(Vimeo link) Check out this beautiful video made during our kick off days in Berlin by the wonderful Claudia! … Subtitles available in German / Untertitel jetzt auch auf Deutsch: Download here/hier! (Video von vimeo runterladen und auf Computer speichern. Dasselbe mit der Untertitel-Datei. Video mit VLC-Player öffnen. Untertiteldatei auswählen. Abspielen!)
En route to Novi Sad we heard about the protests in Vukovar, (or Вуковар as the Serbian population would want it to be referred to) that had recently erupted over a longstanding dispute about minority language, that led to the newly erected Cyrillic signs being torn down from public buildings and three days of rallies and protests.*Protest image from this BBC News article. Since the 2011 census in Vukovar, it was recorded that the population of Serbians in the Croatian town had exceeded one third, which was the ‘legal’ requirement to have bilingual signs in both the Latin (Croatian), and…
We left the common pastures of Croatia and again skirted the border between Croatia and Bosnia, finally crossing for a lunch spot at the border control point. Here an Italian man stopped to wish us well on our journey, only to then return 10 minutes later with a huge watermelon and bottles of fizzy pop; it was a warm welcome back to Bosnia. After the border crossing, the traces of the war became more and more apparent. Only too aware of the landmines that still contaminate the land, we were careful to find our camping spots either on recently made…
Through a contact at Green Action Zagreb, our next destination was to meet activist fighting for the right to common pastures in Croatia. We made camp in their common field, and took a wash in the Sava – some of us even swimming across to Bosnia on the other side! The next morning we met some of the people who volunteer to keep the pastures alive and free for all. Gajna, an NGO and voluntary organisation founded in 2007, have been working to reserve the habitat of the land and keep it in use and free from industrial agriculture and…
After wild camping near to the the Lonjsko Polje Nature Park, we set off next morning, despite the rain, for our 70 km cycling day along the Sava river. En route a few of us took the opportunity to visit a local social anthropology/ ethnographic museum in someone’s back garden. Without any common language we were able to communicate through hands-on demonstrations of some of the tools and equipment from the owner’s lifetime. The museum contained hundreds of examples of D.I.Y handmade crafts and tools used for creating cloth from plants, furniture without fixings, embroidery and fabrics from 4 generations…
.In Zagreb we were warmly hosted at Green Action, Zelena Akcija / Friends of the Earth Croatia, who welcomed us with a party with some of the local activists dealing with local migration and environmental struggles. Over the few days there we held an info exchange with local migration activists, visited two of the nearby politically active squats/ free shop, and made full use of the in-house DIY bike kitchen at Green Action. . . . There some of us also took to the streets, to ask some of the locals or people who would talk to us, their view…
After a long 1000km accent… admiring the view from the Slovenian mountains and my trusty steed…
You can do it Natty! Some of us get over our fears and jump for West Papua, whilst others enjoy the alternative way to wake up before a days cycle…
