Trip Diary extracts - June

17 June 07, Templin

Spent the last few days slowly 'arriving' and adapting to Karlshof - although adapting is the wrong word. I'm just taking my marks and taking time to discover the place and people, and to open up. Yesterday, the summer meetings started to discuss the future of the project and all the wonderful things that could be done within the network. At first it was difficult to find my position and see where discussions were or should be going. Eventually I realised that I'm sticking right in the beginning of the whole project - that I'm seeing the first impulses of a network forming, that I'm a witness to an exciting process.
It makes me want to stay longer here. I feel like going to France and Spain is Verzettelung [dissipation of energy]. Altogether, I seem to be more attached to Germany. I also want to take part in the Clowns' meeting sometime in September, somewhere in the Wendland.


19 June 07, Templin

Developing further. I eventually took informal responsibilitz for moderating the last discussion as well as the stimmungsbild [general mood of the group] this morning. Moderators are definitely endowed with a certain power, and as I was trying to formulate what cristalised from the stimmungsbild, I felt I was pushing one position over another, perhaps unfairly.
[...]
I feel strong alone, and feel it's a good thing I am taking my trip alone. Although I still have some uncertainties as to where I can go, these tend to disappear and I get the feeling I can easily visit the projects I want.


21 June 07, Templin

Opened Jungle World [a left wing German newspaper] this morning and saw a photo of Pia and Andi [two friend clowns] smooching on the grass surrounded by dozens of photographers. Heehee. And then I checked my mail and there was a message from Pia. Nice coincidence.
The G8 paranoia hasn't totally left me. Yesterday night, a helicopter flew over the house twice and I couldn't help thinking it had something to do with me and my email update to the friends - to openly talking about what I did? But it's ridiculous. And just a few minutes ago, hearing once again police sirens in the distance, took me back to Wichmannsdorf [the activist camp where I spent my g8 time with the clowns], where sirens were constantly part of the background noise.
Yesterday I pedalled into town to take petrol to [P] who was stuck there with the car. Turned out it wasn't because of lack of petrol but just because the car was broken. In any case, I realised once I was there that I hadn't left the farm at all in a week, which was strange. It's good that I'm leaving on Saturday and will spend time on other places.


23 June 07, Fuhlenhagen

Where in flip did I land? Arrived drenched at around 3pm in Fuhlenhagen. I got caught in a storm at Wittstock as I was trying to get to the right motorway entrance and tad to make do with covering myself and my bags with my bicycle pelerine rain coat, crouching in a bush and staring ahead of me as the hail bombarded my back. Other than the wet weather, hitchhiking went fairly well. I hopped from place to place on the small roads until, after the storm, somebody saw my drenched carcasse and took me all the way to Fuhlenhagen.
Fuhlenhagen! O merry a place! One street, 'Village Street' (Dorfstrasse), and NO-THING. This is paradise and hell all at once - more hell than paradise. The gardens are lovely and neat and look as if a full time gardener worked on each of them. The houses are huge with large windows. I walked up Dorfstrasse until I reached #7 which happened to be empty and lifeless. I put my bags in a dry corner and waited outside, walked around, dozed off, walked up and down Dorfstrasse in the hope of finding - haha!- a place where I could get hot chocolate, or even just chocolate. But nothing.
Eventually, after 2 hours of my being unsure of whether to wait more or run away and set up camp in a field (the wet weather and the food question left me waiting), a mini bus arrived with a family. I stood up from my stone and walked up to them - oh how awkward. A bubbly young woman jumped out, a younger girl with an inquisitive look, and eventually The Parents - a stern, thin, dull pair with no facial expressions. Both looked embarrassed as I introduced myself and explained I'd arrived earlier than planned (it has to be said I changed the date of my arrival twice...).
"Well..., the mother said, that... will work too..." with the most unconvinced tone.
It turned out the bubbly young woman had just been picked up at the airport after a year away in Namibia. What an awkward timing to arrive in a awkward family.
[...]
I felt so uncomfortable... longed for the chaos of Karlshof, where at least I didn't feel I was acting inappropriate when I was making myself at home. I am definitely not going to be able to stay until Thursday morning in this place. As if to make it even clearer that I don't belong here, the cup I ended with at tea time said "Rudolf-Steiner-Grundschule". It feels like I've landed in a sect.
[...]
Felt melancholic during the day... on my trip, drove through the Bombodrom, passed the point where we'd entered into the forbidden zone on June first, and then through Schweinrich. 23 days ago that all was...! Tomorrow, Morgan is taking his boat to Canada. Wonder if I'll ever see him again. Thought of how I met the Vienna gaggle - Andi pestering against his bus. Katia, Suse, Markus - and Striedl of course. Longing for clowns' days. [...] And being stranded in this religious-alike family doesn't help me feel better.


24 June 07, Fuhlenhagen

[...] Am really having melancholic fit. Feeling lonely. Looking at the map to figure out where and how to go next (Doch Lübnitz zuerst? Visit Martin? Straight and earlier to Haina? If Lübnitz first, cancel weekend option in Berlin with clowns and leave earlier for France?) I end up staring at Wittstock-Schweinrich-Zechlin and longing once again for the camp. Why? Where does it come from? It was only one day at the bombodrom, so why do I have such intense links to it? I think what most disturbs me is the temporality of the even. It's not like Berlin - going back there, the people that I left when I set off will be around. But in Zempow and Wichmannsdorf, there is absolutely no one now. The whole life, community, feeling of common action, of togetherness - gone. I guess I must be mourning.
--
7pm. Very interesting afternoon spent with the Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft [economic community]. Started with a presentation on breeding and on the being of the plant, and how one could draw how it felt to eat the energy of a such a plant. The people seemed to buy it all enthusiastically, even the drawings of food-energy-perception, light etc. The farmer added that if we kept on eating plants which hadn't been planted and bred with "the idea of the plant" in mind, then our health would suffer. I'd never been in a setting with lots of grown ups accepting such esoteric shit. But why not... [...]
But then came the discussion and lots of questions I had [on the parallel economic structures] either got answered or raised, so that I could get a much clearer picture of how it all works. I also talked to a handful of members and to the treasurer. The latter finds the idea of decoupling money from the products fantastic and insisted the products in itself had nothing to with money, only the production and work behind it did. It is the agricultural activity, not the products, that people need to think of and finance. Most members - or at least the ones I talked to - seemed however only (or mostly) interested in food quality.
[...]
There was something very church like about the venue where we were gathered - including some spiritual-light-angel tzpe painting one gets in modern protestant churches. And there was some loud collective thanking of mother earth at lunchtime. I looked and smiled but it didn't help me one bit to feel more at ease.
[...]
Just talked to Haina and checked that I could arrive on Tuesday. Woman said was no problem. Looking forward to being in chaotic-collective settings once again.


27 June 07, Haina

Haina is gorgeous. And hitchhiking yesterday went wonderfully according to plan. Except... I arrived in Haina, or close by at the Autobahn exit, at 7pm. I called up to be picked up and explained where I was. The guy couldn't really understand the name of the place - until he eventually realised I had headed for the OTHER Haina... It was 7pm, I was in the middle of nowhere, and had to travel back to where I had been earlier in the afternoon, to the CORRECT Haina. The comic of the situation was well mixed with a dose of bitter annoyance. Hardly anyone drove up the motorway heading for Erfurt, and if they did, they were only going for the next exit. I hesitated: should I just pitch my tent in the field along the road and give up for the day? I had eaten my last sandwich and appel earlier in the afternoon and am too food obsessed these days to renounce a meal or even two.
So I took the next car that stopped. The grumpy man drove me to a train station - GRIMMENTHAL - which looked a mess and had no indication of when trains came nor where they went. I felt no trains ever came and would be stuck there for the rest of my life. Soon after though, my train came.
I was heading back for Eisenach - which I'd reached around 3pm with Philipp who had taken me in the pouring rain at Hildesheim and happened to head exactly for my way. We drove past where I should really had gotten off - but I didn't know.

In any case, once in the train, a certain sense of comfort took hold of me. I was unhappy about having paid 10.60, but considering I hadn't paid anything to get to Hamburg, to eat and sleep in Buschberghof, and to get down to Thuringia, it's still ok. The scenery was lovely - after flat brandenburg and mecklemburg, Thuringia is all hills and small mountains.

[...] How relieved I was to eventually arrive... at nearly 10pm...
Beautiful it is here. I slept in a Bauwagen [living wagon] - une roulotte. Small and sweet. The moon was beaming outside the window along the bed, the river goggling close by, hills and trees in the background - and delicious bread, cheese and farm produced saussage in my belly. I felt a deep and exciting sense of happiness.
The group here is much bigger than in Karlshof. It makes it more difficult to remember names - but the people are friendly. The family structures are much clearer than in Karlshof - clear papa-mama Bezug, and the parents take care of their own children. I suppose Karlshof is special in that respect because there is only one small child born in the community - and lots of single adults willing to treat Ella as their kid.


28 June 07, Haina

Funny coincidence - Benni from Ulenkrug whom I'd briefly seen in December there, and then again at the camp in Rostock, then in Wichmannsdorf, is here too until next week.
I've moved out of the roulotte until after the party, as it was planned to have someone sleep there who is arriving today.
[...]
Feeling a little unsocial tonight. I still need to arrive, settle down, get more of a feel for the people. Although this is already well on its way. Most of all I need to sort out my own uncertainties regarding my absolute lack of practical sense - or at least practical experience. I feel like I'm doing everything for the first time - setting up a dish-washer, unscrewing a bar off a Gerüst [scaffold]. I feel pretty useless most of the time and hope that people will tell me what to do - which isn't a good behaviour.


29 June 07, Haina

[...]
I don't really feel like leaving this place. As I was walking over to the Scheune [barn] this afternoon, I realised I was doing exactly what I wanted to do back last winter - visiting communces, these places I could locate on the map and had only heard of. I had found the entrance key. And yes. I am glad to be travelling alone. But I think I said that already.