[P2P-F] Fwd: A Decentralized Odyssee; summary of March

Sat Apr 9 22:05:43 CEST 2016

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mathijs de Bruin <mathijs at dsrp.eu>
Date: Sun, Apr 10, 2016 at 2:04 AM
Subject: A Decentralized Odyssee; summary of March
To:
Cc: Irena Turcinovic <irena at dsrp.eu>

(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-confirmats

 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
info at dsrp.eu
+31 6 44 838 131

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