When we went to Larzac it was more like a coincidence, than actually planned. We had no idea what is was about, we just had the name of a small community project, somewhere in Larzac.

Sam had just had „that feeling“… so we went.

What we found after searching for it for hours of drivin and walking round was: a very small village, some sheep, and a church. We found nothing really interesting there, except the sticker of a „free radio larzac“ on the back of a car that was parked there. The sticker didnt really fit with the village. The old, thick walls, the smell of centuries…

We didn’t have another idea what to do, so we followed the signs to the church, and entered into the old, moisty, dark building. What we found was: an exhibition, and a lot of information material about Larzac.

The picture became more clear…

Larzac was not a small village with a church, but it a huge region of 20.000 acres of land, consisting of many villages. „Paysans“, small organic farmers and „artesans“ (artisans, craftworkers) were spread all over the place, produced all kinds of food and crafts, and were joined in a big cooperative network.

We tried to understand what happened in this place, but couldn’t really figure it out, as my french was too bad, and Sam’s non-existent.

We took a map of the whole region from the church and decided to leave the village and to explore and find out more about the region Larzac. But there was a problem: we were hungry, our car was far away, and anyways there was no food in it. Okay, we thought, lets try to find some food from the farmers and shops which are all around. We decided to go for a village which had a bakery and a goat cheese shop. We had not had any real nice organic bread for such a long time! Only Spanish and french supermarket baguette… And I tried to live very vegetarian, almost vegan in this industrial, animal torturing world… so I really longed for some nice cheese too. Here I really had a good feeling about all these goat and sheep running almost free through the lowlands.

We walked a bit, then we hitchhiked a car. It stopped.

It was the guy with the free radio sticker.

It actually turned out to be the guy who makes the radio!

We got cought in the flow: Even though he went to the wrong direction, we stayed in the car, and went with him for some kilometres. We were just too curious.

I didn’t understand a lot of what he said, my brain ..todavia solo trabajaba en espanol.., and I realised I had become more Spanish than I had thought in the time in Spain. French seemed a really weird language to me!

But I understood the main things he said: that Larzac was quite known in France, and had a long leftish history. There was a military camp in the region of Larzac, and in the 70s they wanted to extend it. For this reason paysans who lived in the region were supposed to be expropriated.

But the founded resistance initiatives, and a massive supporting resistance movement came up. Thousands of people fought against the extension of the military camp, occupying the space and organising demonstrations and actions for about 10 years. In the 80s, the had won the fight.

Military just decided, okay, that is not worth it. Let’s leave them where they are, we’ll go somewhere else.

The camp is still there, but the farmers stayed, too. And more than that: many young people who came to help in the resistance occupations, and had learned to love the life in the nature, stayed and revived the old villages in cooperation with the old farmers. That’s where this huge network of paysans and artesans has it’s roots.

Just after having seen how the Spanish train company expropriates people (see escanda article), this history touched my heart especially strongly.

There was not so much to see in the radio station, which was hidden in a quiet forest, far away from anything else it seemed. Good-mooded with some reggae and ska music in our ears, but still very hungry, we decided to get to our bus, and explore more of the space with it - and to finally find some food. We said goodbye to the friendly radio guy and left, not without leaving some tsolife flyers in the radio station.

We walked for a bit, maybe for 1 km or so, and another car arrived. We hitchhiked it, and of course it stopped. Thinking back to all those depressing hitchhiking experiences on french highways, freezing in the cold winter on my way to Spain, I already loved this area.

We told the guys what we were doing, about tsolife and our trip, and they were really interested. That was the moment when I realised what a great place this was for tsolife! So many skills and ressources, so many nice people!

When we were just getting back into our bus, another car passing by stopped, just to tell us, that if we were searching for a place to sleep and camp, we should not hesitate to camp anywhere. This was a free place, he said. What a helpful people, I thought.

We found the small village, the cheese shop and the bakery. But no one was there.

In the whole village, which consisted of about 6 or 7 houses, there was only one guy. And he was under a car, working. We were really hungry and had no other choice. So we asked him for bread.

He came from under his car, went to the house, calling someone, whom he could not find.

Then, not even thinking about cleaning his dirty hands, he told us to take some bread ourselves and put some money into the box on the table.

When we asked him for cheese, he sighed, shrugged his shoulders, smiled and went to clean his hands to serve us, and must have thought something like „c’est la vie“… He told us to leave the bread money in the other houses box anyways. This was another „caisse“ of another family. Everyone doing everything in this village, I thought, and had the association that he money seperation must be more for easier counting than for seperatingin in between the families.

There was over a thousand question sin my head i would have liked to ask, but the language confusion in my head was to big to ask only one of them. We found out that 5 families lived in this village, nothing more. Siting there, eating, some old people arrived, and some other young men and women, all being busy, but slowly-busy and good-mood-busy.

A „bread“ in a supermarket is 45 Cent to 1 Euro minimum. This bread was 4 Euros one, and only one slice made me as full as half a supermarket baguette. I couldn’t tell if it really was the nicest bread I had eaten in a while, or if I had just been really, really hungry. But I loved it to sit there, in this small place, and eat handmade regional products. Maybe it was just the taste of the place that made me feel so …yummie!

We went on, to find more. In a place with a beekeeper, which was really far off road, we tried to find someone to sell us some honey, but we could not find anyone at all! We walked around and waited a bit, shouting if someone was there, but we were not lucky. We glanced into a pottery, where we could have just taken nice things, doors open, no one there. Of course we didn’t.

We decided to check a brewery, and get some selfmade beer as a gift for Sams Dad. On the way we passed a shepherd and sheep were blocking our road. The brewery guy was friendly and very talkative, explained us everything about his 3 year old company, his machines and his recipes – in french though , mixed with a bit of „frenglish“.

He was really enthusiastic about our travel and asked many questions, too. We got some „blonde“, „murone“ and some „vinaigre de biere“. He was very sorry, he said, he did not have any German beer recipes, his came from England, he told us.

He gave us some eggs for free („I got so many of them“), and we gave him some flyers of tsolife. If we’d stayed longer, he would have introduced us too some interesting people, he said. I would love to stay, indeed, but I just feel I need to stop travelling. It is getting to much. Wish we’d come to thise place earlier, this would have been a perfect place for staying longtime with a big group. So many possibilities! So much space! And so many things to learn about cooperation! They seemed to have really strong solidary economy networks here. Where else would these eggs come from, than exchange or gift economy?

We have started our car engine, he came running out of his brewery. „Wait! How did you find my brewery?“ he asks. We show him the map with the different producers on it, not only of Larzac, but of all the region around Millau. Joint advertising. „Yahouuuu!“ he goes happily, „it works! We only have it since 3 weeks.“

I ask who made them, looks like proffessional design, I wonder how they organise. „We did it together, we are doing everything together“, he sais. I like the answer, though it was not what I wanted to know. I hate language barriers. Anyways, we gotta leave.

We check „La Jasse, Maison de Larzac“, on the entrance of Larzac region, before we leave. In former times this was the main coordination point of anti-military-resistancde. Now: a cooperative organic shop with cafe and exhibition about the history of Larzac. „Wow, authentic radical chic!“ I think.

If that kind of place would exist in my place, I knew where I’d hang out to have a coffee.

Even more expensive than in the farmers places, sure, but really cozy and interesting. They sell all the products we saw all around Larzac, so people from Millau don’t have to drive all around the area and search for beekeepers who aren’t there. And some more stuff, like exotic soaps from a friend’s fairtrade cooperative in South America.

We have a look at photos of recent anti-GMO-protests in France, and try to understand the texts of the exhibition. „Agir ensemble“ is the heading of one text. „Act together“.

And I am indeed impressed how much we can reach, ensemble!

Last 5 posts by anja

• Que pasa? - December 15th, 2009
• project update - July 22nd, 2009
• erste Infoveranstaltung in München / first info event in Munich - June 21st, 2009
• back in the land of rain - June 6th, 2009
• game over ... the last day - May 31st, 2009