On the roads of Danemark

Hi dear readers,

After this town we reached in northern Norway, Honningsvag, next to the north cap, we took a new direction, the south ! We went throught Rovaniemi where Anna was three years ago for a studing exchange, and through Oulu where we met a friend of Aymeric from the US. We are now in Turku, south Finland, where we are living at Tuomas place. This kind Tuomas invited us to sleep at his cosy flat when he saw our whitboard with this written on it: "Two travelers looking for a place to sleep for tonight". Thanks Tuomas !

Some pictures of our trip to the "south".

Northen Norway:

Reindeers, there are so many up there !

Anna, happy to see her ex university

Bicycle day-trip in Vasaa, Finland

Back to our adventures in Denmark: We saved three places who where really interesting to us, so maybe for you too !

VITSØHUS Do you remember Aero island, south Denmark ? We were there in May, at Morten and Petras place and their fabulous permaculture garden named Vitsøhus.

These two weeks were really interesting. We learned how to clean and keep clean all kind of stables. Every morning Petra cleans every stable of her farm and oh, surprise... it's does'nt smell like shit, thanks to everyday cleaning ! We also were so happy to feed three little cute lambs three times a day and met some shy alpagas ! Anna has experimented the shearing of cashemire goats. Not easy ! And we learned some nice permaculture technics.

Just born:

-On a slope, dig a hole in front of your trees, fill it with stones (not too small), and, when it's raining, water will come inside the hole and create a water reserve where your trees can drink when they need water. You can see it here:

-One permaculture principle which we daily experienced is to have edible plants next to the house. To cook easily and to prepare good tea, we juste picked what we needed nearby the house. In permaculture, ecosystems which are less usefull for humans and which are more autonomous are further from the house. A interesting fact learned there: During the Middle age, 75% of the income of a family was for food, in the begening of XXth century it was 50% and today, a family puts 10 to 15% of their income into food. Interesting, isn't it ? Aren't we decreasing the value of the food that we are buying by buying cheaper food with less quality? Thanks Petra, thanks Morten for this nice permaculture experience on an island! We will remember it. (website: https://www.vitsoehus.dk/en/ )

CHRISTIANIA

Christiania is the famous alternative district of copenhagen. We went there to meet its inhabitants to learn a bit more about this special place.

The flag of Christiania (the three "i" dots):

Created in 1971 on an ex military base, the "free town of christiania", is like a community and is kind of independent from Denmark, they have different rules and laws. Around 700 people are living there, each of them have been granted by the host comittee. Thanks to Georges we know that the initial idea was to live independently from the city without physical and moral misery. It's unfortunately not completely the case... Inside his little house, floating on the river, he explains to us that this independance is not really achieved, they need the city to live.

A Christiania group collects a taxe to the inhabitants to pay electricity and water to the city to run the water and electricity in this "independent" town. But, inside the community there are a lot of different initiatives like the construction group, agriculture group, restaurants, water and waste treatment, kids caring. We can find also these typical bikes from Christiania, usefull in the distric because cars are forbidden. Maybe you know them:

Georges live there since 30 years, he told us that canabis selling is legal but it's not good for the distric image. On the other side he is happy to see all these community initiatives and other alternative ways of living wich are everywhere in the district, it is a nice laboratory for that. We also met two young foreigners who where here in the wait of something else. These young people looked a bit lost and not really implicated in the district life.

Our global vision is in betwen good and bad. On the one hand it's a very colorfull place with so much possibilites of alternative ways of living and on the other hand there is all this drug traffic and misery which is present. Anyways, if you go in copenhagen, you should go there to visit this unusual capital district. (website: http://www.christiania.org/)

SVANHOLM

This community, situated in east Denmark, hosts permanently 80 adults and 60 children. In June, we spent two weeks in the fields to help picking, harvesting, weeding, sowing,... We were a big team of volunteer everyday ready to help our favorite manager Hanne !

Unbeliveable but true, since 1970, lands, forests, farms and an old castle are inhabited by some utopist people who realised their dream of a together-living life. The only mandatory thing is to give 80% of the family income to the comunity and to help three times a month in the kitchen. In exchange they have: a flat, cars, meals everyday, organic and local food, kids caring and a kindergarten (where kids of the villages around can also come)...

It's simple: there is no leader at all. Everybody is equal. There is an optional meeting every month to take the big decisions for the community and the absolute majority is required to make any decision.

To organise a place like this, a lot of these inhabitants are implicated in different little groups to take little decisions; like travelers hosting, new inhabitants, agriculture group, kitchen group, economic group... It is 10% of the inhabitants who have a paid job inside the community.

We were looking for bad sides: some people told us that there is like everywhere else some fights between inhabitants. But Hanne, for exemple, is realy happy to live here and share her farm with everybody. She prefers this life as her ex life in the city.

If there is room available, there are some contitions to go and live there: to be below 55 years old, to have as much kids as adults in the family, each adult have to have a full time job and having good first contacts with the inhabitants of the community.

Our time there was really positive, our welcoming was warm, smile and benevolent discussions. And we where so happy to be fed by local and organic food ! The sun of summer and all these amazing guys gave to us a taste of paradise !

Thanks and long live Svanholm!

Folio, it's an organic protection to avoid plastic in the fields.

Thanks Ivanna for your pictures from "fragments of svanholm" on facebook. ( website: http://svanholm.dk/index.php?id=73 ) These two months in Denmark were so nice to our ecological and spiritual quests. See you soon. A&A

#Anglais