2016 – Page 9 – Ecotopia Biketour

This year’s theme

ola July 2, 2016 September 8, 2016

It seems like trying to live in a sustainable way in a mobile community we constantly find ourselves reusing other people’s trash. We can’t grow our own but we try to keep our carbon footprint as low as possible, finding alternatives to buying new. Obviously, Western European trash is very different from the trash we see in the east of the continent. Last year in Scandinavia we were able to source nearly all of our food (and even clothes and shoes!) from supermarket food skips without much effort. We had a dumpster diving team on the rota every day and…

The Rocketstove

Ecotopia Biketour 2016 June 26, 2016 July 3, 2016

“Kraft Automotive” (Force Carmotivs) – is written on the barrel out of which the 2016’s Rocketstove is made. It was built in the Radical Allotment Gardens in Warsaw in the first days of the biketour. Built out of Trash that the R.O.D – people had collected. We could use all of their stuff, they had that barrel and some leftover ovenpipes. They hat even some of that alluminium-tape which is made for exactly that purpose. Actually we only had to buy the special insulation material required called Perlite. It is some vulcanic stone material, natural and very light. So what…

Chaos on the way to Puszcza Białoweża

Candid June 22, 2016 June 22, 2016

We have left Warsaw with 1½ days delay, on the 19th of June. We are about 7 people and everything is quite chaotic. Our application for a Belarus visa was not successful on the first attempt, so one of us stayed back in Warsaw to go to the embassy again. Every day they invented a new reason why our application is not complete, and everyday we had to talk to our contact in Belarus (who only speaks Russian, and we don’t) and go to the embassy again. On the first two days we only managed to do 30 km, as…

Warsaw kick off

ola June 18, 2016 September 8, 2016

Ecotopia 2016 has been inaugurated with a hell lot of pizza from a beautiful clay oven courtesy of ROD Warsaw, radical allotments collective. There are 9 of us at the moment. Getting a group visa for Belarus involves a lot of boureaucracy and it has been taking most of our time. There’s a lot to do here so we extended our stay by one day, until Sunday. Tomorrow we’re joining a women’s rights march here in Warsaw and then we’ll have a whole afternoon at Syrena social centre, getting to know about the struggle to save Puszcza Bialowieska and giving…