Welcome to the skillsurfers blog! Currently we are working on a film about the tour and on our brochure. And keep doing skillsharing and handdrawing sessions every once in a while (as you can see on the pictures )

We did not find the time yet to sort articles about the projects we visited, and will do so soon. Til then, feel free to flow around in this blog, see photos and find out about lots of alternative places in southwestern Europe. You can use the tags (on the right side, scroll down) to find your way through our trip and topics you are interested in! Or just use the timeline (on the left)

If you wanna know what is happening in Germany right now: Check our new wiki at https://we.riseup.net/tsolife+skillsurfers and also see our brochure pages gallery at https://we.riseup.net/schildkroete/skillsurfers-brochure-gallery+37152

Hello from Berlin

The tour is not dead already - now the serious part starts

We want to make a film (Anna), collect and evaluate data (Sam) and make brochures and exhibitions (Anja) - and we need your help!

You can find uptodate infos at our new wiki at https://we.riseup.net/tsolife+skillsurfers
If you want to participate in the process, please go to we.riseup.net, register and join the group tsolife and then skillsurfers.

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So, que pasa in Germany?

I made first experiences with evaluation of our tour, which means: I tried to share my skills and experiences with people who were not on the trip.

Our first info event in Munich was a bit chaotic as usual , but nice we did it. Our challenge was top try to make parents and grandparents, friends and other people from Munich understand what we did in the last 8 months… we showed some phots and then talked a bit about some topics that we learned about while travelling.

Well, we talked to long and in the end people were quite tired and confused, but at least it seems most of them realised that we are not only hanging out but seriously working on — something

Here in Berlin I had the chance to test my new organisation and mediation method - skills on the brueckenschlaeger - meeting that we had in a village near to the Polnish border… WOW, some methods actually do really work with a group that is miotivated to NOT just dynamically hang out! –

Moreover I held a first permaculture workshop here in Berlin and will continue working on it to make it better and more participative

Elias from Switzerland visited us here and hopefully will help us a bit Peter was here for a while and same with him, please make some drawings about how to make a flute, etc

Am 26.6. um 18.00 findet in München vorraussichtlich im Eine Welt Haus (www.einewelthaus.de) unsere erste Infoveranstaltung zur Tour statt. Geplant ist, über die Hintergründe der Tour (skillsharing Netzwerke) aufzuklären, Fotos zu zeigen, Fragen zu beantworten, und zu einigen spezielleren Themen, mit denen wir uns unterwegs beschäftigt haben, etwas zu erzählen.

Anna über Gesundheit, Ernährung, die Lebensmittelindustrie und ökologisches Bewusstsein, Sam über verschiedene Modelle von alternativen Selbstorganisationsstrukturen, zB Food-Coops, Anbaukooperativen u.ä. und ich über Permakultur.

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We will do our first info event about the tour on the 26 of June, in Munich propably in the “Eine Welt Haus” (”One world house”). We plan to explain backrounds about the tour (skillsharing networks), show photos and answer questions and also tell about some special topics which we learned about while travelling.

Anna will tell about health, nutrition, the food industry and ecological consciousness, Sam about models of alternative selforganised structures, like food-coops, agriculture cooperatives, etc and me about permaculture

we are back in germany since a few days and started working on sorting contacts, photos, preparing exhibition and brochures… and preparing the brueckenschlaeger meeting in early july.

I live in good old soma house where the tour started 8 months ago for a month, sam is at his parents place, we meet anna in a few days. my sister celebrates her 18th birthday next weekend and in a month  i will do another move, up to börlin zitttttty

i am sitting in denk:mal in bern, switzerland again, where we were already on our way to france last year… (see other blog article) and we will leave to germany today

people are speaking kind of “german” again , the city seems like nothing new and the people are the same as last time and the same as anywhere else somehow - but this is my own feelings and nothing objective i guess…

i am confused as i start to really feel: this game is over  NOW

no more travelling, no more new adventures, from now on we know everywhere we go, we know people, we have concrete plans

an important phase of my life ends and i feel a bit sad, but more happy and looking forward to having a lot of time and space for creating many nice things of the impressions and materials we collected …

right now i dont even find the time to type 2 nice blog articles about Matavenero and Larzac and put them online - they are waiting for me on some old crappy paper which was the only thing i has with me the moments i wrote them

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!

We are back in France, at the moment in Millau in the pyrrhenees back in the country of mc-do-wifi-stealing

We went about 2000 km in the last 2 weeks and will go on in that speed to be back in munich SOON, spending the time in the car with brainstorming for brueckenschlaeger conference and the company/collective and our visions in general …

We spent 2 nights and an amazing day in escanda, a beautiful centro social in the mountains near Pola de Lena in Asturias. The (our impression: very well-working) collective exists since about 6 years and consists of a varying number of about 12 (?) people from different countries. Their main focusses are to built food/growing cooperatives and education (this is where they got most of their money from –> english teaching camps for kids, ecological education, etc)

We talked a bit with some of the people and went with them to their fields, where they grow their own “escanda” (spelt) and beans, and corn in another one. Also we saw their beautiful gardens with many more vegetables and their self-built house.

We came in a difficult phase as they are now suffering from of the spanish train company who is building a tunnel under their place. Their main house is in danger of collapsing and the future of the project is not clear. 2 months ago they were suddenly told to leave the house within only 1 day - the workers put some strange wood construction onto the walls to support them, but anyways you can see the damages the explosions under the area already caused.

The land and main house belongs to a foundation which probably won’t let them back in even if the house is still usable afterwards. Now the discussions are if they should try to get back the house later on (if it is still possible to use it) or try to find another space and just leave their beautiful selfbuilt house that costed them 4 years building time …

(I dont really have time to write more now, maybe I will continue later on )

We hope all the best for this beautiful project, dont let go, escanda people!

we are travelling really quick now

we left portugal and are back in spain

i am writing from escanda in northern spain, asturias, yesterday we visited matavenero in galicia.

both places are beautiful and inspiring… later more hopefully

but maybe no more photos til we are back in germany

greetz, anja

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Sitting in Matavenero, Galicia, northern Spain, 1000m high above sea level, and it is about 10 o’clock in the morning, on a sunny day in may. I could forget about all these facts and figures enjoying that great view over the mountains, the small individual-style, colourful houses, the horses, the huge dome which was built for community events and the childrens toys lying around in the green grass.

I can hear birds singing, all kinds of insects whiring and buzzing, chicken gaggeling, and some reggae music from somewhere near the center of he village. I can smell flowers, and I feel a bit like a tourist.

I am a tourist this time, indeed, coming here only for a day, taking photos, writing an article and leaving again. I am looking forward to Germany so much, but I know all these places are places to come back to … I would so love to stay if I wouldn’gt really want to leave now. Would like to get to know the place, the people …

A least I got to talk a bit about the place with a guy who just came by… he speaks German, around 30 years old, and his first baby will be born in about a month, in Matavenero.

He himself grew up here, in Matavenero. He moved here with his mother when he was 8 years old. He was living wih her in a tipi, then they decided to built a house. And he stayed.

Matavenero, a community which exists since 40 years already, is one of the few communities, where a new generation, who grew up in the place, is staying (and not leaving, like inmamynother communities).

Many other communities have serious problems of attracting young people.

We heard that he is not the only child of Matavenero who is still living here, and new young people arrive, too. Asking him why, he says: „I have visited other places, but what I like here is that it is really layed back and quiet, and that you can really do your thing“

About his mother, who does not live here any more, he says: „We complement one another perfectly“. He is a lover of the ideas of age spanning living and living with nature i seems.

He is very critical towards life in the cities, keeps telling us stories about his childhood, and how he would react onto cities back then. When he came to a city, first, the supermarket were an adventurous and colurful fair for him and the other kids to play around – but after half an hour it already got to much.

They would go to buy some French Fries, or whatever was the cheapest thing they could find. But then not only eat this, but finish all the buffee and sometimes rests of what people would leave on their plates. He tells it like he’d still be such young and at least dreaming about contuining to play around like that.

The community consists about 80 people (including children) from different national backrounds. To stay here really is a choice to make: unlike in southern Spain, winter here, high up in the mountains, can get really cold.

So, one simple rule, „the only rule“, he tells us, seems to prevent any serious problems in this place: stay here for at least a year, before you build anything. Nobody who is not serious about really wanting to live here stays for he winter, without an own house, sleeping in the guest rooms or as a guest at peoples houses.

I wonder how often he has told all these things to visitors like us before:

„You can be happy that I tell you all of these things at all“, he sais, and I see he is indeed a bit tired of repeating.

In general the place is very open to guests, who have that self-governing guest house to use.

People here make some money with them, selling things in a little „tienda“, running a bar, selling artesania as well. But it doesn’t look as if you’d need a lot of money here: people have gardens and good water, there is hell of solar panels everywhere.

The place was occupied at first, back in the 60s. Unlike in other places, the state supported the idea of reanimating this old village. They are now a registered, accepted village and even have an official mayor. A windmill company, who built windmills on „their land“ even has to pay them money for it.

Compared to Beneficio, which has the same roots (Rainbow family movement) and exists about as long, it is really an impressive place, with impressive infrastructure. Even a couple of elderly Spanish tourists who are wandering around the mountains, and by chance ending up here in the same day we are here, are really surprised: „we have never seen any village beautiful like this“, they say.

If he ever went to a school, we ask our new friend with the big smile.

Well, he did, for a few years. It was really bad, he sais.

If his kids ever want to go to such a school, he would support them to do it, but if not, he’d not force him.

„How would your perfect community look like?“, we ask him.

He sais he doesn’t know, how to make a community work, but for sure you cannot like it work within a generation, he sais. First you got to raise a psychically healthy and stable, „normal“ (he smiles) generation, who can then rise their kids in another way.

Even though he has that crazy eyes and laughter, talks a pretty weird mixture of languages, and is definetely not what people in the cities would call „educated“, I can totally see that this guy really seems to be more healthy and happy than many other, „better educated“ people I’ve seen there.

Maybe he knows more about the really important things in life than any school kids.

„You know what?“ he sais, and his eyes get that crazy shining glimmer „I would like to be an old Germanic, or a shaman in a tribe in the jungle. Those people really work together! And they have all these witches and gods and tales – they really have fantasy!! That’s what I would like to be…“

]]> http://www.skillsurfers.net/blog/2009/05/19/matavenero/feed http://www.skillsurfers.net/blog/2009/05/17/permaculture-workshop http://www.skillsurfers.net/blog/2009/05/17/permaculture-workshop#comments Sun, 17 May 2009 14:35:33 +0000 anja http://www.skillsurfers.net/blog/?p=718 some photos from the permaculture workshop of the project “arte de viver”, which rita held in the casa viva on the first day, giving a theory introduction and showing the garden of casa viva - and visiting a community called “quinta cabeza de cabo” 150 km south of porto on the second day. the project was financed by [...]]]>

some photos from the permaculture workshop of the project “arte de viver”,

which rita held in the casa viva on the first day, giving a theory introduction and showing the garden of casa viva -

and visiting a community called “quinta cabeza de cabo” 150 km south of porto on the second day.

the project was financed by eu like ours and they went with a bus and about 30 people (including old people, children, etc) to the community to see the gardens and how people live there - like our tour just with a bigger and more mixed group and just for 1 day.