Traveling the world

Who is violent?

2012-01-31T17:36:00.000+02:00

The Ana Banana experience

2012-01-28T13:00:00.002+02:00

When I first arrived in Luxembourg I was already vegan oriented even though even to this day I didn't make the jump. I still eat animal products except for meat of any kind if offered but usually prefer not to and sometimes refuse it and I never buy any animal products. So for this reason I wanted to see how many vegan restaurants are in Luxembourg which I was surprised to find out that completely vegan there is only one: Ana Banana. I think I found it through Happy Cow and after talking to a few people I decided to go there once before I leave. Only once because of the prices that go up to 25 euros per person. But than I kinda left if for a special occasion that never showed up and gave it up completely. I did go to check it out and interview the only vegan cook in Luxembourg, Ana Ruivo who runs the small, homey restaurant. And from that we kept in touch and on Friday I got a call from her to ask if I can help out in the kitchen. I did and on this occasion I also got the chance to sample some of her wonderful cooking. I even got some tips that I will have to write down as not to forget:

- miso soup is delicious when it also has sesame oil in it and I have to learn how to make it;
- coriander goes well on bean chili and actually gives it a distinctive taste (she also boiled in some algae but I don't know how that works so maybe should ask);
- tarragon goes very well with grated carrots, balsamic vinegar and agave syrup;
- endives can be cut in thin slices and added to miso soup;
- a nice, fast dessert can be made by mashing mango and agave syrup together.

I also learned some neat way of cutting bell peppers and some other small things and on top of which I also earned some 50 euros for the 5 hours I helped with cutting vegetables, cleaning dishes and moving tables. I feel quite satisfied that the serendipity feeling in which things that were marginally intended come into reality by chance is coming back and that I was able to both enjoy the wonderful cooking of Ana while also not being served which is what I dislike most about restaurants. Now I'm on my way to Naturata, the local bio store to stock up for this evening when some friends are coming to say good bye so more cooking, yey! I will probably end up buying miso just to have it there and to be motivated to learn how to cook it.

A very bad photo of the ride taking over the four lanes of one of the biggest boulevards in Luxembourg, Avenue de la Liberte on 27th January 2012.

This entire 27th of January was quite a fun day out with my last Critical Mass preceding the cooking. It started around 18:20 and we went all around the city freeing up the traffic for bikes and letting ourselves go free on streets that on any other occasion are a mine field for cyclists. At some point a cop car pulled up and one inexperienced cyclist stopped to talk to them which halted the entire bike ride. After that the ride dispersed and even though this ride was also a disappointment I can again so those wonderful people who keep coming out to celebrate the bike and new faces that are getting excited and might take up the commitment to return every month. I am curious how things will evolve now with me gone and if someone else will take up the job to start up events and publicize them.

Tomorrow I will be going to protest against the determined Romanian government, determined to push forward with one of the most terrible projects in Europe, the start of a gold mine in Rosia Montana, Romania. The mining company is managed almost entirely by foreign managers with their only interest being the money that can come out of blowing up four mountains where there now people currently living and which will have to be forcefully moved for the mining to commence. I will write more on the subject after the protest in front of the Romanian embassy tomorrow.

2000 members for Free Your Stuff Luxembourg

2012-01-23T00:54:00.000+02:00

Today the facebook group on which one can post things to give away or look for needed items for free, Free Your Stuff Luxembourg reached 2000 members. At the same time the group started around stoping fracking in Romania gathered more than 1000 members in less than two days and hopefuly the eminent danger of Chevron starting this desastrous process will be avoided and their ship will sink. Here are the two groups if interested:

http://www.facebook.com/groups/freethestuff

http://www.facebook.com/groups/frackoffromania

Dumpster diving spectacle

2012-01-19T10:10:00.003+02:00

Here is the link to the dumpster diving feature that was aired on RTL but I am not as excited about it as I was at first since there are not many alternatives to using the supermarket system here in Luxembourg it was just a waste of time to present the sittuation. Right, not people know about the waste but can they do about it?

http://tele.rtl.lu/waatleeft/replay/v/20120104/0/53663/

Travel anxiety

2012-01-19T10:06:00.003+02:00

I've always admitted my mediocrity and one way to go beyond it I've always seen as a writing a book. I am not a writer though and mediocrity is not the worst that the world has seen. Yet my subconscious mind can bring up such vivid, colorful and meaningful stories that it surprises me I can't bring myself to lay these things in black on white. Following an adventure sequence in which my friend sleeping in the room close to mine coming for a visit was chasing me in tunnels and other interesting environments of my dream world me and my friend were best friends again and traveling to a destination I can't quite recall now. Although it was me, him and a couple of other people that either left or are leaving the projects here in Luxembourg some other influences were felt along the storyline. The story ended when out of anger at them living me behind while buying tickets I cursed at them and left in anger towards unknown destinations. I was planning to return though when I got accosted by a Romanian beggar and then his buddies towards whom I immediately started acting aggressive since I thought they were going to rob me.

It's a tough fight that goes on even in sleep to get over one's nationality which in itself I consider a violent construct. The cops that showed up to save the day were of German nationality and I was speaking to them in German. What a coincidence that today I have a German oral exam, no? And that is what challenges my perception of nationality since here you have one that is negatively universal mislabeled and stereotyped, even by my subconscious mind, the Romanian and one that is positively universally stereotyped, the German coming together to fight it off. Since I never had such vivid dreams since I arrived in Luxembourg (none that I can remember) I place the meaning in the sphere of traveling anxiety since soon I will be taking, as before, a leap of faith towards an uncertain future of moving from place to place and speaking to an audience that has no such existential struggles.

I wrote all of the above yesterday and saved it in notepad with the intention to review it and put more focus on that these days although I am still not awakened to the reality that I will be leaving soon I still wake up in the morning with very strange feelings following the dream filled night. I today as well woke up confused and still feeling a bit stressed over what happened in the dream. This time though I have no recollection of the dream but just the end in which I was walking on the roof of some buildings and was approaching the edge with the intention to check out if I could make the jump between two of them. Of course I had forgotten what I wrote yesterday regarding the "leap of faith" but it must have had some correlation. Only this time when I approached the edge I felt vertigo taking over and feeling as if I would fall at any moment and that my body is starting to flow towards the edge. Just as I liquidly trying to get away from the edge I woke up.

Dumpster diving on RTL

2011-11-29T16:48:00.000+02:00

I yesterday met with Sarah Cattani from RTL here in Luxembourg and went on a mission to document the waste created by the supermarket system. We first went to Aldi, than Naturata and finally Match. Every single dumpster had quite a lot of food in it except for Naturata where we did find a lot of wheat bran but which turned out it had a type of caterpillar or worm inside that was making nets in the packaging. But the other two were pack filled with bananas, tomatoes, cheeses and yogurts that are now all on tape. I again ended up with a head ache having to focus on saying the right things and saying as much as possible of what I was thinking on the issue something that was not easy feeling a bit overwhelmed at times by the amount of waste that happens every single day. I hope I managed to present the issue in a objective and fluent manner and that I also mentioned some of the alternatives to the supermarket system that encourages destabilization of local economies both where the supermarket is located but also where the food they bring in originates from, creates incredible amounts of waste and treats people as employees instead of friends and neighbors. I was so nervous I can't even remember what I said and hope to see the end result as soon as possible. The feature should be available from the 7th of December and so I am looking forward to it.

View Dumpster Diving RTL in a larger map

Instant hangover with Coprinus Comatus

2011-11-29T15:11:00.000+02:00

I don't drink alcohol. Probably since this summer. Yet last week while Kyle and Lotte were here and we were foraging for mushrooms I managed to get a hell of a hangover through a series of incredibly funny events that could have ended in not such a funny way. There was nothing to warn of the funniness that was about to occur.

We were cycling through the streets of Dudelange when we noticed in the park a group of Coprinus comatus mushrooms or as they are commonly known shaggy manes. We left them for the way back since they disintegrate quite fast so if you pick them and keep them for longer than a couple of hours you won't have anything to cook anymore. On the way back we noticed we had no bags with us so we used the bags that are placed in the park for picking up dog shit with which I might add we put to a better use than what they are intended for. Not as wasteful. We got home and cooked the shaggy manes in a stir fry which was delicious if I might add. Afterwards I rushed out of the house to go to Luxembourg city where a projection of a movie arranged by ASTM about the mining corporation Newmont and it's meddling in Peru interested me. I felt very thirsty throughout the movie but didn't pay much attention to it. Once the movie and the presentation were over though I rushed for the entrance where a number of glasses were being filled and offered for free with what I imagined would be orange juice. Because I was so thirsty I couldn't stop the first gulp of the liquid from reaching my stomach even though while it was passing through my throat I was screaming inside because I realized it was a hard alcohol cocktail. I put the glass down, said "fuck it" and tried to go ahead and do the job I was there for and that was taking an interview of the guest talker about the mining situation in Peru. I didn't manage because my recorder had no batteries. FUCK IT! And just as I was preparing to leave, a bit of a head ache started to bother me. I at first thought it was the embarrassing situation, the dehydration but just afterwards it dawned on me that I've been poisoned, or better yet that I poisoned myself. The mushrooms which we had for lunch are edible with the only exception that they should not be consumed with alcohol because a chemical in them blocks the metabolism of a substance that is responsible for the feeling of hangover and increases it's presence by 10 or 15 times. So from that one drink of hard alcohol I was now facing the consequences of a night's hard drinking. I came back home, told Kyle and Lotte which had a blast at laughing at me after which I went to bed with by small hangover trying to sleep it off. I found it immensely amusing that out of all the days in which to both drink alcohol and also try these mushrooms for the first time it happened that day that both came into play. Yet I would still recommend the shaggy caps to anyone interested, they are quite easy to recognize and you can find more info on this wonderful resource on mushrooms that Kyle shared with me: www.rogersmushrooms.com/

Beans pancakes

2011-11-29T14:35:00.000+02:00

It surprises me how little I've been writing since I arrived in Luxembourg. There is nothing to tingle the imagination and my practical skills as well as my muscle tonus I can feel are not as sharp as when I came here in January. Lack of any type of phisical obligations has it's toll on the body. So I've decided to go back to the roots, start making my own bread again, foraging and cooking delicious food. Here is a receipe I will make over and over since I've had it already and is damn tasty:

. soak mungbeans or lentils overnight (wash lentils afterwards)
. soak a handful of white rice for 4 hours
- blend everything
- optional - cover and wait for 6 hours after which you can add salt, curry powder, cardemon
- use this raw composition to make pancakes in pan with preferably sunflower or sesame oil

On the beauty of openness

2011-11-17T18:05:00.000+02:00

I find myself missing allot of people these days. I miss friends and people I've met on my travels. I miss lovers and some more in particular. Especially now that winter is here (only November but truly here, in Luxembourg!) and the bed I sleep in is so large that it could fit me and all of the people I've been close to in my life. Yet I catch myself from falling of this cliff by realizing that even though I don't have a closed, monogamous relationship to anyone I don't feel worse than when I was in one. Although I do look forward to meeting a special someone the feelings are only of expectancy and excitement with no jealousy and suspicions mixed in. The open relation made all these feelings disappear and time for myself is well appreciated and put to good use with much reading and keyboard activism being done these days. And as sad as it is I see this lowly type of activism paying of here in Luxembourg where most people are connected to facebook on where I can see how a bit more posting can result in a bit more people turning up for an event. But I feel it's so easy to fall for this type of activism not only because of it's ease but also because of it's openness. Facebook is a huge corporation, structured hierarchicaly in which one person that closed the barriers on an idea is making more profit just because of this disgusting step that he took. Yet so many people are happy to participate in events that have the opposite principles as that of the structure that they are part of that it makes me smile of joy and of self pity for our species. They love openness yet they, as well as me, support a system that was built on completely opposite principles. What is that for a paradox? Or what am I missing? People value a jealous free and honest life yet they play in the roles that create just such scenarios. At least I don't play such roles anymore so I need not analyze it to such a degree that I should this facebook paradox...

Sustainability ON AIR: Sustainable sex

2011-10-31T22:30:00.000+02:00

Sustainability ON AIR: Sustainable sex: How long can you endure? Last? Go on pleasuring your partner(s) without reaching the point of no return ( of which scientists have been warn...

So many clean hands!

2011-10-29T22:49:00.003+03:00

Some days ago someone gave me a bike. That's right, a whole, wheels and pedals, handlebars and seat, bike. Didn't seem to have anything wrong with it. But it was deflated, a bit dirty and with a rust spots here and there from having been kept in the garden among the weeds. It even had plants growing entangled around the spokes. A beautiful thing to see, a reminder that we will not hinder nature much from taking over again and that we should be concerned mostly of how we treat individuals, each other and all the creatures that share our cities, our towns and houses, even our insides. And to learn to share and give. So I'm happy this person particularly chose to give me the bike instead of throwing it away which for me is an inconceivable thought. Especially now that I finished working on it for the day and everything from brakes and lights to kickstand and chain are in perfect working condition. The one thing I found wrong with it is a punctured tube from the back wheel close to the valve so would need a total replacement but still! Other than that it's almost a brand new bike!

And to think of how shattered my grandfather was when he found out one morning his thirty year old bike, that he fixed and welded numerous times from riding it on the country roads of his village in Romania, was stolen. The gate was not even open as not to make any noise so the people that took it lifted this heavy piece of steel over a two meter fence in the middle of the night in the neck of the woods, Romania. And here in Luxembourg people throw these beauties away. And as much as I love a rusty bike with plants covering it I prefer to see it as it is, ready to swirl and twirl in the streets of the city at high speed (it's a fast one as well!). And I have to admit I also love to get my hands dirty which to me is almost as a repayment of the bike for giving it the attention. But than as I got another free thing, a cable for a iphone that my housemate brought inside as he came in and gave to me for the free iphone that I got from him as well I realized how white the thing is. And how shinny the iphone is. And how my hands trying to fumble around it to play some music or to use any of the other "utilities" on it would leave an incredible amount of dirt and grease. Which made me realize of how many people actually choose to buy these fragile, dirt hating devices and how many of the people here have sickening clean hands. Maybe a reason for why here dermatologists are booked for three months in advance? And why everyone seems so god damn boring? There's no passion in those clean hands, no trace of excitement from discovering all the bolts and nuts of an exquisite mechanism that would allow one to move from one place to another completely free from oil and oil prices, congested traffic, taxes and payments. These clean hands haven't felt freedom for a long time here! Freedom is free as bacteria and dirt are not as a fucking victorian garden or a bonsai tree are squeezed into conformity!

Photos of the completely functional bike to come (taken with the iphone ha)......

Back from Romania

2011-10-04T17:56:00.000+03:00

Had a terrific time at times, a terrifying one at others and a great fucking bag of goodies in my brain through which to sift through on rainy days by the fire with a cup of tea in my palms. Or in bed if the fire is just in that bag of goodies in my brain. I've met some really great people at the Reclaim the fields camp in Romania even though my big plan of finding people to live with there didn't materialize. The terrifying times came exactly from realizing how horrible a community can become after 10 years of corporate grinding. Those people up there in the middle of the mountains always bombarded by misinformation have this aggressive air that I got to dislike greatly while walking the streets of Rosia Montana. I feel that the mutual support with the families who are still staying strong would not maybe be enough for me to live there. So what to do next? How to take each day as it comes as I used to when I got the taste of seeing a garden grow and change with the seasons, when I had the luxury of setting meeting points in the house I have my few things I got from traveling around and in which I feel so comfortable going to bed? I am not making any plans though so I guess that is not going to leave much room for choice when the time comes to pick up and go. That's the way to go. Go GO GOO!
But where?

Leaving Mannheim - sunny day, sunny thoughts

2011-09-15T09:35:00.000+03:00

It´s been an incredible time spent here in the suburbs of Mannheim where Laura was staying at her father´s! Backgamon was in as well as trips around the place (in but outside) and yesterday we also got to see "Taste the waste" which we got in for free with our press cards. Straight after we joined the local people´s kitchen in Wild West which was more of a friend´s kitchen in which people were a bit confused as to whom we were and why we were there but friendly nonetheless. I am now about to head out to Nurnberg and later hopefully towards Linz in Austria where I will be hosted by someone I met back in Romania around 3 or 4 years ago. I Nurnbeg it´s going to be great if I manage to give that interview Tobias from Radio Z was telling could be a possibility. I will be on my way soon enough so sunny greetings from sunny Mannheim.!

Thumbs up again by the road´s edge - Mannheim

2011-09-12T09:10:00.000+03:00

Having just arrived in Luxembourg for a week and getting comfortable I ripped the silk cocoon that was started to form around me and went back by the side of the road trying to catch a ride. Mannheim was to be the first stop of the journey and I eagerly waited patiently for the train and buses to take me to the edge of town where I could start the trippin´. Once there I didn´t have to wait long to be picked up. It was some sort of bank manager that picked me up and dropped me of by the border with Germany. There as I was getting my stuff out of his trunk another man offered to take me further. I agreed and went in the direction Frankfurt that was not so straightforward as other directions but it was still making the distance smaller. We were very lucky that he was sharp enough to avoid a car that started swirling towards us coming from the opposite direction. I was so happy to be alive but for the IT man it didn´t seem to change the topic of the conversation from the mundane. I was finally picked up by a bussiness man owning a factory that after checking online for the address in Mannheim he used the GPS to drop me off in front of the Bermuda.funk radio. A place that didn´t stand out as a free radio with not even a banner hanging out. I guess those who know about these things, know and that´s it. I than met Iris who was a wonderful host and conversation partner, with whom I did a bit of gardening and cooking and in the evening with watched "The Castle", an Aussie movie that might fit the sittuation in Rosia Montana, Romania where the corporation wants to move people out to dig under their homes for gold. I will talk about it today on the radio but until than I should prepare the rest of the trip which is not at all prepared and completely open at this stage.

Aaaaaand, back in Luxembourg via pit stop in Hamburg

2011-09-02T02:16:00.000+03:00

Keeping a journal of one's adventures is the hardest thing to do while actively involved in such a thing as what one might call an adventure. So the time in between my last mesage and this one was marked by intense experiences that left a mark on me of which I will try to express in such simple form as writing. I will not even be able to describe one part of what I felt or did but I am incredibly happy I managed to experience all these things before the summer ran out. Unlike two years ago August in Copenhagen was incredibly rainy and cold while in Hamburg it seemed to be even worse. In both places I was moving around the floors of different squats or free spaces, friend's beds or water bells half surmerged in the harbour of the Southern harbour in Copenhagen. It was hard times of dumpster diving and hunting for interviews in between a banana and a bike fix or build up. Tried my hand at constructing a tall bike but was called away by destiny in form of a bunch of people from Hamburg that made me the joyful proposition of joining them the following day in going to the two year aniversary of the Gaengeviertel ( http://das-gaengeviertel.info ) which I eagerly did together with the bike I found a fixed up for myelf in Copenhagen. The place looked nothing like it did two years ago when I first saw it and I felt overwhelmed by the warm feelings that passed my body as I was using a space that if unused by the squatters would have otherwise been in a trash pile somewhere in the world and in that particular space an office worker would have had a hard time deciding between hanging or jumping off.

Hamburg was not to last though and the itch was to interffere with the whole experience. It must be repeated! The itch did not come in the form of the travel bug but.... actually it did! As most people that travel and exchange hugs and close contact I had scabies, the third skin doctor I consulted in Germany this time concluded! SCABIES! I had to leave, and leave soon! I took a "cheap" train that after more twelve hours dropped me of on Dudelangenian soil. I felt so happy that I almost kissed it. And now I am back in the boring old house that I left some weeks ago, with my head and heart filled with so many new things that they both feel like bursting. Aghhhh! And soon I will leave again, this time for Romania's reclaim the fields camp in the Rosia Montana area where an ecological and social, architectural and archeological disaster is PLANNED to take place if a gold corporation will win. Please read about it and get involved but in a fun and spontaneous way. We can put the fun in between those mountains they plan to destroy still and songs and laughter will be heard there soon! Much love from Dudelange and hope to see some of you there.

Back in Smokenhagen

2011-08-17T15:12:00.000+03:00

It´s been a while since I´ve been in Copenhagen and now I find myself in the same routine of moving from place to place, talking to a mad amount of people and cycling like a mad man around the city from one spot to the other. I´ve missed that but in the same time I am glad I now have a quiet base away from the continuous buzz of the city. At first coming back was a bit dream like but I am now getting a bit in the rhythm. I´ve already finished a radio program on the free spaces The Cady Factory and Christiania and am now pondering finding more interesting topics to bring to the listeners back in Luxembourg. Also networking with the radio people from Christiania. But for now I still need to find a place to live from where I can work. I will see how that goes. The Floating City project is wide open for me but I will have a hard time living there because of it´s need for intense labour that I would not be able to put in because I would instead prefer to find people to interview and prepare for the next travel towards the Reclaim the Fields camp in Romania at the end of September. I would like to have stop overs in different cities on my way there from Luxembourg so I would need to have some time to find the venues on the way and prepare a presentation on why the Reclaim the fields is happening there, the destructive gold mining project.

Fox holes

2011-07-25T01:00:00.000+03:00

In a previous post I was mentioning "Fox holes" which even though a place where we slept turned out to also be the key word of the day on Sunday following the night of fun in the gypsy fest and flying dutchman. Xavier called and asked if I wanted to go explore caves and I eagerly accepted. A few hours later we were so tired but still in a good mood to still play some frisbee and football in Dudelange at the good bye party for Francisco and Laura. They will be missed and so will days as this one. Hopefully many more of the same calibre will follow.

Keys, 5 euros and a jumbo card

2011-07-24T13:35:00.000+03:00

Left the house yesterday with these three things in my pocket and also came back with them today. The keys let me inside the house, the 5 euros gave me the piece of mind that I could buy something if really needed to and I even tried to use them to buy people rounds at the music concert I wound in but failing since they gave them for free while the jumbo card allowed me to just hop on trains and buses to go from where I live in Dudelange to Vianden in the north of the country. And all that without really planning to go there.

I got out of the house planning to see a art gallery by a friend but she was not there so I just went visiting at home and there we decided to do something spontaneous and left in a hurry taking a sleeping bag, some fruit and other things she considered could have eased the tenssion of sleeping outside in 7 degrees C temperatures (cold summers here in Luxembourg). I had previously received two tickets from Celine in Radio Ara and they were waiting for us there where I just mentioned I won them and we got it. In a few moments after arriving a guy just came up and gave us a couple of beers for free, trend that would continue throughout the evening and night. It was great meeting some more people I've met before in and around Luxembourg and ending up going to the famous Flying Dutchman where a person from the office ar Radio Ara was DJ, great Manon! And that was not the biggest surprise, ending up there we saw on the dance floor a older guy, maybe in his fiftyes dancing in a suit that was covering his ass and genitals so he was just blowing in the wind without anyone giving a shoot or bothering. He hept at it until closing time and I even got the chance to dance together. And in the end we just left for Paulo's place where we just collapsed in a sweet sleep until morning when we had to get up to try to make it back to Dudelange from the "Fox hole"which we managed beautifuly.

This is how a weekend of fun and relaxation should be like! Wonderful!

Radio Workshop

2011-07-08T12:40:00.000+03:00

I've put this off, writing about the radio workshop for a day now since it was a very strange experience of which I am not sure how I feel about. On one side it feels as if I was given a gun and shipped of with the troops to fight the enemies of the state (or maybe not quite like that but the sittuation feels similar for me with me having to do something I don't really believe in), on the other I feel good for having gone past this experience that made it clear I am not going to do this in the future, hold workshops in luxurious conference halls in which I am standing in front, yapping and yapping with no real feedback because of the tight schedule. I don't like giving speaches and affecting change that comes through the wrong mediums. Sometimes I slip though and do it and most of the time because of social constrains. I wouldn't have done or offered to do something like this on my own but I kinda had to. Don't know what else to write for future reference so I'll end it short here.

Medical Doctors

2011-07-01T17:27:00.000+03:00

Are simplistic and complicated, both at the same time. I wanted to write useless but not quite. Conventional medical doctors are just the two, simplistic and complicated. They simplify any disease, condition and symptom to the same end, the drugs. More than often harmful drugs derived from synthesis chemicals. They never resort to herbal medicine that can work for most of the diseases they are presented to. But in part it's not their fault because states subsidize big pharmaceutical companies that make the deals with officials behind close doors. Complicated because of the waiting time, the useless analysis and body checks that they do in order to come to a punctual conclusion. The simplest way to view the body is the holistic one but medical doctors make everything so complicated in their singularist view that it hurts.

To give an example of what I mean, a couple of months ago I went to the doctor to check if I had contacted scabies from the friends that came visiting from Slovakia. An international group formed of a German, a French, an American and a Spaniard all had it so I expected the worse, that the international scabies organization will be joined by a Romanian. For this reason I went to check with a generalist doctor that I imagined would maybe send me to a dermatologist. But 5 minutes later with no inspection of the skin whatsoever I was leaving the office of the good doctor with a drug prescription for scabies and 43 euros short. I did not buy the drug and waited to see if the condition I was suspecting I might have contacted, but had no symptoms for, would make itself visible. It was a hard period because I tried to avoid touching people without scaring them with horror stories about a parasite that goes under their skin that I might not even have had.

A month and a half later some itching started to make life a bit more unpleasant. The coincidence was too much to have been just a coincidence. But I figured it would not be very smart for me alone to take the drug for scabies while the rest of the people in the house I live in would not. So for them to take it as well I wanted to get a medical doctor's expert advice. Hopefully professional unlike the last one. This time I went to see the local general doctor in the hospital which tried to be a bit more professional but still pressed by time he just took some blood (a lot actually) and urine and didn't give any opinion on what I might have. This time I didn't mention that it might be scabies though. But that is what I would have expected the first one to do as well! He directed me to a dermatologist (HOORAY!). And he also prescribed a antiallergenic just in case. Later analysis of the blood revealed I am not allergic to anything so it would have been useless if I would have taken it. In actuality all these drugs that different doctors prescribe do more harm in the long term than good, coming with their own side effect. I didn't take that drug either though.

A week later because of his overbooked schedule I was in the office of dermatologist Albert Nilles. This period was even worse because in this week the itching intensified and I was not able to sleep at nights. I would than try to make up by dozing off whenever I had the occasion during the day. I got examined and prescribed medication again but this time not for scabies or allergies but for an eczema. What caused it and what type of eczema I was not told but after some pushing and pulling trying to find more information in this direction I got to find out from the doctor that it's not food related, not parasitic and not contagious. In that case I'll just let the body heal by itself instead of taking the prescribed drugs, the two of them. Of what other condition would I be writing about now if I would have taken the prescribed before? And why this situation? Is it because the patients listen blindly to the doctor and don't ask to know the causes but only the solutions or what am I missing?

Photo comp

2011-06-26T16:51:00.001+03:00

I just entered an amateur competion with the following photo:

Maybe in October I will post positive results.

Concrete knees and shoulders

2011-06-20T01:32:00.001+03:00

Lentils are dangerous stuff! I realised that home as I was unpacking the broken and distorted food stuff that I was carrying with me as I had my bike accident. The can of lentils I had in one of the bags dangling on the sides of the bike as I was cycling lodged itself in the front wheel projecting me maybe two meters away from the bike, breaking a few things inside the bags, surprisingly just a few. And I was able to get up and walk away from it even though for a few moments I started feeling a bit like concrete, amorph and thoughtless. I could not figure out what was wrong with the bike after I removed the wheel being in a state of shock and even now an hour or two later I still can't focus on looking why I can't fit the whell back in. I will look into it tomorrow. It was lucky Francisco was telephone call away and he came to the rescue by bike and with the trailer. Even have a movie from it that I guess I'll upload tomorrow (not from the accident which I would LOVE to see live since it was so spectacular but from the rescue missions:P).

Here is a photo:

Of corn, sunflowers and beans

2011-06-18T19:32:00.000+03:00

Just a word of advice in regards to the aztec method of planting corn, beans and pumpkins together: both corn and sunflowers seems to grow slower than the beans (or maybe just in the climate of Luxembourg) so while the beans are already stretching their hooks to find support the sunflowers and corn I planted at the same time as the beans are miniscule in comparison. So the advice would be to plant the corn and sunflowers before anything else and once a bit established than plant either pumpkins or beans.

Marienthal center for youth

2011-06-07T09:20:00.000+03:00

I joined Xavier for his monthly training in Marienthal yesterday and have to say the National Service for Youth (SNJ) from here in Luxembourg has some awesome props to work with. It's a pity I didn't know about this place before since it's a very interesting one where a big group of volunteers could have a blast. Also maybe in this place I could do a safety course for using ropes and such things. I will get interested about it and see.

Radio Camp done and dusted

2011-06-05T18:45:00.001+03:00

Just came back from Radio camp in south Germany by a huge lake where we spent 3 days trying to soak up some sun and new information about radio making, some more than others. I can't say I came out of it with too much but it wasn't a bad trip even though the two days we were on the road on the way there and back were pretty tireing. Maybe for this reason I also got a bit of a cold while there, the first one since I arrived in Luxembourg and as Sandra pointed out I wasn't even in Luxembourg when I had it. But the good food that was even vegan and lots of rest and laying in the sun got me back on track quite soon. I am not well recovered but I fear another encounter with the police today since I'll be going to another Spanish solidarity meeting in center Luxembourg. I think the last encounter with the police which was very aggresive from my point of view added to my state in the Radio camp.

Repurpose the police

2011-05-31T02:58:00.001+03:00

With the current events in Spain and around the world it's becoming more and more clear to the average Joe what the police is all about. You only have to partake in a peaceful demonstration to understand. They're animals. So are the rest of us. But while the rest of us are being discouraged from being aggressive there are certain mechanisms and systems that reinforce the aggressiveness of the police system mostly comprised of males which might be one major contributing factor. These days everyone knows that men produce more testosterone than women and that meat eating males assimilate it more even from foods because of the lack of fibers in their diets. And so the feministic approach to equal representation could finally start to make sense to the general public today when talking about the police force. The currently male animal force. It needs to be put in balance. And for this reason we need to find young, healthy young males different jobs and occupations than that of pack dogs. For this reason I am considering opening the discussion on what jobs could such people occupy away from the aggressive system that reinforces their behavior to society's loss? A facebook group will be opened in which professionals in the social field as well as the general public will be encouraged to propose real alternatives for some of the young men stuck in a system they might even find too much too handle these days but which nonetheless provides a paycheck.

I LOVE GARLIC for it loves me!

2011-05-29T16:06:00.007+03:00

The garlic in the garden has been growing so nicely that I had to take a look see at what it was doing under the surface.

So I took out two of them, one of the ones I cut the leaves of some time ago and one that has been left to grow at it's own pace. The one that was left undisturbed has a bigger bulb so I won't try that again

The one that was left alone.

Drying in the sun.

The one I cut the leaves of.


Smaller in comparison to the one to the right even though at the time when I cut the leaves of off it it was the biggest plant in the batch.

But still I am here to experiment and after I got to two immature garlic heads I still cut the leaves of two other garlic plants since they are starting to flower and want to see how cutting their leaves at this stage will affect their growth. One of the ones that got a trim today had it's leaves cut before as well.

The leaves are very tasty and can be used very well either in salads or in stews or soups. I will probably cook something with them tonight.

So today is a very chilled, relaxed day something I needed since I was starting to get a bit of pain in my throat after the stressful encounter with the aggresive police of Luxembourg where this beautiful camera of Laura that is enabling me to take such lovely photos for myself was grabbed by one of those macho testestorone filled entities. I haven't been sick in more than half a year and would like to keep it that way. Now I feel ready to go back in the streets and my thoughts go out to the people in Spain and Portugal having to deal with police oppression on a daily basis.

Also there is another thing I am happy about for today and that is being able to crack a four digit bike combination lock that we had in our storage locked. It's a bit scary to realise that once you get the hang of it you can open one in less than 30 seconds. So I won't be using this one any time soon on my bike but give it to either Laura or Mari to use with their not so precious bikes. Here is where you can learn to open a combination lock: http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-crack-combination-bike-lock-under-30-seconds-160666/

And since the day was yet not over when I wrote this message I had time to plan and do some more chillin' stuff. For one I planned to go cycling to the Castle of Dudelange.

Once I arrived there I found the observation tower was closed as well as the castle grounds. But I easily found a way in.

And to my surprise all the rock that makes up the castle also creates a nice micro climate in which wild strawberries are already fully ripped. It was an incredible site and I filled myself with delicious fruit. I kept in mind to leave some to the birds and bugs around though.

Just my type of chilled, rewarding day!

And if you haven't noticed I fgo wild for foraging so when I found this wild field of chamomile I was blasted away and almos fell of my bike. Will go there soon to stock up for winter! Mmmmm

First time buying music

2011-05-24T17:08:00.002+03:00

Today I bought my first song and I did that through Manon from Radio Ara who has an Itunes account and I just gave her the money directly like as if buying a bag of potatoes. But I am happy I did this first purchase because the money will go to an animal rights organisation OhWhyOhWhy.

Here is the video for the song "Animals (Oh Why)" on Youtube.

I already made two radio programs about animal rights and veganism but I would like to do more since these programs make me feel like I am doing something meaningful. During the Animal Rights conference that took place in Luxembourg between the 19th and the 22nd of May I talked to medical doctors, doctorates in physics and psychologists, all vegan so consuming no animal products as well as attended lots of talks from morning till evening from book authors and animal rights activists and am convinced of three things:
- we don't need to eat animals to live a very healthy life, quite the opposite;

- animals are the most oppressed group in history with 50 BILLION of them being killed for human's pleasure EVERY year;

- people don't know how animals are treated either in factory farms dedicated to getting milk or eggs from animals but are also misinformed by the meat, milk and egg industries and need to be exposed to the animal's perspective. I will try to add my contribution to changing that.

Soon I will hopefully have a platform to upload my programs on the server of the Center for Ecological Learning Luxembourg (CELL) here: http://cell.lu

Final big sowing

2011-05-11T13:23:00.001+03:00

Today following the rain from yesterday I sowed the last of the big crops so hope for the best. Here is what I sowed: chives, a few different types of beans, carrots, purslane, dill, parsley, leek, sunflowers, a few different types of corn from Kokopelli (SR6 Ashwolh 2007, Sa21 Black Aztec 2008, Letzin 2010), Swiss chard, althaea officinalis, three types of salads, garden sorrel (tumex acetosa), Sperling's aroma star (carum carvi), spinach, turnip, and some peas along with some anis. Will see what comes out of it because I didn't seed in rows or with much care other than some companion planting suggested choices. There are a few other herbs and rucola to be planted and this season's big work in the garden should almost be done. Now it's up to the elements and the seeds to come to an understanding to supply me with some good stuff.

As it's my first garden I just planted what seeds I got from people (all of them) so not much care was placed on where those seeds come from but I will try for nex year to find a seed association from where to get unmodified, reliable seeds. Fuck GMOs and Hybrids! They make life so much more complicated.

25 degrees

2011-05-10T16:48:00.002+03:00

It's been 25 for more than a week now here in Dudelange! Quite an amazing temperature for the start of May. Still plenty of sowing to be done but with two free days, today and tomorrow I should be done.

The time I morphed into a guidebook

2011-05-07T08:14:00.001+03:00

"X town is another hidden treasure of Y place. Take a walk through the old center, marvel at the castle/fortress and eat some local specialties.

Unforgettable..."

Written on a amateur blog, I swear! These people move a lot but always to city centers and are very much into imposing buildings and things you can "marvel" at. I would hate to see the day when I too will become a guidebook expression bank. But so far I've been safe from that since I give fuck all about the places themselves and only care about the life inhabiting the place. Wild life, communities of people that work well on a horizontal level, unpesticided and unfertilized with chemical piece of land go well with me. There will come the day when eagles will be nesting on the towers of the Palais Ducal in Luxembourg city and deers will run through Place Guillaume in between thick vegetation. That is something I regret not being able to see in my lifetime. THAT would be something to marvel at!

Frosts

2011-05-04T09:39:00.000+03:00

Yesterday in the night the temperature droped to minus 0 degrees Celsius just as it was predicted by the owner of the house and neighbour. It's a local phenomenon that I see looking at the temperature chart doesn't happen in Constanta, Romania. I will have to protect some plants these days from the frost but the good news after this I can plant many more things.

Garden spiraling observations

2011-04-30T18:50:00.001+03:00

Today I was left alone with the garden and did some tweaks here and there but mostly just enjoyed looking around and seeing what works well and could work better. I am now a bit disappointed in the position I put it in because it doesn't correspond so much to how the flow of the raised bed is going. It actually seems to go against it. I now realise that the position of the sun in relation to the spiral doesn't really matter, something I thought would be of utmost importance. And maybe it is for bigger spirals but with mine I should have just considered the aesthetic value of it first. In something as small as this I think aesthetics should be more important than function.

Compost - finally!

2011-04-28T22:39:00.001+03:00

Made the simplest compost arrangement around today. Some pieces of timber stacked on top of each other to form a box like structure through which the wind can pass and aerate the whole thing. I also placed a plastic bottom at an angle to drain the excess liquids that will drip out and tomorrow will find some container to get this liquid in and diluted I will use it as a fertilizer for the plants.
I will probably not get to use the finished product but if someone will be intersting in gardening than they will have a really good start with nice, rich compost available.

Spiral finished and mint planted

2011-04-24T19:16:00.003+03:00

I finally ended up finishing this rock spiral on which I will now grow different herbs such as rosemary, oregano, thyme, mint, lemon balm, sage and so on.

Check that garlic out!

Today I just planted the mint in the little container inside the bigger container that you can see inside the spiral. If you can even call it a spiral seeing that it doesn't go back on itself... I put it there for it not to take over the whole thing since mint can be doing a little bit too well and spread it's roots all over the place. Not that it would be such a big problem since after I leave seeing that noone will take care of the garden maybe at least they can use the mint.

Garlic tweeks

2011-04-22T17:31:00.002+03:00

Today I cut off the leaves from two of the garlic plants growing in the garden to see the affect on the roots at the end of the season. I cut of the biggest plant and the smallest just so to compare. For future reference: the biggest was the one on the left.

Post Brussels trip

2011-04-20T13:37:00.001+03:00

Feelings of anxiety combined with a huge enthusiasm boiling under the surface after I came back from the Seed Sovereignty days of action in Brussels. I was overwhelmed to be among so many people that recognized the issue revolving around seed monopoly and not only that but also actively challenging this situation but now feel disconnected again from all of them again and don't know how to bring a group like that together to work towards showing people how such a apparently insignificant thing as preserving seeds localy can be maybe one of the most important challenges we face today just because of this basic inference that concludes SEEDS= FOOD and since we all need to eat of utmost importance... So now all I can do is hunt around Luxembourg for people who would like to present the local sittuation, put all of this information together in a program for Monday and than try and get some working group together.

I was glad to see photos on the free magazine Queesch of this banner reading SEEDS ARE SACRED and bellow seed-sovereignty.org that was hung on the biggest cathedral of Luxembourg on the 17th of April but now I feel more needs to be done.

Here is an article to go with the photo as well:

http://queesch.lu/2011/04/17/against-privatisation-of-seeds

Seed sovereignty

2011-04-16T00:14:00.000+03:00

"Sovereingnty" is such a strange word in English, don't you think? It's giving me a hard time always when I want to pronounce it out loud because of the peculiar way in which you just jump over three letters "ein" and just say "sovrnty". But I am preparing a small "introduction" for Luxembourg before I head of to Brussels on Sunday to take part in the "Seed sovereignty" days of action in which also the peasant organization Via Campesina is involved. The days of action are all about attracting public attention on this very basic yet very important topic just because of it's vitality, the seeds that give us food. How are the multinational corporations getting more and more of a monopoly over the seed production and distribution and how people can get involved to distribute this responsibility.

The end is near!

2011-04-15T09:49:00.002+03:00

Oh nos!

Bike projects

2011-04-14T17:49:00.003+03:00

Thanks Sandra.

http://www.atelierdynamo.fr/index.php
http://velorution.org/articles/400.html
http://carbusters.org/
http://www.heureux-cyclage.org/

Steps Beyond - barefoot walking

2011-04-12T21:14:00.002+03:00

Yesterday I had another program on Radio Ara of which I was very very disapointed in the end because I still read as if I am reading the text for the first time, I made some pronounciation mistakes (how the fuck do you even prounounce this tongue twister "sovereignty"?), couldn't find a track that I was supposed to play and left the mic opened as I was swearing and cursing saying "Fuck" and "shit" quite a few times before Sandra was able to run down and turn it of. Fuck! And again I feel as if I am spiting in the ocean expecting a wave to form. I doubt anyone followed my suggestion to walk more in barefeet because it's healthy for both body and soul.

Anyhow here is the playlist of songs I played yesterday just in case you were wondering:

1. Madness - EMBARRASSMENT (3:02)
2. Jingle Steps Beyond (0:14)
3. The John Butler Trio - Ragged Mile (3:57)
4. Zdob Şi Zdub - Bătuta (1:41)
5. Taraf de Haïdouks - Hora de mînâ si de picior (1:19)
6. The Outernational Space Gypsy Consortium (OSGC) - Just Do It - feat. Jaqee (4:56)
7. Patti Smith Group - Dancing Barefoot (4:16)
8. Paleface - Close to Earth (Feat. Jinx) (4:18)
9. Taxi - Cu Flori In Par Si Nimic In Picioare (4:27)
10. SOJA - Summer Breeze (5:11)

First jingle

2011-04-11T10:02:00.000+03:00

Today I made my first jingle ever for my program, Steps Beyond. Goes a little something like this:
Jingle Steps Beyond by Voluntarian

Garlic again

2011-04-10T19:37:00.001+03:00

If I could stay for longer on a plot of land I would grow on it things that are too expensive to buy without pesticides and other harmful chemicals while here in Dudelange my greatest expectation comes from the garlic I've been planting. At almost 9 euros a kilo it's well worth to plant as much of it as possible and I already have 8 plants or so growing very well from just one garlic bulb. In economic terms you could say that I've made a 800% profit out of it already with less than half an hour's total work put into it. And that is if you can call it work. So today with this economic incentive in the back of my mind I figured I could even increase that profit! If only Rockefeller could see me now! I planted more garlic after keeping it in the freezer for a while since there is a saying that garlic should go through a period of frost for it to actually do well. Following that I also planted some garlic that was never in the freezer just for comparison. So scientific, no?! I will hopefully remember to note down the observations at the end of the season.

Making spaghetti

2011-04-09T23:53:00.000+03:00

Not that I made them today as well even though I have quite allot of wholewheat of them but just as future reference there is a way to cook spaghetti without throwing out the water. Why would one want that? Well, because you conserve all the nutrients that leach from the spaghetti into the water while cooking mostly. And it's a pretty cool trick too!

Here how to do it: put just enough water as to cover the pasta while submerged (guess work that improves after more tries, for me it has been working from the first time very well) and than slowly push the spaghetti into the boiling water to which you've added some salt and oil as well. Keep pushing until all of it is submerged and keep stirring until the whole water is either evaporated or absorbed. Buon appetito!

Faces of the day

2011-04-09T23:23:00.000+03:00

Stravinsky

2011-04-08T12:23:00.001+03:00

Had the chance to go to one performance by Igor Stravinsky on Wednesday just before starting my up and down journey around Luxembourg on Thursday so a perfect introduction to that. At it's first representation in 1913 people starting fighting over it and the police was called yet it's such an interesting piece closer to a permaculture garden than a victorian style one so maybe soon we will see people fighting over such permaculture edible parks (if there ever will be one).

The frame in which I placed myself and Isabelle is a serie of "kitchy-freezy" of shopping carts found on the main shopping street of Eschternach while the place in which the photo of us was taken was actually Remich.

And here you have Remich, right on the border between Germany and Luxembourg but there is something in the air there that makes people take up that position on most benches. Spring!

Busy days!

2011-04-05T22:07:00.001+03:00

Woke up at 8, had breakfast, left by train to Bettermbourg, got on the bus, missed my stop and stayed on until the bus returned to it so I stayed 20 more minutes than anticipated on the bus. At 9:40 I was in Altwies east of Dudelange almost halfway between it and the renowned Schengen village. I got a tour of the gardens there by the manager which is a lovely lady on top of her game. And what a wonderfully dirty, gritty, game that is! Dirty and gritty as in full of beautiful dirt, manure, compost and other fertilizers in the two hectares that her organisation in that area manages. People living in Luxembourg who have been unemployed for longer, work there for a period of two years during which time they receive trainings and formations as to become proficient gardeners and social animators for kids since the gardens are also opened to the smaller public, kids starting from 3, 4 years old. And soon they will also have open doors to the general, average heighted public. More info on this (in French) here: Kalendula

Are we going to sit around while something like CORN (MAIS) basically becomes illegal?

I spent my time there after the extensive tour (which was beautiful! really great stuff they are doing!) interviewing both the manager and a person working there as well as waiting for one of the gardeners to arrive for an interview. I had to leave before though to catch my bus who got me to Dudelange around 14:00. I barely had time to cook and eat something with Francisco that we started working in the garden on a project we started in the weekend. CATASTROPHE! The raised bed that we were working on snapped the bottom of with a loud crack and all the s"*t we were putting in it ended up on the floor. Just as well. We will have a classic down to earth raised bed as I planned from the start. Should have never listened to him. It was a good experiment though and it could have worked if we would have made it a bit more sturdy. So having to fix the mess we did we had a wheelbarrow carrying marathon up to the time when we had to rush out of the house on our bikes, buttered bread in one hand, juice in another while riding away towards the train station. We were both heading for our language lessons him for the French me for the German which were starting at 17:15 and lasted until 18:55.

My impression of the language classes is that they're not so well thought out and that the upcoming public holiday of two weeks is not going to help the situation of us not advancing so fast. And I don't really agree with the statement of the teacher that says that their institution is a public one so that's why they take the public holidays off since I alone know how UNpublic it is, with quite long ques and waiting lists to get in as well as a not so little fee of 170 euros for a semester (filled up with this public holidays plus the occasional canceled lessons by the teacher).

Anyway, I am happy to be back home with some time to cook some dinner and think over the battle plan for the next days since I would really like to go interview people from Kokopelli who are fighting the big business of monopolisation of the essence of life and of people's nurture, SEEDS. I had no idea, but there is NOW a list in the EU that is growing constantly with seeds of different crops that people are not allowed to reproduce, swap or sell anymore because someone (a seed corporation) has a patent for it! Not only are farmers getting sued over this NOW but the situation will increasingly get worse as more and more crops are put on the list and the legislation protecting the practice solidifies around these small precedents. Also far, far away from public eyes these practices are killing farmers who can't afford the debts they find themselves in by trusting the seed suppliers, places like India for example. Read more on it here:
The GM genocide

Happy days!

2011-04-02T00:00:00.000+03:00

Today everything turned out great. Different emotions and feelings were experienced throughout the day from joy and amazement to exhilaration and physical pain.

It all started with the vegan brunch in the city. Here Laura is trying to recover after eating too much as well all did. She was just unlucky to have a slower stomach than the rest of us.

Following the vegan brunch we all, Francisco, Laura and me went back to Dudelange where we finally got to work together in the garden. Following a half an hour nap taken by the fantastic couple me and Francisco started work on a raised bed. Plans changed a couple of times but maybe for the better. We will see with the end result.

Three hours into that I had to pack up and leave again for Luxembourg city where I would be surprised that four hours of silent movie can still keep me watching. It was a brilliant piece by some guy that I won't name since he named himself allover the screen accompanied by the Luxembourg orchestra. Name of the movie.... Intolerance. Felt like the grandeur of the sets out grew the plot and the way things were weaved together but hell, in the end a movie from 1916 still for a crowd that paid quite a good sum of money to see it. I didn't. Celine from the radio just handed me the ticket since she was unable to go anymore. So I think like that it was worth it.

I got to see people react to the silent movie in amusement most of the time at the over exaggerated gesticulation of the actors but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the people in the audience even cried to it. I almost did on the way back while trying to get up the train platform and banging my front tooth into the handlebars of the bicycle that got got firmly stuck into the stairs. At least the ride to the train station was great with very little traffic on the road and I only got a bloody lip out of the whole incident. Life is great right now.

Bikes, bikes, bikes everywhere!

2011-03-29T00:09:00.002+03:00

Even on the radio! Today in Radio Ara I took over the airwaves shamelessly and did a whole hour program on bikes and only bikes. I mentioned the Critical Mass from this past Friday and the one to come on the last Friday of April. I played the following songs:

1. Gil Ionita - Lasati-ma Sa Merg Pe Bicicleta (2:23)
2. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Bicycle Song (3:23)
3. Mark Ronson & The Business Intl - The Bike Song (4:57)
4. Kraftwerk - Tour De France (Allemande) (6:38)
5. Queen - Bicycle race (3:01)
6. The Beloved - Sweet Harmony (5:03)
7. The Decemberists - Apology Song (3:11)
8. Katie Melua - Nine Million Bicycles (3:17)

9.Yves Montand - La bicyclette

And just talked and talked as I never did before. But it wasn't as hard as I would have presumed it would be. There were no supervisors to look over my shoulder which paradoxically I feel I need but without whom I do allot better. I only messed up a couple of times and with no serious consequences. There was no dead time on my air time and I came out of it very relaxed (even though later I felt very tired and exhausted). But I feel everything is working more smoothly.

Critical Mass *** 25th March

2011-03-26T01:40:00.001+02:00

Today was a slow day up to the moment when we left for the train station of Dudelange. Someone asked for a bike for the Critical Mass later in the day and since we had an extra one we agreed to transport it to Luxembourg city. I tried to tandem cycle both my bike and the other one but I lost practice so I instead just cycled one to the station, locked it and came back for the other. Until the train came I also had time to adjust a few things for the bike like the saddle and pumped some air in the tires. The train was fortunately a direct one to Luxembourg and once we got there people quickly started showing up.

At 17:30 we were already ringing our bells and going on our way through the streets of Luxembourg. It was quite a great feeling to see people taking charge of the direction of the ride, going to the front and the whole group following in a smooth and relaxed manner. I enjoyed it enormously and increased my whole interest in getting more involved in getting the event known to more people who wouldn't otherwise dare to cycle on their own. I had so many fears regarding the traffic in Luxembourg but all of them were blown away by the Critical Mass. Everyone acted very composed and lots of fun was had by everyone. We talked at different stop points and discussed ways to make the next ones that are gonna happen on every last Friday of the month even better! So you are welcome to come join us! On this passed ride there were 29 of us and we look forward to doubling our numbers soon. Find us on facebook by searching "Critical Mass Luxembourg".

And for those of you who might not be acquainted with the concept, Critical Masses are basically bike rides through the cities in which the cyclists make a protest to the over use of cars in a place that could otherwise do very well just with bikes and public transport for most part. There is a great movie on it called "We Are Traffic". I highly recommend it to anyone interested in starting such a movement, maybe have a screening of it if you have a projector available.

Here is a movie from the Critical Mass from today:

Early morning climb and planting

2011-03-20T09:47:00.003+02:00

This morning I climbed the highest point in Dudelange and it was great fun. I got there right in time for the sunrise which was beautiful. I couldn't have chosen a better day!

Also today I got to do some planting and planted a couple of things in the make shift green house for seedlings. Planted beans, rucola and anise.

And today again was a very beautiful sunny day here in Dudelange, Luxembourg.

More rosemary

2011-03-19T21:38:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I planted more rosemary and today I got the owners of the house to come over in the garden. They gave me ok on everything but the green roof on which I advised them to think about. But I have two compost bins and two raised beds as well as spiral garden on the way before the living roof. And lots of seedlings to start up in the make shift green house that a piece of furniture that was going to get thrown out is used for now.

German Lesson 1: how to say: "You ripped me off"?

2011-03-15T19:00:00.022+02:00

Today I had my first German classes at the Language Institute in Luxembourg from 17:15 to 18:55. Since I've been doing some Pimsleur language course at home for a while now the course felt a bit slow and not so interesting. But there was definitely an interesting group of people from Peru, Angola, Brazil, Iraq, Iran, Estonia, Canada, Belgium and many more other places and good exercise to hear the teacher talking only in German for the first half an hour.

Too bad that during the day I had a bad experience with a local doctor to whom I went to get advice for the before mentioned scabies. Without even looking at me he looked in some book for about 5 minutes, trying to look busy I assume since he was looking in the same books over and over and from what I understood just to find the name of scabies in French and the cream to put on in case of itching. And for that he charged me 43 euros. This private insurance should cover the costs but I still wonder how do real people, living a real life as opposed to volunteers living in a bubble created by EU policy and the insurance company, live. How would you feel to have someone like that taking maybe what you would make in 5 hours in your work in Luxembourg and what someone with a high paid job in Romania would make in a day, in 5 minutes? Like yelling? To whom? We are all royalty here, remember? And royalty doesn't scream, they take it up the ass and say "Thank you, good bye!".

I've got you under my skin!

2011-03-13T13:41:00.005+02:00

Got the following message yesterday from the people I hosted a few days ago. Oh joy, oh joy!

hallo radu,
alban was today at his doctor and we all have scabies. you can look this up on wikipedia.
we all got tabletts againbst them. you should be safe, but still. please wash all the beds in hot water; at least 60degrees.
and if you start itching in a week or two , please go to a doctor.
i am so sorry that we might hva contagioued your house.
greetings from itchi and scratchi
here is a video for you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sarcoptes_scabiei_2.ogv

kisses
steffi marta alban alex

Later edit on the 15th of March: And now that I am about to go the doctor I think the following is also fitting:

Permaculture meeting

2011-03-13T00:26:00.000+02:00

Today I made my way to Biekerich a second time, on this occasion for a permaculture meeting and discussion group. People were very eager to discuss their intentions for their patch of land and one participant also put up another piece of land for use for anyone interested in working it and we all went to see it at the end of the discussion. Of course the project is mostly a local initiative so the language of the meeting was Luxembourgish but I had a nice person translating for me a few of the points that were being made. And even though I think the people are still confused about what the role of the initiator of these meetings and discussions is these types of meetings could get them to talk to eachother and get some work(ing) connections going on from which something practical could grow. But as the economical incentive to remain comfortably ignorant are.... well, quite strong people might not create the type of relations that are needed for phisical work. We'll see...

Luxembourg, open up!

2011-03-10T20:05:00.004+02:00

For a cow country, Luxembourg definitely doesn't show it's bovine side. At least not in the transport means. Even though the smell tells a tale. So once I made my way into the train with the following I got some looks.

Imagine me running with this whole thing in my arms across the tracks, ha ha!

And I am telling you what; for a cow country in which manual labor would be expected there isn't much access for people who would do such manual labour. Everything is automatic and hard to open and stay open for long enough for a working man and his tools to get on board. Getting to the train is another story as well. For a "bike country" as Luxembourg was dubbed recently by someone living in a cloud in the ministry of transport means and tourism doesn't have much access for bikes. I had no bike on this occasion but coming from one part of Differdance where my friends and I were helping someone with building a chicken house I had the above pictured trailer and a bale of straw on it.

Was I supposed to go down several flights of stairs and than up the equal amount just to reach the waiting area? I was hungry, tired and wanted to go two meters to my left so I took the direct way across the tracks. Got honked by one train and the one I wanted to go on closed it's doors so not to let me in because of that incredible criminal act that probably subverted national cow security. Why is this little country such a big cauldron for hypocrisy to boil in?!

Critical Mass - We Are Traffic!

2011-03-07T00:39:00.003+02:00

On Friday in the house in Dudelange we had 16 people coming over for the movie "We Are Traffic" on Critical Masses, or for those who never saw one or been part of one, big groups of people on bikes cycling though the city at a leisurely pace. We also cooked allot and even though I was not happy with the results most of the food was gone so I was very happy about that. Our couchsurfer, Antonia from Spain staying over just for the night proved to be of allot of help in preparing everything. And with preparations starting around noon it was great that everything worked out, the amp and speakers were in working order, so as the projector and laptop. Everything worked smoothly and I am very happy about the whole thing even though the evening started one hour later with people arriving late eithet because I gave them the wrong house number (ups!) or just because they messed up as I did, either by forgetting the map at home and needing to be picked up at the train station where they got of one station too far....

On the face book group (Critical Mass Luxembourg) I wrote some of the things that were discussed at the meeting (which was not long at all because people already started drinking and were feeling chatty) but the most important thing is that the ride will happen on the 25th of March, on the last Friday of the month as Critical Masses are usually held.

From face book: Some of the issues that were discussed [...] were: -creating fliers (can someone do that?) - start time of the Critical Mass (open) - it depends on the sunset time because most people would like to ride during daylight. -routes (open) - communication means for people in the front and people in the back - making noise and making it fun (bring whistles, face paint, boom boxes, radios?) - facilitation for people who have no bike to find one for the ride - some ideas would be for people to post here if they want to join but have no bike; use second shops (more suggestions other than troc.com?) -contacting lots of organisations involved either in environmental protection, bike culture promotion or just the NGOs people work in Anything anyone would like to add? Let's discuss the above as well.

Messy gardening

2011-03-04T11:22:00.001+02:00

A couple of days ago I've planted a few potatoes that were sprouting in the dark so clearly trying to make a living so I gave them the chance. Today on the spur of the moment I planted the rosemary that I found at the base of a bigger rosemary bush just thrown out and that I left to take roots in a glass of water by the window. It took it quite some time, maybe two weeks but in the end it also made it's claim to life.

David Orlowsky Trio

2011-03-03T23:03:00.000+02:00

A great Klezmer mix up with different tunes from around the world, the David Orlowsky Trio was a joy to be part at. The concert hall at the Philharmonique of Luxembourg was full and for good reasons. By the end of it they received a standing ovation and again for good reasons. While I was part of it I was thinking I will never go to concerts inside a hall somewhere anymore since it's tormenting not to be able to dance to Klezmer but with a few bursts of energy from the public in form of whistling and energetic clapping I think I will give it some more chances. The press accreditation does do a good job at giving me the luxury of choice.

Punctual spring

2011-03-01T12:17:00.001+02:00

Spring is punctual in Luxembourg, freakin' late in Constanta and getting there in Denmark:

Uuuufaaa! ON AIR!

2011-02-28T17:40:00.000+02:00

Could you get more exited for nothing?! I just finished my first program that included half an hour of live transmission and I am so happy because I was so nervous about it! It was very hard to keep cool and not blush and sweat. But I was lucky that something I put in place on the last minute with Francisco and Laura went ahead and with not the worst results. The discussion on land use based on moral grounds somehow turned to a presentation of what alternative ways of thinking, traveling and living there are... not in Luxembourg. I think that if people here are to do something towards their own alternative than they should receive more encouragement than critique and reminders that the country anywhere else but in the capital smells of cow shit from big industrial "factories"/farms and that the only culture they get is for sale and a product of consumption just like a pair of undies in the shops of Luxembourg city. So go Luxembourg! Get back on track to a pre financial boom that paralysed your senses and gave you such a comfortable casket to lie in! When is the first squat going to rise from this appearance of abundance? (since that was the theme of the program).

On reincarnation and culinary experi(ences/ments)

2011-02-25T20:36:00.002+02:00

Yesterday I had my two lovely people that I work with coming over along with a guest of one of them and I cooked them a big pot of beans. I guess the beans were too old because in the end after more than a hour and a half of boiling they were still hard. A pity because the rest of the ingredients fit in quite well with each other.

Nonetheless, today I still used the bean stew together with the last of my garlic, some leeks and lasagna noodles in another dish, let´s call it bean lasagna that was a bit more cooked than the previous attempt. I still have allot of that as well so I am wondering what will come out of it tomorrow and if it´s going to improve even further...

Critical Mass

2011-02-25T11:07:00.002+02:00

This year, the Buergbrennen in Luxembourg City will take place on Sunday, March 13, 2011 in the vallee de la Petrusse so what do people think of chasing the winter down from the city in some spiral (to make the chase longer:P) ON OUR BIKES??!!! Straight into the fire of spring! No cycling special pants or special bike required, no fitness level required, just a good mood towards everyone sharing the street with us regular joes on bikes.

Since Luxembourg is such a small place I propose we have a meeting on which to propose different routes that could make the ride longer and more interesting. How about this Saturday at the Radio Ara office at 2, rue de la Boucherie (right above Urban pub and just around the corner from the Palais Ducal)? I will be providing cookies and juice for everyone present and if anyone feels like they could bring some home made stuff or anything to keep us through the meeting it would be welcomed but not necesary.

I would propose 14:00 but it can be rescheduled. If you would like to know more about Critical Masses you can either check: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass or the movie "We Are Traffic!". Everyone is welcomed!

For more info or for feedback please contact me as soon as possible.

Embedding sounds on the blog

2011-02-24T22:10:00.000+02:00

I've just embedded my first one full hour program from Radio Ara and you can listen to it following this link and you can also find there some info on it: http://i-left.blogspot.com/2011/02/monday-show.html . I used Sound Cloud to upload and host it but it has a space limitation and would like to find other ways of embedding unlimited amounts of sounds. Any suggestions?

Inspiration

2011-02-24T00:45:00.001+02:00

Sunday I left for Gent, Belgium. No fun or holiday though! It was hard enough to get to Gent from Dudelange with the public transport going very slow. I had half an hour stop in Brussels where I went to the front of the train station to realise once again why I'm doing what I'm doing. While the surveillance camera was watching the pile of trash accumulated in the bin

and this older man climbing the stairs to the train station under the symbolically filled pieces of rags hung in the wind

another older man was sleeping in the winter cold under another piece of rag.

The camera was watching again.

How does making a radio program about growing food wherever there is place to do so have anything to do with these very apparently random impressions? Well, for one the structure of power still seems very wrong and dysfunctional even after 5 minutes of quiet observation and the main cause of all these wrong pictures that I wish I hadn't the chance of taking. Flags waving still wave goodbye to personal responsibility to a small community, the old man sleeping on the bench still has no community to take him in while the trash accumulates as the responsibility for it's disposal is safe in some paid hands. Why I went to Gent for though was to find people who took a wholesome type of responsibility in their life and not only work responsibility disconnected to personal life responsibility. People who dealt with other people on a day to day basis so that together they can produce even the most basic and simple of life's needs. To start with they are growing food in the city. They are taking responsibility for a place where the municipality and it's bureaucratic system was too slow to take any. They are also occupying old abandoned private buildings for day to day living. So a small group of people is inspiring others to take responsibility and if not at least they are there for the back up plan of oil prices soaring and the current energy consumption trend coming to an abrupt halt. But it was also a very humbling experience on a personal level having lived in one of these occupied buildings for the three days I was there, with no heating other than a oven for a 5 room floor, no tap hot water or washing machine at arm reach but with open doors to people living there and friends, with animals living a happy life along with the people and with many beautiful things filling every corner of a creative beautiful mess. I was inspire to learn by doing as well and in the following days I will be searching for a building to give life to and to learn from: to learn to deal with making my own heat, getting water and managing my "waste" which I hope won't just be waste but food for either worms and bacteria of for a technological process like plastic recycling.

Bike filled sunny days.

Here are also some random fun photos from the venture:

What is dumb people like myself say Belgium is famous for? pedophiles (real sign from a Belgian train station but selected composition) and chocolate (found on the belgian train seat).

I was considering hitchhiking from Arlon close to the border with Luxembourg where the train ticket to the nearest border village was 3,6 euros in the conditions that I got to Arlon for 5 with the gopass. Does it make sense to pay 72% of the price of a 251km journey for less than a 25km one? I asked a random person which way towards Luxembourg at which he invited me to drive with him and his parents that were coming to pick him up to the border with Luxembourg. In the end his parents ended driving me all the way to the front of the door in Dudelange. The photo is of little crazy dog that they had at their home where they drove me first to offer me beer, wine, etc.

Planted garlic

2011-02-18T13:36:00.001+02:00

Today being full moon I made the symbolic gesture of planting some garlic which was supposed to be planted in autumn for the frost to kick start it into germinating but since there might still come some frost I keep my hopes up.

I also need to figure out if I want a compost or not and how to get the water to flow again in the garden. Also if I want to start the small green roof project I had in mind. For these purposes I took some photos of the garden to look at from time to time and schetch down ideas.

On top of this small water soaked cement roof I am considering growing a small garden of strawberries.

Lower are some of the plants already growing in the garden of which I am happy since some of them are edible while some others like the third one from the top scare me since they are very invasive.

Destroy after reading... if you can!

2011-02-18T12:08:00.001+02:00

I got my debit card sent in a couple of days ago and before that the PIN code. I just checked the PIN code now. Do you want to know it? It wouldn't serve you of much good since there's hardly any money there.
But anyhow, I wanted to know it so I can get the food money off of it and with coin in hand I scratched the code area and the lucky number was revealed. The letter on which it was attached recommended that the code should be destroyed right after seeing and memorizing it. Yet I noticed that would be more difficult said than done. The code is printed on a plastic card, glued to the paper. Once detached from the paper there is still a heavy duty plastic to destroy. Am I supposed to resort to burning plastic? Cutting of the individual numbers by scissors and giving them to individual recycling areas? Eating it? Could I than sue the bank for not writing down in the letter I was not supposed to ingest the code? How was I supposed to know it was not from biodegradable materials? Maybe than I could have some actual money on the account! And now I am honestly curious how the bank would react to these concerns of mine.
Maybe impressed by the Romanian plastic banknotes they wanted to adopt the system and were so excited that they applied it to the wrong area of the banking system. Who knows? I am now seriously considering writing them a "serious" letter with all these concerns.

Monday Show

2011-02-15T14:58:00.002+02:00

From now on I will have a show on Radio ARA every two weeks and yesterday I had my first one. It's called Steps Beyond and it starts at 14:00 for one hour. You can find a livestream link at the top of the menu on the right.

Originally it was supposed to be on sustainability issues but being my first I just made it as an introduction to Romania though music.I will upload it as soon as I have it. It was cool that during the show I even received a call from a Romanian living in Luxembourg. He wanted to congratulate me so I'm happy someone was impressed because I personally had the feeling I did a very bad job.

Steps Beyond - Radu's intro by Voluntarian

Busy Sunday

2011-02-14T02:02:00.000+02:00

As yesterday I didn't focus so much on making the radio broadcast for Monday today I went very determined to the studios of Radio ARA to listen to some more music and find a way to fit it in the program. Another guy turned up and occupied the recording studio so at lunch I checked CouchSurfing and since there was a meeting for going under the city in a drain type of tunnel I joined in at 14:30. The walk turned into a invitation for a late lunch at Magdalena's place, a couchsurfer from Germany living in Luxembourg that I got the chance to meet once before. It was a very pleasant time spent with her, her house mate and her boyfriend as well as another couchsurfer Egyptian-English. But I finally got back to the radio and started recording when I got a call from a friend letting me know that he is coming to visit today. So instead of staying that extra hour that I planned on spending in the studio I wrapped it up and took the bus only to miss the train by one minute. Half an hour later I was on the train towards Dudelange and now that I am here at 1:02 I still have some work to do on the emission. Bummer...

Vegan brunch #2

2011-02-13T01:14:00.000+02:00

Saturday started late but just in time for us to catch a train to Luxembourg and than a bus close to Cafe Rocas where another vegan brunch was happening. Again for 5 euros we were able to fill ourselves with vegan food and sweets to the point that we could not even look at food anymore. And this time I didn't pay 8 euros like last time and stuck to the minimum since Luxembourg is expensive and I´ve made some mistakes already like that 6 euro beer and that 2 euro bread.

Later in the day I arrived at Radio ARA where I was ready to put all that food energy into a great show when Sandra and her training buddy arrived and took me out for a nice walk around the historical center of Luxembourg city. When we came back I had just a bit of time to focus on work and than we mostly played around on youtube. T´was fun! I than stayed until 22:40 trying to write a script for the show but not getting really close to finishing it. On Sunday I have to go back to the studio, but that´s ok because I don´t really see it as work. It´s very creative fun and I enjoy it.

Weather comparison

2011-02-11T12:47:00.007+02:00

Free Your Stuff!

2011-02-11T01:10:00.003+02:00

Yesterday, frustrated by the long process of starting a freecycle group for the region I live in I gave it all up and started a facebook group called Free Your Stuff Luxembourg with the following description: "This group is a quick alternative to Freecycling which takes for ever to create a yahoo group for, with tons of boring check ups and what not. And all the trouble for people to find a platform to give their s#&t away.

So! This group is dedicated to all of us here in Luxembourg who tend to accumulate, accumulate and fill in spaces that could otherwise be used for something more interesting than storage and dust collector.

If you have something to GIVE write that at the beginning of your message, the same for when you NEED something or when you GAVE something to someone and it´s unavailable anymore.

Most importantly keep it FREE!"

Transport in Luxembourg

2011-02-10T22:20:00.001+02:00

While travelling in Luxembourg I notice that most people have transport cards which also differ from person to person I guess according to their age category or maybe even financial status. I for example at twenty five shouldn't be able to obtain a jumbo kaart normally but somehow I got one and with no actual problems about it. I was disappointed that I had to pay for it myself even though the money I get here seems to be allot for volunteering but with prices like 5,8 euros for a beer and similarly high prices for food it's quite a normal amount for living a student life but not even that (a Romanian student's life).

Back to the Jumbo Kaart, it cost me 50 euros and it offers access to all public transport in the country of Luxembourg. I heard you can only have it until you are twenty five, on the CFL website it says until twenty with some exception that translated in google doesn't make sense to me. Maybe I fit in the exception, maybe as a volunteer I get extra benefits.

Otherwise the payment for all transport, train or buses in the country is at a flat rate, 1,5 euros for two hours and that can get you anywhere in the country from one end of it to the other I assume. So having some sort of transport card pays of for people staying for longer. Also ticket packages are sold with some discounts but since I don't need them now I don't have more information about them.

One other thing that I can talk about is buying tickets. If you get on a train from anywhere in the country and you get of before the inspector arrives your gain. If not you buy your ticket on the spot at the same price with the only exception being on trains coming from Luxembourg city where there is the possibility to buy the ticket from a counter. In this case an extra fee (fine?) of 1,5 euros is added. I never had to show the jumbo kaart for any of the buses but sometimes if the driver had a bad day I see he closes all the doors except the one in front and checks.

More extensive and exhaustive reading on the subject can be found here: http://www.luxembourg.co.uk/pubtrans.html

DELL sucks. I rule!

2011-02-10T15:08:00.000+02:00

Four days ago I called for technical support in Belgium for the laptop I am using from Graffiti. The DVD ROM wouldn't function. After being passed around five or six times until I reached a technician who could (hardly) speak English I was told to open the laptop there and than. Ha! I ran around looking for a screwdriver but when I finally found one the screw wouldn't come out. So I gave up and told the guy so. He just told me he will send a new DVD ROM and instructions via mail. The next day the DVD ROM was already in the office but the instructions were not there or inaccessible. But today I got myself two small screwdrivers and a bit of brute force and opened up the damn thing breaking some small parts in the process but at the end of the torment I now have a working DVD ROM. That gives me a new dimension of accessibility to information with two mediateques that I can access for free, one right here next to the Graffiti offices and another in Dudelange in Centre National de Audiovisuelle. Wooo hooo!!!

Happy Vegan Meal

2011-02-09T21:36:00.000+02:00

We cooked too much food for the Queesch party and even though we tried in the following days to finish it and mainly had only that to eat for both lunch and dinner we were far from the bottom of the pots. Francinsco and Laura picked up on my idea of distributing healthy food in front of the McDump and so that was the plan. Today we put it in practice and even though at start it was just people from the Vegan Society of Luxembourg that followed the facebook invitation joining us, at some point a large crowd of people showed up and helped with getting the food eaten. And I think we have to thank one brave boy who boldly broke from his group of friends and came over to chat and ask for a plate. His friends soon joined and than more and more people. With maybe more than 30 people served we still have some cous cous and hummus in the kitchen as I type this but in manageable quantities. So the day was a success.

I was quite surprised by the distrust of people of having some free food but also by the fact that no police made an appearance to right the wrongs that we crazy people were committing. It was quite refreshing even though I came prepared with songs by NWA, Immortal Technique and Black Star. I´m also quite pleased at how out last minute preparations turned out to be quite efficient. We did do some things that were over kill like writing on pieces of paper on the pots that noone got to read because they were on the floor. But Lauta´s posters did get some attention and people from the crowd to join. So wow, last minute was not as bad as I usually imagine it.

The ego factor

2011-02-07T01:12:00.000+02:00

There's no secret behind it, that we are living in a century of self in which the ego is inflated from all sides and with every opportunity. Even charity gives people the opportunity to become bigger in their own eyes. One way to do so is by giving the individual the chance to donate money and any other material goods. The other is by visiting the global south, the half of the globe always positioned in the LOWER hemisphere of the world, coming back home to appreciate the hot shower and electricity that the system of the UPPER hemisphere is providing. But is there really an UP and a DOWN in space? How does you spending global resources to fly around the globe, sleep in cut off from local culture hotels and going to conferences as well as joining one day trips around the poor areas of a country change the situation in that particular country?

Photo source: http://fa.mielie.com/index.php?m=06&y=09&entry=entry090620-093801

First studio interview

2011-02-06T22:50:00.001+02:00

As I look back on the experience and hear the finished product of recording my first interview, which was on Friday, the 4th of February it makes me compare it to what a teenager would experience with his or her first sexual experience. And I can even say that for me this level of awkwardness and shyness never reached such levels in intimacy. But I guess it's easier with one person than it is to start at once with three. And at least you read and see copious amounts of information on sex while on radio I am still in my infancy regarding my skillfulness. I will post later both the edited minutes and a bonus that I am working on now.

But I can say I realise some of the things I could have done better and one of the most obvious is a classic mistake and that is of starting without a foreplay. The guests were nervous to start with and throughout the interview that started abruptly they became more and more nervous. I should have started with some small talk that would have made them forget they were in front of the mics but I jumped right into it.

What, when, who....ahhh!!!

2011-02-06T17:31:00.000+02:00

If you thought doing volunteer work will give you the time and the space to be alone with your thoughts WAKE UP! Here it is. It's more intense and you find less time to sit down and reflect on what just happened or what you should be doing in the future. But I'm just talking to myself now of course. Some people might find that place in their mind with EVS I guess but I'm more hyper than ever.

The last week I took my first interview in the recording studio in French of which I am not happy at all, while at home a couple of friends that came by from Belgium to visit were just wondering around Dudelange without me. They made things even more complicated with their extreme detachment from any form of authority and system as well as from the consumer system to which I try to fit in. Their response to corporate businesses pushing the little people out of production is dumpster diving, busking, squatting and paying as little as possible and only in extreme cases. I guess they firmly believe that a time will come when this society build up on other people´s exploitation will disintegrate. I´ve been reading this book about green business "Cradle to Cradle" which two years ago I thought would be the answer to everything but now while reading it for some reason I am not so optimistic anymore. I've lost my trust in the bigger brother watching over the little brother's good well being. As it so happens in real life even blood brothers screw each other over, so why trust a know-it-all, even well intentioned, technocrat big brother like a corporation? Why not take some action towards one´s own self sufficiency and locally responsible involvement? My suspicion is that the role of the parents played by the state which wants it´s kids to grow as wholesome individuals has been taken by the big brother, the corporation and it worked towards dependence on it´s "help". We´ve become week and to see such strong, autonomous people as my two friends, Dries and Eva is a heart warming experience. I wish they could have stayed for longer. And that I get over this pompous writing style in which I fall from time to time. I´m guessing I had one too many essay assignments requiring the use of metaphors in school.

Yesterday the Queesch magazine party happened and since I am friends with the two volunteers involved in it I helped with cooking the whole day. In the evening I helped with eating. They didn´t even recover the money for the ingredients from the donations but now we have a plan with all the leftover food and that is to distribute it for free on Wednesday in front of the McDonalds and Quick hamburger in Luxembourg.

SMS4TICKET®

2011-01-29T23:30:00.004+02:00

I was looking for info on this funny thing I saw today in the bus, when a young guy came in the bus and showed the driver his Iphone. I found what I was looking for here:
http://luxembourg.angloinfo.com/information/73/busses.asp

Bus tickets may also be bought by mobile telephone via the service SMS4TICKET®. Registration beforehand is not required.

To use the service, send a text message to 64222 stating the type of ticket required. A text message will be received confirming the purchase of the ticket; show this to the bus driver on request. The bus fare is invoiced on the next mobile phone bill. Currently only "A" tickets are available by SMS, covering the whole city of Luxembourg territory.

I like the creative aproach to this. But why is there a little ® following the title? Was the title patented or the program? Both destroy the whole pleasure of finding a creative spark here.

1st Radio Feature

2011-01-28T20:48:00.002+02:00

Today I recorded, cut and edited my first feature for Radio ARA that will be aired during the youth emission Graffiti.

The feature will have a space in the program prepared by the two Queesch magazine volunteers Laura and Francisco and will start from 2 PM the coming Tuesday. It will last an hour. My feature will be around 5 minutes and a half for which I worked around 6 hours just on cutting, recording the narrative and editing, not counting the time spent interviewing and recording at the presentation of CELL (Center for Ecological Learning Luxembourg) on which the feature is.

I hope it turns out well.

22 January from room window

2011-01-28T02:24:00.002+02:00

Events

2011-01-27T22:11:00.005+02:00

With the days passing so fast that I hardly know where and how the time flied I am not sure I will be able to catch any of the feelings I am experiencing in writing and I will definitely not write down all the things that have happened.

What I am most excited from this almost passed week are the vegan brunch on Saturday, the weekend radio workshop and the live transmission on Monday, the trip to Biekerich and the interview at the presentation for the Center for Ecological Learning in Luxembourg (CELL) with Katy Fox, the mayor of Biekerich and lots of other interesting people while today the highlight was getting 2 kg worth of fruit for 1 euro, getting my Carnet de Jeunes with which I can go at numerous Museums, Galleries, Concerts for free and in the evening going ice skating and going to a Indian restaurant that Graffiti paid for. It´s been amazing also because in all of this chaos and back and forth movement I still got the chance to find a great book I was looking for for a long time, Cradle to Cradle and now I have the time to also sit down and read it.

On Saturday the Radio workshop held by Arvina, the German EVS volunteer, was scheduled and it started with a vegan brunch in a local cafe. I followed Arvina though the streets of Luxembourg city to this very cosy little cafe where some other people I've met in Luxembourg were also. Everyone had a very eager look on their face. The food looked great and after eating copious amounts of everything I also discovered the dessert section. Oh wow! I haven´t felt sick from eating too much in a long long time and all for 5 euros! I ended up paying 8 but I´m telling you, for the amount of delicious food that was there it was a small price.

Vegan EVERYTHING!

Laura trying to recover for dessert.

So with such a great start to the Radio workshop everything went smoothly throughout the weekend. We went around interviewing people, cutting and editing, discussing and recording in the studio. And than some more cutting and editing. So we´ve cut and edited our way into a Monday show that got us all very excited even though after all the cutting and editing we barely had 5 minutes live each. It was funny that we were all so excited. My pulse even went high high a couple of times.

Right after clearing that out I was getting ready to go to this opening presentation for CELL (Center for Ecological Learning Luxembourg) that I was planning to attend even from Romania. In the evening of the previous day I found out someone I knew was going by car to the same presentation so I got a seat in their car. On the way from Differdange to Beckerich we even passed though Belgium so that was funny. My first time in Belgium was spent on the highway going from a point A in Luxembourg to another point B still in Luxembourg but on shorter line though another country. Luxembourg is funny like that. The presentation was unfortunately in Luxembourgish so all I got out of it were some recorded sounds for a feature. But at the end I got to interview some really interesting people, like Katy Fox, the initiator of CELL, the mayor of this village that provides 90% of it´s own electricity, the guy in charge of the bio gas electricity plant, a left wing party political coordinator and so on. It was great! And at the end of the presentation I ended up sleeping in Differdange at Francisco's place which is actually my project coordinator's place, pc that I hadn't met at that time. She owns a beautiful house from which I got the following very boring and typical photos:

Yesterday I had another great experience going ice skating, falling a numerous times, but yeah, for the great experience: going to an Indian restaurant as a welcoming reception for me and a fare well one for Arvina all on the organisation´s expense. And what expense! I am happy I didn´t need to pay for that! But for how delicious everything was I wouldn´t have minded paying for something like that in the end.

Today was a proper work day, getting up in the morning, having a quick breakfast and heading for the city where me, Laura and Francisco recorded for the first transmission of Queesch, an indy magazine. Once more I tried to open a bank account in this country with no success! Maybe tomorrow... For a country full of banks this seems to be the hardest thing to achieve so far for me as a low income individual. I am especially very disappointed at the Nordea one which in Denmark at least tried it´s best to get of it´s high horse but which here in Luxembourg is just an empty box with no soul. A money making box. I did find an old fart someone dropped there that told me the following once I told her I would like to transfer my bank account from Denmark to Luxembourg: "When you become famous and make a little bit more money, than you can come visit us again".

Suffering is still sold at a pretty price here in Luxembourg.

The urban park and park forests

2011-01-24T00:42:00.003+02:00

Looking on at Luxembourg via satellite photos made me realise how well designed the place is for humans. Maybe not as good for anything else but Luxembourg is the place to be if you have a bank account and have the digital ability to access it.

On top of the well shaped urban parks, your everyday city or village (you can't really call villages the settlements of Luxembourg so I will call them towns) you also have the "nature bit" which by the looks of it even from satellite is as unnatural as it comes. This feature of the urban parks, the "park forest" becomes more obvious when you scroll down at the border between Luxembourg and let's say France where the trees on one side of the border line decided to be of a different species and of a different arrangement than those in Luxembourg. Funny feature.

Following that observation made me realise that while in Romania let's say, the urban parks are not so well designed for the people living there also the chaotic natural element offers a bit of diversity and our civilised fear of the natural is still grounded in something. Which one do you prefer? Even though you might know it's against your nature....

Bread making

2011-01-21T21:43:00.001+02:00

Today I mainly stayed in and tuned the laptop I am to work on for the following year but at some point in the day I got restless and got on the bike and cycled to the organic food Supermarket where I grabbed a pack of wholewheat flour and an envelope of yeast with which I cycled in a rush back home. Here I baked my first bread in Luxembourg in which I forgot to add salt and seeds but it came out very well. Next one will be better. And I still have half of the package of flour. Maybe I will try to conjure up some sour dough.

A bread like this here in Luxembourg can go up to 2 euros I think but I just paid 1,69 euros for the package of flour and 0,69 for the yeast package without which I can do without for sour dough. So basically I can make my own wholewheat bread for 80 euro cents which is damn cheap for Luxembourg. Not to mention that I get to experience the pleasure of bread making itself.

Documents

2011-01-21T14:44:00.002+02:00

It´s the 19th of January and I am in Dudelange. I have to deal with papers and I head with Arvina, the volunteer from Germany to Hotel de Ville (where they don´t rent out rooms but documents and make life a bit more complicated with bureaucracy). What we are looking for is a residence permit for the year I will be spending in Luxembourg. I need the following documents:
- ID card
- birth certificate
- letter from the organization that gives a reason for my stay in Luxembourg
- a type of contract or paper in which someone signs that I have a place to stay

I have all except for the last one so we leave empty handed but someone from the organisation renting the house renting a room to my organization (complicated no?) comes by in the evening and fills and signs a document for me. The following day I have to arrive to the Hotel before the Luxembourgeese siesta which starts from 11:30 and may last until 14:00. I make it and maximum 20 minutes later I walk out as a legal resident of Luxembourg. Why bother though? Well, now with this paper I can open a bank account and is the basis for all other types of bureaucracy. Surprisingly I don´t give it that much thought and I am not so bothered by all this. So after paying a visit to my mentor´s office where I print out a bunch a photos of myself in colour (crazy looking thanks to Arvina!) and photocopy the permit I head back home and after a REALLY fast lunch we make a run for the train station to catch the direct train to Luxembourg city. I take my bike as well and try to cycle with Arvina in the trunk but we are incredibly slow up hill so we end up running, cycling, panicking. But we make it time.

I am now in Luxembourg city in the afternoon of the 20th of January. I cycle from the train station to Centre Ville and easily find the Radio Ara office next to the Palais Ducal. I wonder if anyone in the radio station has blue blood since the location so central seems an incredible sign of good will. Maybe they put it so close to the Palais so that the stiff soldier making the robot can intimidate us crazy free radio people. I make an acquaintance with the cute Matrix like elevator that is the only way up to the offices of Radio Ara. Also with Manon who is very welcoming and helpful throughout the day. We don't manage to open a bank account since it now has some crazy taxes that come with the account so we go looking for alternatives. One might be the Post but I am not sure I can buy books online with a Post account. So I have to document myself at home and decide. But now I am mobile thanks to the new Jumbo transport card that covers all transport throughout the whole country. It was 50 euros and since I didn't have the money with me Manon paid and I should refund her and than the national agency would refund me but I will see if she can just get refunded by the NA directly.

I am now in the train back towards Dudelange after parting with Manon at the train station and am talking with Jilles who was the only nut with a bike as me that got on the train. He´s got a rock band in Dudelange and we plan to meet some time. Maybe go climbing.

...emotions with delayed effect

2011-01-21T14:26:00.003+02:00

Following is a trascript of my journal entry regarding my state of heart from the 17th-18th of January:

"The feelings I am experiencing now after a full day in Dudelange, Luxembourg vary from feeling content to feeling blessed. Being driven in 5 and a half hours by two beautiful humans from Munchen to Dudelange, a total of 550km yesterday (the 17th) has a saying in this I guess. Also hearing the story of the second driver that told me that as a Polish truck driver he doesn´t sleep for 48 hours straight followed by a 20 hour sleep and having to provide for two children back in Poland. He was 26. I on the other hand have everything handed out in this project so far and have the freedom to move as and where I please.

I am also in awe at the black, square and shiny object in the middle of the kitchen, the monument which is the oven in which I hope to bake a great deal of bread, cakes and cookies!"

Here are videos of the two rides from the 17th (notice the no cloud sky and sunny weather in the first to get an idea of how lucky I was feeling!):

1st driver

2nd driver

The one thing that I did pay for while I was in Munich was the S2 train tickets that nobody even checked and that cost incredibly much: 2,5 euros for one way and 2,5 to go out of the city. I did hop the #143 bus without paying though just because it was pulling up next to me and would have gotten me to the hitchhiking spot allot faster than if I walked (which it did).

Mum's sandwiches, cozonac cake, fruits and nuts lasted me even in the first few days in Luxembourg!

Writing about emotions

2011-01-20T23:02:00.003+02:00

I've now been in Dudelange, Luxembourg since the 17Th of January and the initial emotions that came, passed and rolled in through the series of fortunate and beautiful events are now already faded in comparison to the vivid impression that I was somehow living in a state of bliss. All that is left to do is transcript the dry impressions I wrote down at that time even though it feels useless in their lack of the real substance of the experience. I will give a background to how I came to experience that state though.

As I left Constanta at 00:30 on the 15th in a tiny and packed with people and luggage mini bus I knew I was in for a hell of a ride. The lack of comfort and the general pain following the 35 or more hours spent on the bus would have been ok if the constant bitching, bullying of others, infantile jokes, complaints and general stupidity and ignorance would have been a notch (or two) lower. I could have lived without the horror/porn movie Piranha as well. Alas it was going to be a purgatory that would remind me that distancing myself from all that was for a reason. Can you imagine that at some point 2 monumental idiots started picking on this girl behind me and 3 others joined in by laughing at the stupid sexist and even aggressive jokes they were making? Following my controlled outburst outside the bus where they were having a smoke I lived in constant tension that their attention and agresivity will be directed towards me. Thankfully they stoped harassing the girl and what surprised me most was that they did not come after me as well even though one of them was stating outside that he "doesn´t care about anybody because he doesn´t have anyone and he just wants to enjoy himself on the bus". They did give me the impression they were on some strange drugs that were amplifying their aggressiveness. I will end this episode here though because of it´s overwhelming negativity. But I will mention that at the border with Hungary there was a bag passed around in the bus, to which I didn´t add anything, from which the sum of 77 euros found it´s way to the pocket of the Hungarian border guard. A gesture that was announced in the bus by the driver as a method to avoid over zealous searches and verification. Incredible!

But following this horror scene I arrived in Munich where I immediately found the S2 train that took me where I needed to go to meet my host. I´ll admit that the walk from the S2 station to his home was a bit too much for me after stepping out of the "Horrorlines" bus but arriving there was like arriving at the doors of heaven. They were green. The doors. And inside the most beautiful creative mess I´ve seen in months. My host is a wood turned that is new in the trade but shaping very beautiful things already out of both wood and situations. I spent all day inside this sacred area, sun bathing topless, eating and talking, wood turning and eating. Drinking tea from his home grown mint over wonderful conversations bathed in sincerity and feelings of deep love for a person I barely met kept me the next day from leaving early to hitchhike as well. I just managed to get out at the spot by 11:40 while usually I would be there with the first rays of the sun. Transcripts of the day and added impressions of Luxembourg to follow...

Book suggestions

2011-01-11T21:42:00.002+02:00

I was suggested I read the following book: Ecopsychology - restoring the earth, healing the mind.
Will try to get a hold of it soon.

Also this one by Shif: norman finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering

Developing Fed3 photos

2011-01-11T17:45:00.005+02:00

With my godfather passing away my godmother passed on to me his old and beautiful Fed3 camera which reminds me so much of him in built, heavy and solid. Also of Ukrainian making as him.

I don't completely know how to use it and I was lucky that today I found an old timer in a photo lab that knew how to open it and take out the film a relative of mine placed there. I developed the photos I took with it but because I didn't use it properly nothing came out well. I can see some potential for it though. It will stay here in Constanta nonetheless since I doubt developing the film will be 2 euros in Luxembourg like it was here.

Preferred plants for the garden

2011-01-11T13:54:00.006+02:00

I hope we will get to have a garden meeting in which everyone interested and living in the house will bring some favorites to the list and than we can all agree on what would work best for that spot (I am so curious to see it now!).

Here is mine so far: rucola, kale, salad, rhubarb, strawberries, melissa, mint, rosemary, alcea nigra - 'black hollyhock (althea)', sweet potatoes, chives, spring onions, melons, garlic, onion, leek, watercress, red radish, nitrogen fixing plants.

I also have some special seeds with me for camut, the very old grain found in the pyramids in Egypt and patented, so illegal to grow just by yourself (ha!), calendula from Sekier in Slovakia and tomatoes, zucchini, green melon, yellow melon from my grandmother here in Romania. She and my grandfather live in the countryside and she still grows most of the food they consume. They were even growing their own wheat until a couple of years ago and making flour from it for home made bread. That until the mills started importing cheaper flour, grinding it and selling it to them for bigger prices than if they would buy bread. So now they buy white bread from the store because they can't mill their grains and because the flour from the mills is now to expensive. But I'm divagating...

Speed reading

2011-01-11T01:19:00.001+02:00

http://video.yahoo.com/network/100743807?v=5051788&l=100000248

Cousins, family, nomadism

2011-01-09T15:26:00.005+02:00

These are my two bigger cousins:

They are perfectly functional family people types. Day in, day out they still return to the lair where the rest of the family is waiting for them. They are also able to walk on water as you can notice in the photos above.

They are special. But than again most people are special that way. Who would have thought that we would come to this from nomadic tribes wandering in the scorching heat of Africa to walking on frozen lakes so much up north? With a electricity bill somewhere in the back of our head?

But one thing in common with our ancestors in Africa is that the family unit is still there. We might leave to ice skate or whatnot but at the end of the day the family will be there. Unlike most self appointed nomads I meet that presume that a nomad just goes from place to place in kerouacian style for the whole of their lives, in my opinion (unsubstantiated) nomad people are some of the most traditional familists around. Just watching Discovery, going to some expositions on Amazonian tribes, having an interest in the Rroma that leave right next to me here in Constanta but also met in many places in Europe gives that impression. Mongolians pack the yurt, the family shrine but also the daughters and sons along with their multitude of cows. The family goes on the road. This would also be my aspiration for me and the rest of the family but unfortunately their faith is cemented. So I guess I am left to break away from the cement block and be more fluid again. That doesn't mean I reject the concept of family but I see I need to reinvent it for myself.

RoadSharing web-site

2011-01-07T12:22:00.000+02:00

http://www.roadsharing.com/

Add Art

2011-01-05T01:03:00.005+02:00

"Add-Art is a free FireFox add-on which replaces advertising on websites with curated art images. The art shows are updated every two weeks and feature contemporary artists and curators."

You can find it here: http://add-art.org

This add on makes me think and sing to myself: Ain't Got No - I Got Life by Nina Simone!!!

I've got aaaart!

Self dissapointment

2011-01-04T19:05:00.005+02:00

Today I let myself down.

I was raised in the lies and velvet lies of the orthodox christian belief. What OC, as most religious systems, is is basically applied behavioral analysis on a large scale and applied to "normal" individuals as opposed to an autistic person. I myself was a tutor for ABA for a five year old and we were trying our best to basically program him to say he is fine, among many other things, when asked "How are you?". What good would such a mundane answer other than the illusion of normality would do anyone?! But we were working hard on it. (and of course for an autistic person there are other aspects to it but to go into it would take up to much space)

And today when I was asked "How are you?" my program made me say "Fine!". A priest came in our building and was "sanctifying" the house by spraying it with "holy water" and when he offered me the cross to kiss I did while I knew my belief system was completely different now. As an orthodox christian you would see this small symbol as showing allegiance to god, as myself I see it as a failure to stand up to my beliefs which say that I don't accept any religion especially one that I was programed for and will not accept the symbols of authority over me. But I did. Could have been the anchors given by the family house setting, my parents and all the small details that count in such programing: olfactory, audio visual and finally tactile, the actual touch of the cold metal against the lips. They have been and are hard at work programing but so am I on myself and hopefully this encounter will make me stronger for the next.

And having written that I don't want to close it on a negative note having written a negative post about disappointment just before this one. So I'll just make an observation that for someone who represents the stand of an organisation against gay people the priest looked quite comfortable in his dress.

Books disappoint

2011-01-04T00:18:00.002+02:00

I wrote before I've bought two books, one by Eliade, one by Nietzsche.

Maitreyi by Eliade was a disappointment not because it's a bad book but because I didn't read it at the right time and I got to experience those feelings before the intellect got a whiff of what was heading it's way. I didn't keep a journal like the male character in Maitreyi so the whirlpool of emotions and sensations are just a background of my personality now but nothing that can be spoken of.

They tried to kill Nietzsche with this book I bought from them with half of it being comments (pre scriptum!) and his Twilight of the Idols has been fragmented and not presented whole! Who the fuck would want to read a fragment of this historical, monumental war declaration that altered you, me, even the ones that fragmented it?! I stopped reading and will try to find a full version in English in Luxembourg and am looking forward to learning German so I can read it in the "mad man's" language.

Cycling in Luxembourg

2011-01-03T11:55:00.001+02:00

http://www.luxembourg.co.uk/cycling.html

365 new days of superstition

2011-01-01T11:37:00.008+02:00

It's marked on calendars, pencils, in the streets, it's here and it's new, better things will happen in these 365 days to come! They say...

We will live and see. Right now the day started just as any other day with a bit of ingrained folk superstition: I was asked to get dresses and go see my aunt so I would be the first to enter the house before my sister. Because for some reason it's better if a man walks first in a house on the new year than if a woman does. For some reason I'm feeling a bit too manly to comply so I will just hang around here instead listening to something fitting to the sittuation:

Bubbemeises: Lies My Gramma Told Me
David Krakauer & Socalled with Klezmer Madness!
.:)photo source: http://englishblogtoday.blogspot.com/

Sis is back!

2010-12-31T16:15:00.004+02:00

My sister which I haven't seen for more than two years has now arrived at the parents' place here in Constanta and we finally got to meet. Yey!

Super excited about it even though managing to finally talk on Skype the other day kinda mellowed down the bulk of the excitement. So instead of feeling like we haven't seen eachother in years for me it feels good to hug her but not like such a timespan has flown in between us.

On Christmas and the following days she has been flying to Australia and than back to Dubai after which she took the flight to Bucharest and than a bus to Constanta. For all of that she was surprisingly energetic but after a bottle of wine the fatigue kicked in and she went straight to bed.

Even though I've been repeating that we are so different, with her flying and shopping all over the world while I hitch and skip I still feel there is a connection there we can strengthen and I'm looking forward to talking and hanging out more! And now with the New Year just a few hours away what a great new beginning that can be!

Luxembourg prices

2010-12-29T18:28:00.003+02:00

Found a web site for a online "supermarket" that might give an idea on how much things cost in Luxembourg: http://www.luxcaddy.lu/index.php

I am sure in ordinary, physical shops the prices could be lower but that remains to be seen.

Also some nice recipes even though some not vegetarian:
http://www.cactus.lu/page.asp?id=4286&langue=EN