Blog – Page 17 – Ecotopia Biketour

campfires, sandpits, cow pastures and swamps

Ecotopia Biketour 2016 July 3, 2016 July 3, 2016

Finally the group somehow has improved its routine. Cycling, cooking and camping is working. We where so occupied with the visa for belarus that we hardly could organize our daily tasks… But we found nice sleeping places every night and we cycled through very beautiful landscapes. Especially the area around the Bug was nice. In the tiny villages, every house has a bench in front, where the people hang out and meet each other. We are always a big attraction cycling through. The dogs running after us, barking, and then suddendly jumping back when Knoedel, the biketour-dog barks back.

This year’s theme

ola July 2, 2016 April 28, 2017

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 April 28, 2017

“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…

Pre-Biketour: Berlin–Poznań–Warszawa

Candid June 17, 2016 June 17, 2016

The 5th of June was the official start of the pre-Biketour in Berlin. Only 3 of us met (we expected much more) and joined the Fahrradsternfahrt, the biggest bicycle demonstration in the world, along with 140 000 other people. On 19 routes of around 1000 km in total, starting in different places around Berlin and all joining on the way to go to Brandenburger Tor in the centre, people are cycling in the whole city the whole day, including two of the city motorways. Outside of Berlin we quickly visited Kesselberg, a piece of forest outside of Berlin some people live…

Biketour in Helsinki (last year)

Candid June 17, 2016 June 17, 2016

The first two of us arrived on the 15th of September in Helsinki like planned, but only at 2 in the morning. In the end the 10 of us that remained arrived in about 6 groups spread over the next 4 days. Some people had decided to stay a bit longer in Tampere, but some wanted to arrive in Helsinki on time, so the group split in two. The first group split up on the last day when it got dark, as some wanted to make it to Helsinki, but some were too tired to cycle in the dark. The…

Biketour in Tampere (last year)

Candid June 17, 2016 June 17, 2016

On the 11th of September, we arrived in Tampere. Our sleeping place was the social and art centre Hirvitalo. Tampere is a city surrounded by lakes, and on one of them, really close to Hirvitalo, some people had built a floating sauna with a glass roof from which you can see across the lake. The highlight was when we saw the northern lights over the lake while having a sauna. There was not much programme in Tampere. On the way to Tampere we slept next to a really freaky sculpture park in the middle of a forest. Some of us…