suck new air into the fireplace to heat up the fire and keep it alive.
so more high a chimney is, so more sucking-power it has.
But why is that so??
The nature tries to balance everything. When you put hot water in cold water it mixes it up and balance the temperature.
The same it is with the airpressure.
in higher areas we have lower airpressure than in lower areas.
At the fireplace we have more airpesure than at the top of the chimney, so the airpressure press automatically the steam and smoke of the fire up through the chemney to balance the airpressure-differences.
At the same time:
The air gets heated by the fire which is more hot than the outside air.
Hot air is more light than cold air and rise up streight.
so it is flowing throuth the chemney up and generating an underinflation which sucks new air from the bottom of the chimney through the fireplace and keeps the fire alive by feeding it with oxygen in that way.

how big shouls a chemney be?
5-6 meters tall is minimum size
also the diameter should be not too big, minimum size is 18cm = 220cm²
you can calculate the cm²
by round chemneys with following formul: r²*π (square radius, multiplicate with pi)
by cornerd chemneys multiplicate the length and wide of the chemney-sides.



in older buildings, the chemneys where build very big that chemney-cleaners were able to climb into the chemney.
for the most ovens its too big, and sucks too bad so it could be useful when you build in a smaller tube, you will have much more sucking power. but be careful, ask your chemney-cleaners there are everywhere different strikt rules about ovens and chemneys.

also when the chemney is too big the smoke will circulate inside and go much slower up.when the chemney is small it goes up streight and fast.

when you build the chemney with bricks you will have the effekt that the bricks will heat up by the hot smoke of the oven(s) and heat the areas where the chemney pass by and be a heater at the same time.
when you use a tube inside the chemney which is isolated from the walls, you willnot have this effekt.



You also always have to look when you build a chemney,
which main wind-direction you have, this is important for knowing how you should build it.
also when your chemney is smaller than the top of the roof it can happen that the wind hit the top of the roof, start to squirl and press air into the chemney.
So the smoke cannot go out and get pressed back into the house.

Also very important is the location of your house and your surrounding.
Is a house build on the top of an hill, where the air runs up on the side and helps to press out the smoke of the chemney is better as a house which is build in a forest where much trees are growing beside which are taller than the house
where air fall down at the trees and could press the smoke into the chemney.

an fire also starts bad if you have too low airpressure outside or the chemney is too cold,for that you can use a trick.
go down to the cleaning-clap of the chemney in the basement and start a short and very hot fire with newspapers there.. so you will heat up the chemney very fast and you can more easy start a fire in the oven.
in german it is called "Lockfeuer"



chapter two: the oven

there are differne kinds to build up ovens.depends on what you want.
if you just want a simple ofen for heating the room you just need a fireroom and a channel go up to the chemney,
but you can use the hot air going out of the fireroom much more efficient when you lead the hot smoke of the fire around in some channel-systems before you let it flow into the chemney.
so you have much more stone-area which get heated up and ray the heat into the room.
you also can build a sitting-bench on this smoke-channel-system so you have heated bench.
there are no boarders for your creativity.
I just want to show you one example of ovens and its aircirculation, that you get an first impression about the functionallity of ovens.
and some very important things you should attend.

first and most important:
fire produces different gases.. some of them keep stick on the top of the ovens fireroom.
they are very explosive and when them get in touch with some fresh air they will explode and distroy the hole oven, some people also died of that effect.
so most important is in every kind of oven you build.you need to build an so called "shortcut" this is the shortest way connection between the fireroom and the chemney, so the gases can always leave the top of the fireroom and flow suddenly into the chemney.
for that you build a small tube for that and build also a clap between the fireroom and the tube where you can open and close the tube but you have to make a small hole in that clap.
it has also following side-effect:
when you start the fire you open the clap, so the chemney can suck the air of the fire in the shortest way and you will have a stronger sucking and pressure which helps to start the fire easily, cause the hot air and smoke dont get lead through the channel-systems.
when the fire is burning you close the clap and so the smoke gets lead through the channelsystem and heat up the hole oven.
the hole in the clap has the function, to suck all the time the gases out of the fireroom and lead them suddenly into the chemney.

so you have the fireroom, it is the room in the oven where you burn the fire in.
this will be the most hot place of the oven and it is important to build up this whith good stable materials.dont use pure clay-bricks and normal clay-sand-glue for it, it will break.
better is to use schamott or firebricks (the red ones)
Schamott is in compare to clay made of a mixture of clay and little stones and pressed under much higher pressur.
The Schamott-bricks has to be clue also with much more fine clay-sand-mixture.
The pure clay-bricks just get clue by more gritty mixture of clay and sand.
this is cause the schamott-bricks can handle much more heat than the clay ones. they dont get so easy brittle like the more gritty glueing-mixture and the clay-bricks.
the fireroom should be between 90cm and 120cm tall.
at the exit of the fireroom the smoke has about 1000 degree.

from the fireroom the smoke will flow through a channel called "Ãœberbrandt* (german) there it has 900 degreeand runs down the (Sturzzug) to a channel which is under the fireroom,
there you let lead the smoke through different channels up to the chemney.
so more way you have so more stones will get heated up, but also so slower the smoke will flow and when it is too long the chemney willnot suck it anymore.
there is no standard data how long it can be, it always depend on the power of the chemney and how the oven is build.

the diameter of the channel leaving the fireroom should be the biggest one,
the smoke get more and more cold on the way to the chemney, so we can reduce the channel-diameter on the way to the chemney.
so we also have a better smoke-flowing and the pressure from the chemney can suck better and more consistand.
on the bottom channel of the oven we have to add 20% more cause there ash will stuck over the years and we need more space to suck the smoke through.

...Read the rest here!

ecovillage Clos du Doubs

Clos du Doubs

We arrived at ecovillage Clos du Doubs few days ago

Since then, there has been some trouble - and a lot of good learning experiences!

When we first came here we espected a big ecovillage community,
but we found an empty farm with one single person living here, which is Nicolas,
who has inherited some money and from this bought this farm some years ago.
Nicolas is a guy with a lot of travelling and community life experience
and I think this place here is a really good place for learning a lot of different wise stuff:

For instance: why chairs are making our society sick,
how to build a stove of clay
or about the African languages and how they effect the Africans view on the world ... :-)


We arrived here most of us quite sick
and not very fit to work


So there was a communication problem in the first days:
Nicolas had told us he expected about 4 hours work a day for staying here, having food, etc...
but he also said he wanted us to be happy while working and that this was the most important thing to him - so we shouldn't do anything that we feel it's not good for us

Well, so the sick people stayed in bed and didn't do anything
whereas most of the others were working busily and happily on a stove that is being built here
together with Nicolas and Krishan, who is an oven builder who lives half the year in Sri Lanka and has an Ayurveda centre there


Somehow we fucked up the communication about the people who didn't do anything as they were sick - and we also fucked up the communication among ourselves totally
missing any kind of structure, totally different sleeping rhythms without any meetings of all people, etc...

so Nicolas was very sad and hurt
and told us after only two nights he would appreciate when we leave
as we are costing him too much energy...
in the end 3 people left with the white bus to Lausanne

5 of us stayed - after each one talking with him if that is ok - and are working on the oven still,
sadly making a pause every few hours when our strict boss is telling us again that it is time for tea :-)

Everything is quite fine now with Nicolas and he apologized for being rude
and today actually he has to learn about how to express his feelings without hurting anyone
and told us he is very happy that we stayed
and told us "thank you" for that he could just be like he is
without being punished for it
and that we just took everything as it was, trying to communicate and make the best out of the situation, so that it could be a good learning experience for everyone.
Thanks Nicolas,
for teaching us in your open way, that our group didn't havea good "rhythm" as you called it-
we realised this before, the situation here propably cleared up a lot
and we will work on it :-)
it was all really clearing communication here in this place I guess

Tomorrow we will hopefully finish the stove
and then we will also meet the people
who originally founded the first community here in this beautiful area...
They will come for dinner and hopefully we will by then have the first fire in "our" oven



So, by the way, about the ecovillage Clos du Doubs:
there is basically 3 farms here,
one of those is Nicolas farm.
There have been big communities in the 70s,
but now there is only one community left and in the other two farms there is only few people,
among those mostly travellers and one (or two) people livin there.
The ones who founded these old anarchist communities was Chaques and his sister.
They bought a farm and made a community out of it belonging to a foundation.

Chaques was quite well known for publicity actions,
like goin to the local prison (where he should be sent to because of not goin to the army)
with the beard of a shepherd in his face and with all their sheep goin with him

The police of course sent him away so...
but the sheep had eaten all the nice roses etc in front of the prison

2 years ago Michi and Remo (whom we also met in the Schule mit Herz) and some other people left one of the farms, they told us it was a very nice time and very good place, but not the place where they wanted to get old and so they had to leave...
since then all tries to establish a new community in the old farm house failed

But actually the people here - especially Nicolas - are longing for community
and there is enouph space, food and work for a lot of people in this beautiful place.

The mountains and nature are amazing
and life is very quiet up here...

We are enjoying it
and having long discussions about why most people prefer living in big cities
to this clearness up here...

and - even though we know that life here means hard work too (well, about 4 hours a day ;-) )
- in a way can't really understand it ...

-Anja

CLOS DU DOUBS PART 2

Falling ill
05.11. As we don’t wanna use word – problems – by itself (positive thinking, hehe), then I should say - we are having right now new challenges here:) One by one and by now almost all of us - we are falling ill,,, :/ It is kind of hard to be with our ideas on the move when the nose is full with shit and stuff. And as everywhere we go we are also helping out with many things which mostly takes physical power – it’s hard,,, At some point it feels that it has been just too much,,, And if you believe that the body is connected with your mind and all what comes from mind reflects in your body then it’s getting even more interesting. How much in common we actually have and how much of this collective unconsciousness works for us. I would say we are on the same flow for sure :) Just not sure where it will bring us…
06.11. Only today I realized why I wrote this previous text yesterday’s evening, kind of with no purpose as it doesn’t really fit anywhere, more just like reflecting my emotions. Now I know, as this morning came with some unexpected changes for all of us… We had some really tough morning – Nicolas wanted us to leave. Partly all this messy situation was connected a lot with us being ill – if you look for the root of this problem. And whether you look at the illness as a physical or mental weakness, he didn’t like it and made his statement clear for us. Then the situation started to unfold and even like reflecting us as a group he pointed out our strengths and our weaknesses. That was a gift – something we really needed at this point, and hopefully it will bring in us some good input in the future. Present situation also changed. As a result of what happened Arthur left our group, but the rest of us split in two groups – one left, going further, but other stayed after some negotiations with Nicolas till the moment the stove will be finished. We didn’t expect this to happen with us, however I really think that what happened, happened for good and all of us can learn something from this and as well that this really will change things for good in our future.

-Sani

...Read the rest here!

And then there was 8 ... ... About changes in our group:

Our group is changing dynamically all the time...

three of us left Clos du Doubs and are now in Lausanne
and our third bus is already in Spain

people are comin and goin...
here some words about and to the persons who left wnd who came:


Elias stayed in the Schule mit Herz and isn't sure yet if he will come join the tour again
We'll miss your bread - and you too of course!

Artur will go back to Schule mit Herz to get his papers and then follow own ways...
(travelling in a big group can really be tiring)
Time is art (I at least put it here now ;-) ) - keep juggling with it!

Lena will go to Venezuela soon for 8 months to work in a "children republic" there...
do good empowering job over there!

Thanks for travelling with us you lovely people
...have good luck on your trips
and don't forget to surf some skills ;-)


Very soon we will loose one more travelling mate who is still here...
One of the Anjas will leave to Sri Lanka
together with the oven maker that showed us about building a clay oven here in Clos du Doubs.
He lives there half the year and has an ayurveda centre there with his Sri Lankan wife... so Anja will know soon how to built saunas and do very good massages :-)
Enjoy and don't forget to send us some sun!

travelling...
school...
of life...


In the meantime we are having first chances to learn some french together with Kati,
the french girl who joined our group just few days ago.
J'éspère qu'elle va être très fatiguée tousjours parce qu'elle parle plus francais quand elle est fatigue :-)

life...
is change...

c'est la vie....

...Read the rest here!

Bruno Rossi

fairent and fairnetz



Today we visited Bruno Rossi of fairent.ch and fairnetz.ch
He has been a coach for years, done some therapies, etc

His main topic is (problems in) relationships and we can gain trust again in a relationship once we lost it...

We had a coffee or two and some nice talks, not really finding out why we had to meet but still being happy that we did so :-)




We actually had found Bruno for his fairnetz-subcategory "fairtrade". Whereas we actually thought that he wanted to build up a virtual fairtrade-network similar to e.g. lohas or karmakonsum.de (which is one topic some of us are dealing with since some time) we found that he actually doesn't mean anything like fairtrade labeled commercial goods... and that he is quite unhappy about the connotation of thw word "fairtrade".

The German word for "fairtrade" is "fairer Handel". "Handeln" means "to trade", but also "to act". So what he means with fairtrade is actually just "acting fair".

He is planning to build up a network for self-coaching, where people can find their sence of life again, think about how the life they want to live should look like and then also come together to act fair together.

He seems to be very active person, being in the world peace commitee, having been very active in rainbow family earlier as well as in a -Tauschring-

He also found one method of how to communicate non-violently when there is problems in realtionships.
The persons neutrally explain to the other persons how and when was the moment when he or she lost his/her trust in the other.
Then the other person(s) try to find solutions to gain the trust again
and collecting clear ideas what to do.
From the ideas the first person can choose what he/she finds necessary to gain trust again.

We told him a bit about some good open source software that he could use for his network (even though he doesn't seem to be that ready yet to really build up that network), and also about tsolife and the skillsurfers tour of course...

It was very short but good exchange of ideas
and I still have the feeling that it was quite important to meet him...
time will show why maybe? ;-)

...Read the rest here!

Exchange economy : starting with a stone- ending up with a scooter :-)

Since we are travelling we have been trading a lot without any money ...

Our newest trading game:
Aris from Slowenia gave us some sceletons of sepia she found in France,
that she had painted some celtic signs on which have different meanings... from inspiration to gentleness...

So everyone of us got the same thing now (well, moreless, as we have different signs and meanings, and also some of us carved some nice things into it...)
We will try to trade it for something else, which we will trade again and again and again...



Aris told about this girl who started to do this thing with a stone and ended up having a scooter
So we will try our luck and see what everyone will have in the end of the tour :-)

Moreover we will tell everybody he shall trade on with the sceleton
until whole world is trading with those sceletons ;-)

Artur already traded his sceleton with the nice human body and the heart on it against a button from the longo mai cooperatives with a nice "sheep-yin yang" on it.
Hope Bruno from fairent.ch will trade on with it

We want to inspire people to trade more like this again - also as we experienced it really works (even without sceletons ;-) )

For example: having a holiday house for painting Franks wagons...
exchanging some pumpkins and nuts against cheese and eggs at Hof Allne Wind...
... helping to cook for the seminary guests of Lena and Jana in the Schule mit Herz for staying there
... helping to build an oven in Clos du Doubs for stay and food...

So, just don't use this worthless paper no more
It's much more fun without!

Imagine there would be no money ...
no banks...
no stress in the supermarket...
no poor people...
no inflations...

but people would be trading with ... arts... ?

...Read the rest here!