Hello ecotopia biketour friends,
João and Alice, our international coordinators, have been in Barcelona for one month already, they have had many incredible adventures and felt like blogging about what they’ve been up to:
Alice and João working on the office
We have spent the first few weeks mainly trying to get contacts (an endless task) and looking for concrete places and projects to pass by. We have been working out important dates (registration, starting and end dates, big stops) and making a big tasks plan (website, route details, wiki organisation, propaganda, video, etc…). These are all happily up on the wall in Research and Degrowth’s office next to a giant southern Europe map, our constant source of inspiration!
As you can see, the website had been revitalised, the wiki is on the path to becoming more organised and many exciting places continue to pop up on the brainstorming map, most of these have already been contacted. It’s such a pleasure receive almost daily emails from people who are really enthusiastic about this biketour and want to help out or participate. Although so much information is being passed on to us, we still need to work better on our communications skills (and tools), especially as neither of us speak much French or Italian. We are really happy to have been offered translation help, this will really get the wheels in motion (thanks Maryse and Camille!).
Mezcal Squat - Reclaim the Fields Gathering
We have also been taking time to get to know Barcelona, there are some amazing projects here. We have visited many squats and social centres, met old BT participants at Can Masdeu, Alice built a bike at the Biciosxs DIY-workshop and João is participating in a local squatted social centre.
On the last weekend of February we went to Can Decreix (the new house of degrowth), in Cerbére, where we had our Wintermeeting, check the minutes for more details.
After that João and Yo headed to the Reclaim the Fields gathering in Torino, Italy. Alice and Guillem joined them some days after. The gathering was a great place to get many more contacts and people interested in the tour, we met amazing people and held a workshop on Ecotopia Biketour and other action-travel groups, many people participated.
NO TAV Vall di Susa
While in Torino, as well as all the long (but productive) meetings (which had an amazing team of real-time interpreters), workshops and guerrilla gardening, we had the chance to join with and get to know the NO TAV struggle in Vall di Susa. We joined them in the streets and behind the barricades, along with people from the local villages, old and young, dancing and playing music and enjoying resistance!
At the end of the week we had to return to our EVS Volunteer formation in Coma-Ruga, but one of the Biketour trailers finally managed to hitch back to Barcelona before we did ;-)
Check more pictures at yo’s album.