We Travel For You Ltd.

Nearly two months ago, Johannes and I started spinning around the idea of our summer trip through Eastern Europe, and decided we could try make a photo and text documentation of the political projects and people we get to meet. So we got our acts together - at first Johannes more than me - and did some first internet research to find some eastern left wing presence. We asked political friends for contacts and ideas. We discussed our conceptions and Johannes started writing a draft application to get funds from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation for political education (the name should tell you which political landscape the foundation belongs to) to get a few euros to finance the costs for films and development and book layout. We reworked his draft together, and I gave it its professional final touch thanks to years of experience working in a company where a report's good looks matter more than the contents. And off it all went to the foundation.

Last week, we heard back from the foundation. Our project description had been forwarded from department to department to eventually reach the eastern Europe section, where, they said, they could not finance the project. But... they had another offer to make.

And so it is that we now have this perfectly unexpected, random offer from the foundation to travel through Bulgaria, Romania and North Serbia and find projects and organisations dealing with conflict mediation, strengthening women's rights, offering political education and such. They would actually pay us for that and cover part of the travel costs. Our travels would then officially be "research".

The "problem" is: we would hardly have any travel costs, hitchhiking as we would, and do not really need the money. So why would we take on the offer? I'm not sure we will, but we both see positive and negative points in it and need to talk with the foundation before we can decide anything.

• positive points
  

- we would have a Very Random Job
- we could give the projects and people we meet a contact to the rich west and its money reserves,
- I would get new work contacts through the foundation, which is always good when one has just quit the safety of regular employment,
- I'd have a little extra money for my still unplanned autumn and winter.

• negative points

- we would be traveling in the name of the foundation, and not as free travelers,
- the temptation of getting traveling costs reimbursed could take us away from the challenging (but more interesting) path of hitchhiking,
- we would be potentially working towards the integration within the system of social movement and other extraparliamentary groups.

These lists are not exhaustive and probably too sketchy to be fully clear, but that's all you'll get for now, for I'm tired from all the work on the women's straw bale house construction site (today and yesterday, plastering the walls with a mix of clay and cow dung. Now that was cool work. Really.)