Respecting the wishes of the village people, we decided not to mention the village name or other hints to it. This article reflects only my personal opinion about this place and doesn’t represent the general opinion of the skillsurfers group.
Birgit
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Imagine a crazy party… Even if you try really hard, I guess you cannot imagine the kind of crazy party we experienced in the squatted mountain village that we visited. For that reason, I don’t start with boring information about landscape and so on but with a report about this lunatic anarchist punk party we suddenly found ourselves taking part without being informed before.

Actually, we were sitting at the table having dinner with most of the village people. We listened to a kind of screamo hardcore metal somewhat music which didn’t really support a good digestion. It was turned on so loud that it hurt badly. People were rather screaming than talking with each other because of the music. This was nothing special for us because we already got used to the communication attitudes between the village people. What definitely was special, was when one guy who inhaled gas for cooking jumped on the table, rolled over plates and cups, stopped before one plate, got up to his feet on the table and totally out of his mind screamed at the poor guy that was trying to eat from his plate. Afterwards the freaked out guy took one table, threw it in the other corner of the room and grabbed benches as well to rearrange them somehow. After some minutes the room looked like total chaos. Total chaos which means total freedom to another village man I talked to. I asked him what he thinks about structure, schedules and trying to organize somehow in a group. He didn’t really care about those kind of structures even though they could be made up by a self-organized, self-sustained group. What he was interested in was “maximum freedom” and nothing else - a kind of “maximum freedom” that rejects any kind of rules and structures. Finally, everybody fled the room expect for some village guys and ladyz. Many strange ideas what else could happen at this party after I left came up to my mind while I was walking to the visitors lodge where the group already sat around the wood stove. Everybody who is interested in sharing my fictional and weird thoughts is welcome to read the story Punk sex orgy. Otherwise go on by reading my more or less (maybe only to me) sad report that continues after the story part…

Punk Sex Orgy

This story is fictional and doesn’t relate to reality.

Before you read on, turn on “Rage against the magine/Killing in the name“… it’s more fun

In the storage room one guy was seated on a box of apples while another one fed him in a violent way with apples making him almost suffocate or puke. One couldn’t really tell apart. In the kitchen one guy was laying on the dirt floor with his arms and legs spread out widely and being nearly unable to move any more because of all the stuff piled up on him. Others had decorated him with honey, cornflakes, noodles and all kinds of vegetables till the layers were about 1 meter high. Maybe this was the punk method of tar and feather. One guy turned on “Rage against the magine/Killing in the name” and then they started to jump on the poor vegetable guy while he was screaming delightedly the song line “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me! Motherfucker!”. But they didn’t stop and I guess he screamed it only because he wanted more people to jump on him. It seemed like a ritual thing. They took changes in this decorating one person and jumping on him/her. One guy put Nutella on his penis and started to fuck a loaf of bread while a puppy was watching. The women went mad with him and screamed at him that he should have put the puppy out before. It’s nothing a puppy should watch. One guy was watching a porno video of the last sex orgy while another one was doing another movie of this sex party. Later on, I found out they had a storage of hundreds of self-made porn movies on the attic. Maybe they make their living with selling those freak porn movies.

Afterwards one person pulled a pig on a rope in the room to fuck it. But before he could go on with his perverted idea the pig escaped and ran through the living room. Guys tried to catch the pig and were chasing it through the kitchen and living room. Suddenly it dropped dead without any reason as it seemed. I got the idea that it maybe died of a heart attack because it couldn’t stand the music. The men cutted the pig in little pieces and spread its blood all over them and the room. Two woman inhaled cooking gas and started to shave the dogs. They undressed and covered themselves with sticky pig blood and honey and put the dog hair on their body. Then they started to move on four legs and making wolves sounds. They were ready to attack the men who in the meantime had shaven the cats to make penis enlargements with their fluffy dense hair. Afterwards their penises where about the triple size than usual. The scene looked so dangerous with the wolf women making wolf sounds sitting on the tables ready to jump on the men and the cat haired penis man in fear shivering on the ground. Now, they were ready to have sex with each other. The shaved cats and dogs gathered in front of the heated wooden stove shivering too because they were cold or afraid - I cannot tell. Then they started it. I cannot describe what I saw, it was too disgusting so I focused on one of our guys who somehow got in the kitchen with all the freaked out punks. His face was distorted by fear and he was jumping and running so wildly up and down the rooms so that none of the village people could catch him and put different body and food stuff in his body holes. Somehow though they managed to undress him. I finally freed him and put some blankets over the poor trembling guy. From this moment on, he stopped shaving and let his hair grow and we started to call him Tarzan.

… Back to reality….

After the party we were told, that these kind of partys are nothing special here. Summarizing this event, it can seem somehow strange, brutal or dangerous to outstanders but on the other side I found out what a really “open space” could look like. A place where everybody just does what he/she feels like to do or where it is allowed to just do nothing all day long without being blamed by anyone for being a lazy bastard. On the other side you really need to be a strong person in this place because if everybody is allowed to do everything borders of some individuals are violated more often than in the mainstream society and in that case you need to protect yourself. Maybe because of that reason people were not so open and willing to talk to us strangers.

We encouraged people to take part in our ideas of sharing knowledge and building an anarchist network of knowledge - the main ideas of the skillsurfers project. I explained to two women and a man but they told me, that they were not interested at all because they don’t want to share their knowledge with e.g. ecovillages like Longo Mai or alternative companies. When I asked them for what reasons they don’t want to cooperate with e.g. Longo Mai, I was told that their ideas of life and ideals are totally different. I could feel some strong rejection towards some other projects we are visiting and I mentioned to them. One woman also stated that our project is too utopian and that in this place there are mainly realists.

Maybe now, you are interested in some background information on this very interesting place we visited. It is a lovely mountain village in the South of France that formerly was left by village people and then squatted by some people from Paris. Now, the squatted village exists for nearly 20 years and about 10 people and 8 dogs live there. I was told that all of those first squatters where not there any more. Now there are punks and their culture. I got a pretty good insight in their punk culture: having lots of dogs, skulls paintings everywhere which didn’t create a nice but rather unpleasant and uncomfortable atmosphere, harsh and very direct talk (I was told that it is more important to be honest and to scream at each other to solve conflicts than to be polite and solve problems in a friendly discussing way.) Another interesting thing I found out was, that some of them burned books for starting fires in wood stoves. That terrified me especially, cause it’s a thing that in German speaking countries few people would do because Hitler had people do it. But even though Hitler wouldn’t have done that, it is a quite strange and brutal thing to me to burn books because some other people put much work in building a library there and I would respect that rather than destroy it. Harmony is a thing you shouldn’t be looking for when you go there but if you are interested in harsh conditions, people trying to live by themselves rather than in a group and survive somehow this squatted village is worth a visit. Also when you look for an “open space” where things are allowed that are not commonly allowed elsewhere you could be happy there. It’s maybe also a good place for people who don’t want to do anything expect from taking drugs, drinking and hanging around.

As you maybe already figured out it was quite difficult to communicate with the village people because of our rather poor language skills, the southern French accent and also because people seemed rather closed and not really willing to talk with us. There were lots of prejudices from both sides that actually couldn’t be dissolved because of the poor communication and language barriers. Actually, I can not tell which group had more prejudices against the other. All I can tell is that this place was scary and I didn’t feel well there. Some of the girls of our group were also afraid of the strange men there because they seemed to be very lonely and just looking for a fuck when they talked to us. One of them talked to me and another girl while we were in the library doing internet stuff without light and freezing fingers which made it difficult to type. He didn’t even ask if he could join us. He just joined and sat in between us. He started staring in a pretty disgusting sexual way at me and than again at the other girl. He even started talk like “If you are cold at night, you can come to my bus” or “Dance with me at the party. I’m a too good dancer”. I would call that sexism and treating women as objects. But if I’m to respect their maximum freedom, I can say nothing against it.

On the other side there were pretty cool people too. Those people probably stayed in their cosy homes and didn’t join the other village people in getting drunk and partying every night in the kitchen and the living room cave painted with skulls. I got to know a guy who kept animals and did a lot of perma culture and worked a lot in the fields. He explained to me a special type of fallow land to let the field relax for 5 years so the soil gets fertile again and no creatures are harmed that live in the earth. On a field they piled up earth, compost (they have a compost toilet), and straw in rows and let it rest for about 5 years until the whole field is flat again. Then they start to plant vegetables on it again. This method is less harmful than the mainstream society agricultural method of plugging away.

Maybe you are also interested in basic hygiene in this kind of place. They got a compost toilet. Prepare yourself to enter the middle ages virtually when you go in a castle room without doors and windows and with a hole in the ground in one corner of the room. (Don’t let small children go there alone unless you don’t want them to drown in shit when they fall in.) Then you shit in the hole and clean your ass with taped water because toilet paper shouldn’t go into the toilet as well as urine because then the compost gets to fluid and cannot be used on the fields. To prevent it from smelling to much they put saw mill waste on it.

For washing yourself you can heat a wood stove in the kitchen which heatens water in a boiler that can be used for taking a shower in a dirty unheated room next to the kitchen. This process takes about 5 hours. Maybe that’s why they don’t use it. Maybe they have a better washing method in their cosy homes we never were invited to visit (but we also didn’t ask). So we didn’t take a shower in this facility showed by them to us. Some of us took a bath in the river. I tried to bath in the room. Water and room was cold, outside temperatures about -3 to 10 degrees. I had difficulties binding my shoelaces afterwards because my fingers were nearly frozen to ice lumps. The whole process took me about 2 hours. While I was up there I mainly focused on staying alive and not getting too dirty.

According to me, this place is made for survival of the fittest and the strongest - Definitely no place for me. I had a hard time imaging me falling ill there. I was frustrated and sad to see what happens to this lovely mountain village surrounded by pretty nature. I felt that you could reconstruct it nicely and make a harmonious friendly place there very different from what they make of it. I’d rather stay and work in the mainstream society than joining them in their insufficient, brutal and unfriendly communication lives. Politeness is not a value that I want destroy. That’s a value that should stay for sure. But maybe they are not impolite at all and it was all a problem of lack of language skills - maybe or maybe not. But probably not, if I trust my feelings.

As we don’t want to publish photos of the village, I post some images from our thyme collection tour: