challenging white ecotopia

dear ecotopians — especially dear black, brown, indigenous, asian and migrantized ecotopians, —- for a long time the ecotopia biketour has been quite the white environment and it mostly is that way still. this doesn’t mean that no BBIPoC or migrantized people have joined ecotopia in the past or have been/are part of the tour and orga, of course. but they have usually been a minority or even just a single person. some of our PoC friends feebacked that they were hesitant to join or didn’t come to the biketour because our group was so white. we would like to…

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The brand new ✨Ecotopia Orga Month✨

dear everyone! —- we have some good news! some of us will meet next month for several weeks to do orga work like contacting projects, making a more concrete route, gathering equipment, creating tour info material, discussing topics like conflict resolution, awareness, the whiteness of ecotopia biketour and much more. we will meet where last year’s tour started, in austria with some sweet friends of ecotopia. <3 —- wanna join us? anyone can come! but we ask you to tell us beforehand when and for how long you’d like to join us because the place has limited capacities. we’ll then…

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Ecotopia?? Tell us what you think about our name

Ecotopia?? One of the topics that came up during the meeting in December 2023 was about the name of the biketour. More specifically, if we want to change it. The name has a lot of history – it was first used as a name of a bus tour and later gathering from many years ago, starting in 1986, then a biketour was attached to the gathering in 1990, and then the gathering stopped happening in 2008, and since then there is just the biketour! This isn’t the first time we have discussed the idea of changing the name. It has…

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Winter Meeting Updates

Coucou! Our first Orga meeting is over and thought we could give you an update of some of the things that we have been discussing. This is a rather long post, as we have covered several big topics.  Would be amazing if you had the time to read through all of it, but if it’s too much, here’s a list of the article’s content: — Route for 2024 — QINTAW start — Orga Structure — Conflict Resolution — The Use of Alcohol and Other Substances — Changing the Name …?         Where to….? You’re probably curious where…

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Winter Meeting for Ecotopia 2024

hello everyone! ecotopia orga for 2024 has begun and we already have a time and place for the winter meeting! ✨DATE✨ the winter meeting will take place on the third weekend of december, the 15.-17.12.2023. ✨STRUCTURE✨ on friday we will arrive, structure and go through the feedback of this year’s tour. for saturday and sunday we still need to make a schedule/order of points to talk about. feel free to contribute: https://pad.rankenste.in/p/wintermeetingfor2024 ✨PLACE✨ we will meet near berlin in prieros, heidesee baruth/mark. ✨WANNA COME?✨ due to the limited capacities it’s very important that you let us know if you’re planning…

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Beograd to Timisoara — a tale of wetness & warm hearts

I joined as a newbie in Beograd, finding a cheap bicycle and then trading up before the turnoff to our stay at the public camping area on War island, crossed by a pedestrian metal bridge manned by the military. (The understanding was that traffic ceased at eight o-clock but was later found to be for visitors and not campers like us. Meanwhile, it prevented us from joining a collective that was serving vegetarian pizza. Boo.) Beautiful site with beach, picnic tables, forest, and open grass at the merging of the Danube and Sava rivers. Internal rumblings of the group were…

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Lljubljana — Zagreb

Soooo finally come some insights from the route Ljubljana-Zagreb. Yes, some things take time.   After leaving the vampire-house and having an amazing bath in a beautiful spot by the Sava river, it took a few days to really feel like a group again. As it was my first time on the tour, I thought this was usual, but some fellow riders said it was a strange feeling of “in-between places”. Indeed, a big chunk of the group which was there from the beginning needed some time on their own after socializing so much and was planning to join again…

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3 weeks with the Biketour in Romania

I saw that the blog wasn’t updated for a while so wanted to share my experiences of three weeks on the biketour in Romania.   After a loooong train journey to reach Arad, I saw that the local trains from Arad all leave at either 5 in the morning, or 5 in the evening. Given that a journey of 150km was going to take 4.5 hours, which would then deposit me in the middle of nowhere in darkness, practicallity won and a got on a train at 5am heading for Brad. The train looked like it was 60 years old,had…

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