Candid – Page 8 – Ecotopia Biketour

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Biketour in Kampetorp

Candid December 12, 2015 April 10, 2016

At the end of July, the Biketour stayed for two days at Kampetorp, an eco-village in Sweden really close to the southern border of Norway. Getting there was a nightmare – steep gravel roads at about 10°C and heavy rain. But when we arrived we were welcomed to stay in a cosy little red house heated by a fire stove. Kampetorp is a clearing in the middle of the forest where a group of (about 10?) young people have started to live in a communal and sustainable way. People live mostly as families in their own houses, and there is not…

Wildcamping in Sweden – with hot showers and a sauna

Candid December 8, 2015 December 8, 2015

On the way from Broddetorp to Loo Östang, the scouts had difficulties finding a good sleeping spot. In the end they chose a lawn next to a football pitch just outside a village. No one was around to ask whether it’s a good idea to camp there, and our Biketour experience tells us that wild-camping really close to a village without asking for permission is normally not a very good idea, and football pitches in particular are not the kind of places the most open to strangers, so we were already expecting that we would be told to leave the…

Biketour in Broddetorp

Candid December 4, 2015 December 2, 2015

Broddetorp is a small village of about 140 inhabitants somewhere between Vättern and Vänern, the two big lakes of Sweden. The Biketour spent the night from the 22nd to the 23rd of July there. Broddetorp got our attention when we were looking for anti-mining groups in the area (there is a lot of uranium and rare earth mining projects going on in that region). We found a group called Nej till Uranbrytning and got in contact with their member Birgitta. A coincidence for such a small village, it turned out that a former participant of the Biketour also lives there. Birgitta was very…

Biketour visiting JAK member’s bank

Candid December 2, 2015 December 2, 2015

On the 22nd of July, Biketour passed by Skövde on the way from Bossgården to Broddetorp. Skövde is a small town of 35 000 inhabitants somewhere in the middle between Vättern and Vänern, the two big lakes of Sweden. It happens to be the place where JAK Medlemsbank, a members-owned alternative bank, was founded in 1965 based on the concept of JAK Denmark, which has existed since 1931. Knowing some alternative banks from other countries, which are a part of the capitalist system just like any other bank, except that they invest their money into more social and sustainable projects, it seemed…

Links #2 – Vio.Me blockade, COP21, bicycle repair man

Candid November 30, 2015 December 16, 2015

Vio.Me successfully blocked and postponed the auction where the factory is supposed to be sold. Vio.Me is a soap factory in Thessaloniki that was squatted by its workers in 2011 and has since been run as a cooperatively and democratically self-organised organic soap factory. We were there with the Biketour in 2014. In Paris, the COP21 (the 21st Climate Change conference of the UN) has started. It will officially last until the 11th of December (but is expected to last longer, like the previous conferences). France already announced in the beginning of November to close its borders in prospect of hundreds of thousands…

Links #1

Candid September 2, 2015 December 16, 2015

If Bicycles Took Up as Much Space as Cars Mesmerizing Photos of People Lying in a Week’s Worth of Their Trash Syrians cross Norway’s Arctic border on bicycles Critical Mass from London to Calais – Bikes Beyond Borders The Invisible Bike Helmet Johnnyrandom | Bespoken (full song)

Biketour at Bossgården

Candid July 26, 2015 December 2, 2015

After Jönköping, the Biketour stayed at Bossgården, a small farm on the country-side between Falköping and Tidaholm. One of the farm buildings was built in 1818 and still has a traditional reed roof, making the farm an official cultural heritage site. On the farm lives a small family with children, and some volunteers are around as well. There is a big vegetable garden that is being operated as a CSA (community-supported agriculture, where people pay a fixed rate to the farmer but get a varying amount of food depending how much grows). We stayed for two nights and helped with…

The magic waterfall of Trollhättan

Candid July 26, 2015 December 2, 2015

Already before the tour I noticed a town called “Trollhättan” on the map. When I looked it up on Wikipedia to find out about what its name meant (it means Troll’s hat), I read the absurd story of the Trollhättan Falls. The city’s most iconic landmark and probably biggest tourist attraction are the Trollhättan Falls, a huge waterfall in the middle of the city where the river Göta, which goes from Sweden’s biggest and Europe’s third-biggest lake Vänern to Göteborg, falls 32 metres. Unfortunately, a big hydro-electric power station was built next to the waterfall in the 19th century, with…