Now that i’m in the bus in the way home i’ll try to honor the rota task i took two weeks ago about writing a blog post (sorry dear rota). I’ll try to give my very personnal impression of the last 4 weeks I spend in Sweden riding with Ecotopia. This does not reflect the all storys of theses times but only my time here.
I arrived in Sweden after many troubles: the person i’m travelling with has forgotten their id card at home and now we spend all our time stressing about getting into the bus and border controls (fuck border anyway).
Instead of spending only 3h at Berlin Zob (bus station), we were deny to enter our bus to Stockholm and found ourself at 11pm in the most random place in Berlin asking ourself what to do next. After some call for desesperate help to find a place to sleep, some friend from previous Ecotopia offered a bed for the night. The rest of the story leads us to some shady travel in Brandenburg in order to get back the forgotten id card that has been taken plane in the night to join Germany but was not able to reach until Berlin. 3 days laters, including a beautiful ferry ride and some more shady hours sleeping in a park in Malmö waiting for our connection on the night, we finally arrived in Stockholm !
1rst step is to get to Solidaria, this amazing social center that welcomed the tour during its stay in Stockholm.
When we enter and meet the person that welcom us, I directly feel at home in this big city I first found very clean and chic. All the nice banderols, flags, prints and anarchist art on every wall, this huge kitchen and big tables to sit around, the most well sorted free shop I saw in my life, the mini bike kitchen in the downstair living room… Everything feel like Ecotopia belong here.
It didn’t stop us to turn the place upside down with our shitty luggages, our workshops to build rocket stove, our dumpster vegan kitchen and our hopes to repair some bikes founds in streets.
Being welcomed in those places feel so heartwarming because even with our mess we could feel that Solidaria social center was happy to welcome and meet us.
The people there organised for us showers, laudry, dumpster food, news bicycles, bike kitchen, place to sleep, visiting nice places around and of course the big anarchist joy to share all this together. This place is well carying its name !!
Even if we didn’t show much of the appreciation we had for this place while leaving it a bit messy (sorry again for that), it was the best place we could have stayed in Stockholm!
Those places and times are also a big switch for the group. The group incoming from Upsalla was around 8 pepole and Ecotopia is now leaving Stockholm with around 25 people. Could be challenging for the people staying but for the one joining, including me, it feels like starting something together. And since the majority of the people joinning in Stockholm were staying for 2 weeks at least, we had a pretty stable group until Jonköping that create something very special in terms of group dynamic (also called my my favorit topic about ecotopia).
In opposition of my expérience of last year where every day some people where joining or leaving, suddenly I felt that I would have the time to meet everybody and that I could take my time to create nice connections.
As a good friend of mine (also ecotopian) says « if you’re scared of meeting new people in Ecotopia, don’t worry, tomorrow you will be in a dumpster with a random person and then be friend ».
I was in this mood until the two days we spend in the communal garden in Linköping.
In the route between Stockholm and Linköping, we had crazy beautiful camp spot over the lake or on beautiful forest, free ferry rides, extravagant donut dumpster, bicycle emergency, amazing swimming breaks, also rainy evennings, but always good food, good fire, good stories and good people.
The time we spend at Folkträdgården in Linköping has in my opinion really bring the group together. For the first time since Stockholm, we had two days with not so much planned. We used this time to play some funny collectiv games, have some workshops about sexual capital, do some drawing portraits games, do some garden, discuss with our host about being topless in the collectiv space without asking … What a nice program !
After those two days, I really felt like the group was really strong and could really deal with stuff now. But actually, the first goodbyes were already starting some days after and the Ecotopian cycle group went on.
Still, this group and Ecotopia in general have a very funny effect on me that I call the pirate effect : the confidence I gain while doing some controversialy leggaly stuff. This feels really great to feel confident enought together to say fuck to this crazy shitty world especially with some people I met 2 weeks ago. It feels that this group of beautiful people on their bicycle, nothing can’t stop them and we’re juste gonna do our way, caring for what’s important to us and saying fuck to the rest. (Kinda felt like this free anarchist animal)
As I was discussing on my last evening on tour around the fire, for me Ecotopia put all of your energy in the basics. Getting food, getting rested, moving forward with your bicycle, and dealing the social dynamic (making friend as well as dealing with conflict). Since your putting everything that you’ve got into those basics, the rest become bonus, kinda of extravagant. All my troubles I had at home before leaving seems now too much, not as a big deal as before I left and it makes them barable again.
For other people around the fire on that evenning, being always on the move and putting all these effort in the collectiv life made people not territorial about Ecotopia like in other statics projects as living project, social centers, squats … and this is maybe that allowed Ecotopia to be such a welcoming space. After caring a lot for the tour, people leaving the tour let the space for new joiners to take over the communal life and organisation. (Outside of the orga group that still creat some form of territoriality and hierarchy of course). For me, the constant physical and social dynamic moove, also makes us less capable of dealing with conflicts. We think that it’s not worthing all the trouble, we’re gonna leave soon, the day is already to long, nobody is on the cooking team for tomorrow … The time we could have to deal with those stuff if we weren’t mooving all the time, well, we spend it on our bicycles linving this crazy adventure.
I guess this is what makes Ecotopia so special in comparaison to other leffist/anarchist spaces. It some ways it feels really easier to get involved into the shit (it takes only to clean the pot once) and to feel part of the group because you follow the ecotopians arrows.
(Last arrow from the tour for me)