---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Mathijs de Bruin <[email protected]> Date: Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 2:04 AM Subject: A Decentralized Odyssee; summary of March To: Cc: Irena Turcinovic <[email protected]> (English version below…) Lieve vrienden, English ———————————————————————————————————————————————— Dear friends, As you might know, last month we drove off by car to the South of Europe, to explore various sustainable, natural, decentralized and autonomous forms of living- and perhaps also…to escape the winter. Want to know where we are or ware we have been? For a while now, Mathijs has set up a digital map, which automatically keeps up the position of our car. You can find the map in the link below: https://maps.dokterbob.net Our journey plans, in as far as they are known, we will publish on the Hackpad of the Decentralized Society Research Project: https://decentralize.hackpad.com/Iternary-2016-gfjSSjeTTj3 Furthermore, we have made pictures, selected them, and placed them online: https://cloud.dokterbob.net/index.php/apps/gallery/s/M0up5odmM5hjQzj# Roughly, in March we have visited the following places: 1. The house of Jip’s parents in Lunas in Southern France- to breathe out the city and breathe in the country side and nature. 2. “Els Gorgs” (“Gorgistan”) the (winter) residency of the Dutch (and international) natural construction fanatics “Mas con Menos”. 3. Peace Garden “Lung Ta”, the ‘neighbors’ of El Gorgs, where finally we truly succeeded to let go of the city. 4. The post-capitalistic, eco-industrial, hacker colony “Ca La Fou”. 5. Can Pipirimosca, an ecological farm near the town “Valls”. 6. La Casa del Dragon, one of the locations of the decentralized artists/ecological community “Famila Feliz” . Hence, we’ve been keeping ourselves quite busy. We shall now briefly touch the mentioned destination, to give you a rough impression of our experiences. Apart from that, on Mathijs’ blog about decentralized communities, we will try to publish more in-depth info and stories. In case the address has passed your attention: http://dsrp.eu Lunas ——— Lunas a wonderful old village in the mountains near Perpignan. Jip de Ridder, founder of the ‘Commoneasy’ peer-to-peer insurance and his parents, offered us make a stop here and get used to the rhythm of travelling and natural environment without spending our whole travel budget in South of France.. We have spent about a week in this beautiful area; made trips through the hills and cuddled before the stove to keep us warm. We were happy to breath out our packing-stress, before going to our first (topical) destination. Els Gorgs ———— Through multiple channels Mathijs got across the name ‘Gorgistan’ and ‘Mas con Menos’. After meeting Sieger on a meeting about a Dutch eco-village-festival, we proposed to visit them outside of their regular schedule of natural building workshops. However, due to a tiny miscommunication, the inhabitants of Els Gorgs turned out not to be informed about our arrival. Regardless, we stayed a single night in the old mine of Gorgistan, made a big walk through the area and by excellent advice of Sieger, pursued our way to the nearby Peace Garden ‘Lung Ta’. https://decentralize.hackpad.com/Gorgistan-2etqYCXb2XT Lung Ta ——— In the wonderful peace garden of Lung Ta, we were received by Isabel, a spiritual (but pleasantly undogmatic) 70 year old lady with the vigor of a youngster. We felt received as long lost members of the family. The first nights we even slept in the meditation room! At Lung Ta, we worked four hours in the garden/kitchen. The rest of the time were mostly finding inner peace and: enjoying. After the first couple of nights we moved to the dusty, Romanesque house of Isabel, which was thousand year old. There, we shared a bent-through, one-person bed but slept like babies. Nevertheless, after a while we decided it was time to leave; other interesting destinations were awaiting on our horizon. https://decentralize.hackpad.com/1320-Peace-Garden-Lung-Ta-fv8expaLG4J Ca La Fou ————— After various documentaries and a lot of stories of friends, especially Mathijs was having very high expectations of this community. However it would have been wise if we had contacted them weeks before as they had limited capacity of receiving visitors. Furthermore, the provided information about limited facilities turned out to be very accurate indeed. Luckily we found an Airbnb in the nearby town and were received very warmly by our host. Across the end of April, Ca La Fou will organize the event “Hack the Earth”. There is a small chance we will make it to be present there on our way to Italy. If not, we will have save a meeting with Ca La Fou for a next journey. https://decentralize.hackpad.com/Ca-la-fou-26snajVPS8C https://calafou.org/ca/content/simbiotica-hacktheearth-2016-tallers-confirma... Can Pipirimosca ——————— After our visit to Ca La Fou, we wanted to pay the artist’s community “Casa Del Dragon” a visit, but on that moment, it was not the right occasion yet. Juan, the initiator of La Casa Del Dragon referred us to the ecological farm, which refuses to call itself ‘a community’ but does receive volunteers (and WOOF’ers) and experiments with self-sustainable, ecological gardening. After a terrifying exit from the highway (it appeared so sudden, we had to choose rather to ride in the grass bank or hit a truck!) we were received with a simple room and meal. As we were near a highway and warned that the rooster (unlike they teach us in children’s books) would begin to crow from 4 'o clock onwards, Mathijs preventively put his earplugs in that night. The following four days we were put to work hard on the land from day until night. On the first day we helped preparing the soil for sowing (the plants). The days after, we worked as unpaid construction workers on the realization of a garden shed. The standard working day at Can Pipirimosca took 7 hours. You can imagine, how as city folks (softies), we were approaching exhaustion. Perhaps this place learned us that authoritarian/hierarchic ways of working combined with long, physical labor, was really not for us. We realized how important it is for us to be actively involved in processes and to have a dialogue. We found ourselves thirsty for creativity, physical work combined with mental engagement and - we have to admit - a basic level of comfort. https://decentralize.hackpad.com/Pipirimosca-cRIHjy986uN La Casa del Dragon ————————— To get over a week in an environment reminding us of our homeland (in the sense of its flatness and traffic noise), we went to camp in a natural park at the beachfront. It was marvelous to be able to breath healthy air, hear no cars and we spent a cozy night in the tent (although opinions on camping diverge amongst ourselves). The next day Juan received us in ‘the house of the dragon’ in the eye-catching, picturesque, fairy tale town Cervera del Maestre (half an hour from the coast town of Vinaròs), where we are staying at the moment. Although we pay 10 euro per night for our stay here, we enjoy life and relative self-determination. The work is satisfying and involving and only takes up part of our days. Juan, our host, invests a lot of attention in teaching both theory and practise. For example: yesterday Irena and Mathijs learned how to plant grapevines and avocado plants and have helped to build a (concrete!) sculpture in the garden. Plus we are in an environment of which the rustic beauty is hard to express in words. Apart from that, the living community’s way of organizing and balancing power is very interesting. Juan, the artist and initiator, has a lot of valuable experience in building, agriculture, social experiments and living communities. It was worthwhile to get to know him as well as other visitors of this house. https://decentralize.hackpad.com/Casa-del-Dragon-UjUQwyNZCRE Next destinations —————————— Having visited a lot of places where we volunteered, after La Casa del Dragon we feel the need to distance ourselves from this mode a bit and to fully manage our own time and to be able to document and process the gained lessons and reflect upon it. The coming week we expect to go to Granada, to perhaps visit the sea shortly and to visit Toca de Coelho (‘The Hole of the Rabbit’) in Algarve, which is in the South of Portugal. We’ll keep you up to date of our adventures! Love, Mathijs & Irena Irena & Mathijs — Decentralized Society Research Project http://dsrp.eu / http://dsrp.eu/hackpad [email protected] +31 6 44 838 131 -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/