Malmö

Pete parks the van beside the main road that runs through Dragør, a little fishing village on the East coast of Denmark, just before the bridge over to Sweden. We are barely out of Copenhagen. I peer over the back of my seat to where Jatta and Linus are squashed in between two bikes, a mattress, boxes of food and all of our backpacks. My friend Jim is in the other passenger seat, beside me.

“There’s something I may have forgotten to mention. We have to stop here in this little village so I can take some pictures for my mum. Our great-great-(great)-grandfather lived here and she really wants to visit. It won’t take long. I just need to walk around a bit and take some photos.”

Everyone tumbles out of the van obligingly and we go for a wander down the quiet village streets. The houses are yellow. Many are thatched. There is a harbour and a long jetty, which Pete and I walk to the end of. The big bridge connecting Denmark and Sweden looms ahead of us out in the water. We’ll be going over that shortly. We find a little gallery that’s open and go in. The man is very friendly, a migrant from The Congo. There are paintings and African masks. I spend my last Danish Kroner on a card painted by a friend of his.

We all pile back into the van and make our way across the big, big bridge into Sweden. A new country! Jim reads the Sweden pages aloud from Pete’s New Internationalist World Guide. This is becoming a tradition.We learn that the bridge we are crossing is only nine years old, and how many Swedish politicians have been assassinated.

Malmö is the first city in Sweden – just over the bridge. Pete and I will spend a few days here, hiding from Xmas, while the others hitch up to a permaculture school to spend theirs with some friends. We drop them at a service station and head into the centre of Malmö, following my hand-drawn map to the address of our couchsurfing host.

Kajsa is the perfect host. Not only does she not celebrate Xmas either, her flatmates are all away – meaning we get our own room, she’s vegan (mostly) and we share a mutual friend – Josh from Brighton. Kajsa is very sweet, beautiful, super-friendly and makes us feel very welcome and at home. She tells us about the social centres and skipping hotspots.

Unfortunately, Utkanten, the squatted social centre is shut every time we go there. Glassfabriken is open though. It’s a great little vegan cafe that reminds me a lot of Pogo in London. Pete and I pig out on liquid smoke tofu and fake cheese on ciabatta, chocolate cake and soya latte. Mmmm… I also kick his ass at Othello. Ahh, lazy days!

Kajsa’s sister’s boyfriend wants to celebrate Xmas. She goes over to their place to see how christmassy it will be, then texts us an invite. Scot is a Scotsman – something both sisters find extremely funny – bearing a bottle of Laphroaig, which he quickly seduces me into partaking of. I am also cajoled into trying a piece of his non-vegan homemade chocolate fudge and some Snus – basically a little teabag filled with tobacco which you shove up under your upper lip, wait for your gums to go all tingly and your head to go giddy and try not to swallow your saliva. I’m told it’s a very important part of Swedish culture, but it’s all a bit much for me. I start to feel a bit swoony and retreat to the balcony for a bit of fresh air. Nobody here would believe I used to be hardcore.

The others head out to a bar to play pool. I cycle back to Kajsa’s to read my book. Oh dear.

Copenhagen

Ok, so I’m going to write a blog entry about Copenhagen. A lot of people have already written reams about Copenhagen and it’s kind of yesterday’s news, so rather than theorising about bullshit deals and how binding they are, I’m just going to give an account of my own experiences of visiting a city which for two weeks became a hub of political activity and the activist social event of the decade. If you want to know more, leave a comment and I’ll answer as best I can.

Pete and I finally rocked up into Copenhagen and parked up outside the school house we were to stay at with the rest of the Ecodharma crew a full nine hours after them. It was 5am. This is not the same school house you may have heard about if you are connected to Climate Camp, but a little house on the grounds of a school outside the city. We got it through an accomodation list for organisations, and although we had to pay around €5 each per night, it was worth it for the space, comfort and security it offered. We had our own kitchen, enough bedrooms to share one between two people, even our own meditation room. It was very square, white and unfurnished. Pete nicknamed it “The Bombshelter”.

We spent our first few days finding our feet and regaining our sanity after the epic 48+ hour drive up North – acclimatising to the city, the temperature, the silver-grey clouds that obscure the sky and being surrounded by a language not one of us could decipher.

Copenhagen seems to have a good strong activist scene and a lot of autonomous spaces. Bicycology had a workshop outside Bolsjefabrikken (“The Candy Factory”) and I was lucky to find a silver mountain bike in such good nick that after pumping the tires, oiling the chain, lowering the seat and removing one damaged mud guard it was good to cycle home on. No punctures – even the brakes and gears were in perfect order. Copenhagen is a bicycle graveyard and abandoned bikes are considered a social menace. They are so available that hardly anyone locks their bikes to anything, they just put a cheap lock around the rear wheel to signify that it’s not abandoned.

The Candy Factory and Folket’s Hus (“People’s House”) are two established social centres. There are also some massive spaces set up to operate as crash space and host meetings for the tens of thousands of activists descending on Copenhagen. Ragnhildsgade, or “Rags”, as we named it, held an action meeting every evening about all of the actions and demos being planned. The Anarchist Teapot served food up outside and lots of my friends from England and beyond were amongst the 1-2,000 people sleeping there.

“Global Day of Action”

If I had my time in Copenhagen over again, one thing I wouldn’t go to is that giant march on the 12th. 100,000 people, the most organised and best attended demo of the entire mobilisation and it left me feeling like I’d banged my head against a wall for four hours straight. This march was organised by a coalition of NGOs, trade unions, churches and political parties. Imagine Gay Pride in Brighton, but with polar bears instead of rainbows. Imagine call and response chants like: “I say climate, you say change… Climate!” “Change!” “Climate!” “Change!”

After spending the first three hours of the march looking for the rest of our friends and the CJA block we were supposed to be marching with, we eventually found some of the anarchists, although not CJA as they were blocked by police and mass arrested, in disguise as a mobile rave. Great music, but I’m not sure what the throwing of hundreds of glow sticks off the back of the truck was all about(!?) CJA had made an agreement to respect the ethos of the demo and the woman on the loudspeaker was reminding those marching behind her that we were behaving ourselves on this occasion, but that the 16th (Reclaim Power action) is the time to fight! Now a new chant starts up: “One solution… Revolution!”

No Borders

The No Borders demo on the 14th was a little better. Again the march was pre-arranged with the police, but only as far as the Ministry of Defense, whereby the demo would become illegal. Denmark is similar to France in that you have to ask permission to demonstrate or it’s considered illegal. It’s interesting to see the various ways activists are trying to get around such laws, but I’m not sure how effective they are. The M.O.D. was in such a state of lock-down that getting anywhere near to the building itself was impossible. Instead, the crowd had to content itself with chanting the usual slogans on the road outside, although I did hear that after we left people started playing with a giant inflatable globe and pushing it down the street. The police later ripped it to shreds.

Still, times are hard and this demo was counted a “success”: the police allowed it to happen, there were no mass arrests and everyone was (eventually) allowed to leave again afterwards. Some of the other demos, which I did not attend, were not so lucky. The “Hit the Production” day was curtailed by police before it even started, when again hundreds of people were forced to sit in the freezing cold, then rounded up and put in cages for six hours under “preventative arrest”. This is the new and now infamous power recently granted to Danish police. You no longer have to commit a crime, but can be put in a cage for up to twelve hours if they think you might be the kind of person who is about to do something naughty. A friend of mine, for example, spent six hours in one after being stopped and searched and found to be wearing padded clothing.

Christiania

After the demo, Pete, Lou and I headed over to Christiania on rumour of a party. Christiania is a squatted free town in the centre of Copenhagen. It has been occupied for almost forty years and is home to a selection of hippies, vagabonds, rainbow warriors and drug pushers. A sign leading out of Christiania back into Copenhagen reads, “You are now entering the EU”. There are signs all over Christiania forbidding the use of cameras, so have respected this and have no photos to show you. You will have to content yourself with an explanation: It’s much bigger than I expected, with many different streets and areas. The main street, leading down the middle is known as “Pusher Street”. Every few feet is a little stand or shop front displaying several different types of hash. Late at night, it’s often hard to find a hot meal, but you can buy dope anytime. It is pretty though. Fairy lights and murals decorate the buildings, which all seem in very good nick. Fires burn in braziers and large metal cylinders along the street so people can socialise outside. A friend described Christiania as “what would happen if the Big Green Gathering were allowed to run continuously and unchecked for thirty years.” She has a point. The atmosphere is similar to that of a festival and there are a multitude of bars, cafes, markets, a sauna – even a large marquee, accompanied by yurts and teepees set up for Christiania’s “Bottom Meeting” – presumably the best word they could come up with in antithesis to “Summit”.

We wander around and explore with glasses of “glugg” (hot mulled wine) and visit some bars, making sure to leave early as we need lots of sleep for the following days. Unfortunately things are not so simple. We reach the door of the bar and bump into some friends. “Hello! There’s a riot outside!” Oh. Great.

We head out into the street. People are running and shouting. We decide to try to leave Christiania, but our way is blocked by a flaming barricade and men in balaclavas throwing molotovs. We ask what’s going on. Apparently the police have been raiding Christiania every night, looking for activists, and this time people have decided to block them and fight back. We are looking for another way out, but a cloud of white smoke is slowly spreading around us. I can taste something dry and peppery at the back of my throat and start coughing. Tear gas! I put my head down, put my hat over my nose and try to head out of the cloud. I am faintly aware of Pete heading off in the other direction, but I can’t take in the air I need to shout. I can’t see more than a few feet in front of me. People are running all around me. Somebody grabs my hand. It’s Lou.  Together we stumble, coughing, through the mist. Behind a building the air is clearer. We can see similar white clouds seeping in from other directions. Christiania is surrounded. Somehow Pete finds us and together we look for an escape route. Pete knows of a back way out, so we head off down a track by the canal. Pete has his bike, but Lou and I stupidly locked ours up outside the main gate, where the police and fires are. Eventually we come to a footbridge. There are police on the other side, but only three or four, no dogs, no vans, no gas. Behind us we can hear helicopters, explosions and loud barking. It’s like a war zone. Some Danish people are sitting on a bench on our side of the canal. They tell us if we’re not Danish the police will let us leave this way, as long as we have passports and consent to be searched first. A girl asks calmly if they have released the dogs yet? Time to leave. We empty our pockets of anything relating to activism and head out across the bridge to the inevitable humiliation of a police search. Danish police are very polite. They tell you to have a nice day after they have searched you. There’s a video –>here<–

Reclaim Power

The paln was simple: “There will be a legalized starting point, which will be announced to the media and the police. From there, the climate justice bloc will move on towards the Bella Center. Affinity groups will make their way to the border of the conference area from various directions. The aim is for all groups coming from the outside to start entering the UN Area at 10am. At the same time, groups inside the Summit will start to disrupt the sessions and mobilize people to leave the  negotiations and participate in the Peoples Assembly. The assembly will start at 12pm at the main entrance to the Bella Center inside the UN Area.“

We on the bike bloc were aiming to create distractions, allowing those in the green bloc to break through the perimeter fence. However, the entire green bloc was rounded up and preventatively arrested at their meet-up point. We gave some cops the run around, got stopped and searched six times and joined up with the blue group just in time to hear it announced to be illegal. Our affinity group quickly decided to sacrifice our bikes for the cause and erected a bicycle barricade, locking arms behind it as the police marched forward. A big push-and-shove ensued and the whole crowd was shoved  further and further back until we were off the road. At this point the People’s Assembly started further back from the frontline. I have heard a lot of people talking about how this was a great success, but they must have been at a different demo. The People’s Assembly consisted of various people speaking over a megaphone to a ring of fellow protestors, then people were invited to get into small groups to discuss a chosen topic. I was full of adrenaline and cynycism and could think of little worse. Pete was more positive and joined a group towards the end. Lou was busy nursing batton welts. A girl invited me to “make some statements and change the world”, but I wasn’t really in the mood.

A New Chapter

On the 19th my Ecodharma friends went back to Spain, leaving Pete and I to rattle around the bombshelter alone for a night before we too evacuated.

The night before they left we went to the bathhouse in Christiania for a “sauna treat”. My god, I love saunas. Especially when the weather is so cold and especially when they are accompanied by fresh juice, singing and spoken word.

Pete and I moved back into the van to see if we could stand the cold. We parked up by the canal just outside Christiania, but it was so cold that the bottled water beside our heads froze and I felt crushed by all the blankets. We decided to find some couchsurfing hosts and were given a warm couch and even warmer welcome by two loveable Danish stoners. There we spent our remaining few nights in Copenhagen, before leaving for Sweden on the 24th.

Did I mention – I got my bike back realtively unscathed after the demo! It will be accompanying me on my adventures. Pete has one too. Ah, the wonders of a van.

Further watching:

• 6 Hours of tortue in Copenhagen
• Reclaim Power video

Germany

December 7th

I’m in Germany. My first time. I’m ashamed to know hardly any German, and to hardly be trying really. It hardly seems worth it as by tomorrow night I’ll be in Denmark.

I am back in the van with Pete as of 4am this morning when we were reunited at a service station just south of Frankfurt. I left G, Carol, Alex, Ben, Rob, Lou and Laura to continue on up to Copenhagen in the landrover and got a few hours kip after a romantic reunion with Pete. We are now around five hours behind the others, who have decided to drive all night, rotating drivers. We still need to get the shopping before we leave Germany. We have been warned: Copenhagen is expensive.

The first things I noticed about Germany: Coffee here is bigger, but not quite so nice and nowhere near as strong as in France or Spain. The staff are friendlier, the toilets cleaner, the weather rainier. You have to pay for public toilets, but in return for your money you can automatically clean your toilet seat by rotating it uder a little jet of water at the touch of a button. Tissue dispensers are also automated and all taps seem to have motion sensors. How very efficient. It’s always a little disconcerting for me when stereotypes come true. The first sight to greet me on entering a German service station was a man shoving a giant sausage down his throat.

Ecodharma Pictures

Ecodharma

*Please note I am very behind on my blog. I’m hoping to catch up a bit over the next few days*

Arriving is often a favourite part of my stay somewhere. Possibilities and opportunities unfurl in front of me. Later, when I come to leave, I often feel sad at how few have come to pass. Then onwards to the next place, where again the faces are new, the slate clean and everything feels fresh and new. I am addicted to beginnings.

Snaking up the mountain track in the landrover next to G, back up to that valley I know and love, remembering how nurtured I have felt there, I know I have been traveling too fast. I have been unable to connect with any of the last few people and places I have visited. Somehow I have slipped into tourist mode: sightseeing and photo-snapping, then quickly on to the next attraction – the next remote mountain eco-village, fly-postered squat or social centre.

What is it I’m really searching for? How have I come to feel so disconnected?

As we pass by first one, then the next crumbling farmhouse, climbing ever higher, I realise this is the place where I will come back into touch with my motivations and fears. I realise I have been holding onto something, refusing to look at it, knowing that at some point I would come here, a safe space where I can let go.

We arrive at Cal Monsor. The others only moved into this house from various yurts and benders on the other side of the valley this morning. It’s a good day to arrive and I’m happy to be back in the house where we spent the retreat last winter. Some faces are new, some wonderfully familiar: Alex, Rob, Carol, Lucy, Ella… so good to see them all here again. Even most new faces are not so new after all, but friends of friends and some I recognise from other places. It feels like coming home.

The following morning we’re up at 6:30am. A typical time for an Ecodharma morning, but after traveling alone and free I wonder how I’ll find settling back into such a structured routine. After meditation and a silent breakfast we have check-in. It’s a nice thing to do, to check in with each other about how we are before launching into the day. Some people express feelings about moving into the house. Most people have been here several weeks since the Build Project started, and the last few days have been a disruption to the usual rhythm of the place. Alex talks about how she thrives on routine and is looking forward to settling back into one. I really don’t thrive on routine. I thrive on constant change and new beginnings, but I’m willing to give it a go.

I’m advised to have an “Arriving Day”, to take the time to settle in a bit and fully realise I’m here before joining the others at work on Cal Toa, the house further down the valley. But some of the others are heading into town and as I rushed here I have unfinished tasks. I go into Tremp with Ella and Celia – email, post things, buy some essentials and reckon I’ll do my arriving after I’m done letting go of the world outside.

The following morning I decide I’ll do half a days work and then get some “arriving” time. G stresses the importance of arriving fully, but I take no heed, anxious that after feeling disconnected at the last few places I visited, here at least I should feel I’m integrated and pulling my weight.

It’s nice to feel part of the team. I spend the day “pointing” cement into the walls of Cal Toa, the farmhouse the others have spent the past two months rebuilding from ruin. The room I’m working on, chatting away to Carol in Spanish, will eventually be the library. I take the afternoon off, but only finish a couple of hours ahead of the others in the end and spend most of it walking slowly back to Cal Monsor the long way, stopping frequently to take in the view of the valley sprawling out below me, breathe deeply and whisper “I’m really here.”

The next day the work begins proper for me. I’m enjoying it for a few days, but as the temperature keeps dropping and the timetable repeating, I find it harder and harder to envisage days of pointing stretching out over the next five weeks without a sinking heart and a lot of resistance. While working, I look up at the Coll and sigh. I must get up there. I must take some time to myself – free time, unplanned, unstructured, to reconnect with whatever is going on inside me.

G may say everything is voluntary, and in a way it is, but a lot of social pressure and guilt stops me from just ignoring the others working day-in, day-out and going off in search of myself.

There are days when the temperature has dropped so much my fingers are blocks of ice pointing cold cement into cold stone cracks. Every 5-10 minutes I realise how many days of this are left and lose the will to live. I stand and stare at the wall for a few seconds, take a deep breath and start pointing again. Most of the others seem to be enjoying themselves. Clearly there is something wrong with me.

Ok, it’s not all hard work. We finish at 5pm and have free time after dinner on Mondays and Wednesday, Saturdays are completely unstructured and Sunday is a meditation day or part day, which I often skip or substitute half of for a long solitary walk. It’s not that I don’t find meditation days beneficial, it’s just that our time here is so structured and full that I find myself becoming more precious about it. I have to steal it when I can.

Tuesday and Thursday evenings we have ’study’, which can be anything from a meditation workshop to an open discussion on any topic, led by one of the group. Friday is ‘cultural night’, when we share stories and songs around the wood burner downstais. I also have my trapeze here. It looks so beautiful hanging from the big round beam in front of the mezzanine upstairs at Cal Monsor. Wednesday before dinner becomes trapeze time, but even that’s hard to stick to. After work we’re often too tired for much except dinner, chatting, drinking tea and scoffing anything sweet we can find.

I love these people and I love it here, but by god I need some space!

It works out that Alex’s birthday falls on the Sunday before the Tuesday that Magdalena is due to fly back to Portland. Alex, Magdalena and I decide we’d like a couple of days in the city and plan to go to Barcelona together to see Magdalena off. A bit of a birthday trip for Alex. On the Sunday itself there will be a long walk along the ridge in silence (Alex’s choice). I decide to take some space for myself and join the others later in the evening after the silence is lifted. I also decide to take some of the mushrooms a friend brought with him from England.

Time evaporates. I find myself sitting – no, dancing – on a rock just below the West ridge, my body twisting and curving in a pattern of its own that my conscious mind has no part of.. I let it happen. I learnt that my body knows what it need when I took mushrooms early in the summer and my back unknotted an old and seemingly permanent tension by contorting into a shape I could never hope to replicate and shaking the tension out in spasms. Just relax and let it happen.

A thick mist reaches its icy tentacles up the valley towards me, it’s body creeps nearer, surrounds me. I feel a fear rise up and release it. I am in a stillness I cannot possibly describe. The silence is the loudest thing. Bird cries are audible, but muffled by the silence. I am alone save for the vultures which soar around me. I ask (who? The mushrooms? My higher self?) why is it that I can’t get into the work here? The answer, so obvious really: That’s not what you came here for.

I need a solitary retreat.

By the time I come back down the mountain clutching a vulture feather it’s almost dark and Alex’s birthday dinner has started. I sit outside the house a while, reluctant to go in. But Barcelona is tomorrow, no time now to creep off alone to a solitary space.

As it works out, Magdalena decides to stay on at Ecodharma and Alex and I go to Barcelona alone. We get up early and walk down, down and out of the valley, slowly encountering first electricity pylons, tarmac, then cars. A few kilometres more and one of them stops for us – a nice old man from Abella who takes us to Isona, where another man stops and takes us all the way to Barcelona. It feels good to be on the road again, but strange as time is tight. On arriving at Can Masdeu where we have arranged to stay, we realise we will need another day. We’re there over a workday, which we’re simultaneously anxious yet reluctant to take part in. That in itself seems to sum up a lot of my Ecovillage adventures. It’s interesting to witness Alex going through the same thing, throwing herself into the work but at the same time clearly wanting to run off to play in the city or lock herself in a room somewhere.

Aside from work and other necessary things, we have one full day, which on Alex’s request we spend separately walking the streets of Barcelona. I wouldn’t have suggested we spend the day apart, but actually it does me a lot of good. Getting lost in cities is an old love of mine. I have some synchronistic encounters and find two piles of abandoned clothes, which along with some free-shop finds make up my new winter wardrobe. I’m now prepared for Copenhagen.

Getting back to the valley is a beautiful and heart-warming experience after the city. I remember the last time I left: a feeling that a tremendously loving and supportive community had suddenly vanished overnight and left me flailing. I feel how fortunate I am that this time it’s here for me to come back to, and next time I leave it’s coming with me to Copenhagen.

The far solitary retreat yurt is nestled in a spot just below the end of the track, in the stillest and darkest part of the valley. The silence is almost penetrating. Nobody has lived here for a very long time. This is where I spend three of my final eight days in the valley, alone with my thoughts and the caterpillers. Ah yes, the caterpillers. They may look cute and furry, but startle them and they shed their hairs which get into your clothes, your bedding, and once on your skin are prone to causing an itchy red rash. Unfortunately they’re everywhere: millions of them cover the valley, especially over this side. They live in the pine trees in cocoons and drop down onto you from tiny threads. They’re crawling all over the outside of the yurt and occasionally one or two manage to find a way through layers of yak wool and liner to the warmth inside. It’s important to be constantly vigilant and to evict them promptly and carefully: Do not scare them.

I’ve never done a solitary retreat before. Three days isn’t long, but I soon realise I’d like to do a longer one. Some other time. Hours I spend just sitting – sometimes meditating on a cushion, sometimes in the big red armchair just staring out of the yurt window, reflecting on the last few months. The snow falling outside somehow helps. I write too – pages and pages of thoughts and feelings I had perhaps been conscious of, but hadn’t allowed myself to recognise. In meditation I have been feeling a big dark lump where my heart was once open. It’s the only way I can describe it. As I had suspected, but not really allowed myself to believe, I have a lot of pent up anger, fear, frustration and guilt that seems to stem from Calais.

Other things bubble up and out onto paper. Nothing dramatic, but I lose a couple of layers of the onion. The crispiest layers, at least. I emerge after three days with a deeper calmness I had forgotten.

It’s good to return to the others for a final four days of work. I even get into the rhythm of it a bit. Our final day in the valley is a Saturday. I take an epic solitary walk up to a cave so big it’s visible all the way down at Cal Toa. I have been staring up at it while working and now here I am: inside an incredible ancient rock formation high up inside a mountain ridge that was once at the bottom of an ocean.

Tomorrow I’m spending my birthday in a novel way: inside a landrover on an epic roadtrip from Catalunya to Copenhagen with seven friends from Ecodharma.

Hitching Burnout?

A different waiting room. The one in Lleida has a view of the world outside and a toasted cheese and bacon sandwich vending machine. I wait for an hour and then walk out. Fuck it. I will look at my armpit later and decide for myself if it needs further treatment or not.

I arrive at Tremp two hours early and finish off my shiitaki mushroom pate (I can hear you drooling Mango!) before heading over to the usual rendezvous point: Bar Miami, to wait for G.

I’m very tired. I put my tent up last night on a disused patch of land in Lleida, but lay awake most of the night thinking I heard footsteps or the nearby house was on fire. Wild camping is better with two people I think.

I’m starting to get annoyed with people constantly asking why I’m traveling alone, if I’m not scared, telling me it’s dangerous, that I’m very brave. I’m sick of people offering lifts because they fancy me. I’m developing a strong dislike for the word “guapa”.

Is this hitchhiking burnout? Or am I just sick of traveling alone for now? It’s just as well I’ll be spending the next month in one place, with people I love and trust and who allow me to be myself. I have only been to Ecodharma twice before, but it feels like coming home.

I’m not sure how much I’ll be writing over the next month. Internet is sketchy up in the mountains, I’ll be working a lot as we’re building a house and I would like to spend my free time hanging out with people, meditating and writing other stuff. Plus my trapeze is up there!

I will check in every now and then and my adventures will resume in a few weeks.

My last visit to the mountains

My first visit to Ecodharma

Segovia

27th October

Somehow I came to Segovia.

I find internet quickly and scour couchsurfing.com. Only 25 hosts in Segovia and lots are travelling or their profile is set to “coffee or drink only”. I email the others and leave my number, then go on a big walk around this beautiful little city. There must be a space for a tent somewhere.

Tourist information told me there was a vegetarian cafe. Actually, it has some meat, but not as much as most places. It´s also a restaurant, not a cafe, and a bit above my price range. I have walked around the city, my backpack is heavy, my armpit hurts, Im tired and it´s dark. There´s a cheap Chinese, but something draws me back to that almost but not quite vegetarian restaurant. Perhaps it was the friendly girl who worked there? Some intuition, anyway.

The meals average €10, even the starters, but I need some proper food. I order spaghetti with tofu and spinach and an infusion – a tea of mixed herbs and rose petals.

While waiting I watch the proper people eat their meals. The couple opposite smile politely at one another, use napkins, make gentle chitchat. They order a starter, but they only eat half of it and then they´re onto their main. They only eat half of that too. It makes me want to cry. I catch the eye of the waitress and whisper to her, “you´re not going to throw that away…?”

I had already asked her about cheap accomodation. I told her even this food is above my price-range, but I need a decent meal and it´s hard to find veggie food in Spain.

The couple leave, leaving some of their wine of course, and go off to their nice warm home where they will probably have the window open with the heating on and run the bath till it overflows.

The first cheese I have knowingly eaten in three years. No, actually it made me feel a bit sick.

I ask for the bill. It takes a while to come, but when it does, it´s not a piece of paper, but a little box with all of the food that the other people didn´t eat. For me, she says, it´s free today, and she tells me of a place where her friends go “recycling” (skipping). Mostly it´s meat sandwiches, but I might find something else.

Oh, but about the food: it´s cheese. I give the girl a hug and put the food in my bag.

I find a Pensión nearby. €15 a night. Just one night then, in a warm bed in a room that locks. Tomorrow I´ll go to Cataluña.

——————————————————————————————–

28th October

Picture the scene: I´m lying on the hospital couch in my hospital gown, on that bit of paper they put down to keep the couch clean, that never stays in place.

Enter two men. I raise my right arm while they loom over my armpit, squeezing and prodding my two big red lumps.

Looming man one: “Es muy compacto”.

Looming man two: “Sí”.

They exit stage right.

Enter nurse with dyed red hair, chewing gum. She pumps a pedal with her foot and the bed lifts slowly into the air. Suddenly I am surrounded. The words I understand: “necessario” (necessary), “cortar” (to cut), “antibiótico” (antibiotics). None of these words fill my heart with joy.

All part way for Hero Dotor. She enters.

Hero Doctor: “Would you prefer to speak in English?”

She talks me through the process in my mother tongue. It is as I have gathered. They will cut the lumps and remove the infection (puss), then leave a little bit of cord in to stop the hole closing up too quickly to reseal the infection. I will need to return in two days to have the cord removed. I will also need to take antibiotics for a few days. I am initially reluctant on the antibiotics part, but on seeing that the infection is beginning to spread up my arm, realise it is probably a good idea.

I will not be leaving Segovia tomorrow.

The two men from before are in training. They peer excitedly as Hero Doctor makes an incision in my armpit and a little fountain of puss shoots out. She then proceeds to kneed and squeeze the remainder out as the two men make little squeels of excitement and comments I can´t understand.

Hero Doctor: “There is a lot of puss.”

Me: “Owwwwwwwww!”

—————————————————————————————–

29th October

Ok, so I´m forced to take a couple of days off relaxing in Segovia. Things could be a lot worse. What I need to find now are some friends and a free place to sleep. I can´t afford any more nights in the Pensión.

To find the right kind of hangouts in the past, I´ve asked buskers, street people, punks and hippys. Near the top of the Roman Aqueduct I see a man cutting coins and making pendants with a little sawing device. I sit with him and ask in my best Spanish, “where I can find the alternative people?”

He laughs and says there aren´t any. But he´s lying. It was him I was looking for all along. My new friend´s name is Geovanny. He´s from Costa Rica and has travelled a lot. He understands my travellers blues. He tells me I am very welcome to sleep on his sofa. He has been living in Segovia one month and is sharing a flat with three archaeology students. They are all very nice and it will be no problem for me to stay. I am delighted.

Geovanny packs up his things and takes me to a little bar called “The Bohemian”, with friendly people, Flamenco CDs and some vegetarian tapas. Geovanny is vegetarian too, and he hasn´t drunk alcohol in 15 years. We are two freaks together here in Spain.

———————————-

30th October

I have returned to the waiting waiters room. People sit around on chairs and in wheelchairs in various states of decomposition. A woman holds a paper bowl to an older woman´s face while grey sick oozes out of it, accompanied by a groaning creaking noise coming from somewhere deep inside her.

Now we have a ranter in our midst. I have no idea what he´s saying, but the man next to him, clearly embarrassed, is making gentle hushing noises. Everyone else sits in their chairs and wheelchairs, hands politely folded in laps while they pretend the old man in the corner isn´t shouting.

It´s my turn at last… but where is Hero Doctor? Oh no, she´s not available. My new doctor speaks a bit of English, but not much and I´m sure she´s not old enough to be a real doctor yet. She looks at my armpit and tells me it´s “a good evolution”, but then rather than removing the dressing and sending me on my merry way as I had hoped, she sticks the cord back up after a little rinse by jabbing her scissors into the hole, sticks a new pad on so my skin is all folded over and I can´t lift my arm properly and doesn´t even bother washing off all that yellow stuff they use to ´clean´the wound with. Then she tells me I have to come back in another two days and doubles the length of my antibiotics course. I feel like my armpit has been raped.

“But I´m going to the mountains and there won´t be a hospital there! You said it was a good evolution! Where is the doctor who treated me - the one with the good English? I want to speak with her!”

Now I´m crying at her and this girl can only smile and say “what happened?” in her patronising nurse voice.

I want control of my body!

Back at the flat Geovanny tells me I am at home here and I can relax. We make lunch together and he teaches me to make his special rice – the best I have ever tasted!

———————————————————————————————

31st October

One more day in Segovia. It´s Samhain, although nobody here knows it - and it doesn´t feel like it either with the weather like this. It´s still vest weather in the daytime, although we´re 100m up. I remember Halloween in England – blustering winds and golden leaves everywhere, the chill of the first frost. Somehow this weather seems out of synch. Some of the children in town are wearing pumpkin masks.

This morning I had a shower and removed the dressing from my armpit – against doctors orders. I instictively feel that it needs some air. The lump is a good deal smaller now, but the wound is still open. Giovanny gives me some stuff to put another, lighter dressing on. I´m leaving tomorrow (for sure!), but will see about finding a hospital on route to the mountains.

Calais 9

28th October

I´m in a hospital waiting room in Segovia, waiting. Waiting to have a small incision made in my armpit. While waiting I read the Calais 9 zine that E made. I´m happy to read some of my own words in there. It´s very well put together and brings up lots of bubbles of emotion. Tears come at times, but I blink them back, conscious of the neon lights and the other waiting waiters in the waiting room.

Three quotes in the zine get me thinking about privilege:

• “In ‘So you think you’re an Anti-racist?’ Gorski describes racism as “an institutional structure that provides access and opportunity to some at the expense of others.” This means that anyone who has a passport is complicit in maintaining and justifying the border regime. “White people are privileged by racism; even if we aren’t consciously contributing to it.  Since we reap the benefits, we also hold the responsibility to challenge the system that benefits us.””
• “White privilege: “an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was meant to remain oblivious.”"
• “In the context of Calais, my privilege is less like a package and more like a huge white elephant, one which is painful, oppressive and unjust, and one which must be acknowledged to be deconstructed.”

When I came to this hospital, they asked for my passport. When I used the internet earlier, they asked for my passport. When I booked into a Pensión last night, driven by fatigue and cold and worries about my tent being seen, I was asked for my passport. I don´t have the words in Spanish to ask why a passport should be necessary for internet access, medical treatment and a place to lay my head. I´m just left thinking of all my friends who don´t have one and are constantly denied such luxuries.

I can relate to the white elephant analogy. A memeory of the time I waited in the ferry queue on my bike while Afghan friends passed by the other side of a 20ft white metal fence, smiling and waving their goodbyes, draws sharply into focus. It wasn´t just white railings between us; that elephant was there too. I was embarrassed. Embarrassed to be on that side of the fence, exposing my privilege for all the world to see; and yes, if I´m honest, embarrassed also under the gaze of  the passport control and the motorists - my co-priviliged fellow travellers – to be waving at these illegals who are not a part of our gang.

I think that´s what I hate about tourists: privilege flaunters. But now I am one too. Staying in a Pensión, taking walks around this beautiful place with bars called “La Colonial” and all it´s national identity. The beautiful ancient walls and castles designed to keep people out, statues and memorials glorifying conquerors and the invasion of other lands. But yes, they are pretty.

I have just had word that some of our Iranian friends, including at least three of the four hunger strikers, have made it to England. This is great news, except two of them – Benjamin and Ali – are in a detention centre. I imagine them hiding in a lorry and the joy they must have felt when they knew they had made it. I wonder how they are feeling now. I know just a little of what they have each gone through in order to make this journey and it´s more than anyone should experience.

Some recent stuff about Calais:

• Calais 9 zine
• Activist Trauma Support booklet
• No Mercy blog

Escape from Bembibre

26th October

I left Matavenero this morning and got a lift with Ba-Ba, a white man in his fifties wearing an orange turban and some kind of Indian toga. Also in the hippy van that jangled it´s way down the mountain track was a blonde dreadlocked woman I assume to be Ba-Ba´s girlfriend and Nick, a grumpy Londoner who has lived in the village five years. On learning that I am (more or less) vegan, Nick immediately began quizzing me about my dietary habits and challenging me with questions like: “If you couldn´t go to the supermarket, how would you keep warm in winter?” and “You use cars, yeah? How many animal products do you think are in them?”

I have noticed a corresponding, yet opposite trend in the amount of time people have spent in the village and how friendly they are.

A little way down the track we pick up David, a (Swedish?) guy I had met the previous day. One of the Rainbow people, but definitely not one of the stoned-soup-gang. Like me, David had moved quickly out of the Communal Kitchen, and had been working for and staying with a woman in the village. I had been considering travelling with him, but he originally wanted to leave a day earlier than me – now here he was hitching the same lift as me out of the village.

This felt synhronistic, and although I am hitching and he has an inter-rail (a real one), I felt sure we would travel together. But I spent a little longer than him on the internet in Bembibre and when I came out he was gone – presumably on the 12:50 bus to León.

David – if you ever read this – I looked for you!

I sit now in a cafe/bar in Bembibre, drinking a caña in preparation for the journey ahead… I have seven days to do with as I wish before I have arranged to be at Ecodharma in Cataluña, where I will stay for the whole of November.

I will go now to the road to see where the wind will blow me…

 

———————————————————————————————-

 

Well, the wind blew me round in a big circle. I walked out of Bembibre and after a little wait got picked up by a man who said he had to go and pick up a caravan, but would come back in an hour and take me to Palencia, 180km on the way to Madrid. He gave me a choice: he could drop me at a better spot from which to get a lift, if I got one then good, or if not he would be back in an hour. Alternatively I could wait in a bar. I chose the aforementioned, and for the first hour I was kicking myself for standing by a sliproad with the sun in my eyes when I could have been in a bar relaxing and writing in my diary.

Well, I had a sum total of eleven lift offers, ranging from France to the North down to 80km South. I refused them all because none were as good as the caravan man.

After an hour and a half I was glad I hadn´t waited in a bar, but I was kicking myself for passing up that 80km lift an hour previously. I decided to accept anything going further than 50km, but then the only offers I got were to Astorga 40km away, or Ponferrada in the other direction.

After two hours I was ready to go to Astorga and stay there for the night. The sun was dipping low behind the trees and a cold wind was brewing. But then the lifts dried up altogether and the cars were thinning out, so that when an old man stopped after two and a half hours of waiting I got in, although I couldn´t quite make out where he said he was going.

The old man was wrinkly and he had a hearing aid and he wanted to touch me between the legs in payment for the lift. Of course I said no, so he talked about the weather and the scenery for a bit before asking again.

“No!”

“Ok, traquillo.”

He dropped me off in… Bembibre. Fucking wanker!

My spirits were really low as I stuck my thumb out again on a dark road with no traffic. I walked to a little petrol station and relayed my woes to the woman working there in my shitty Spanish. No traffic at all, so I began the 2kn walk back to centre of Bembibre to look for some food and a place to sleep. I stuck my thumb out to the cars that passed, just on the off-chance.

A dear, lovely man stopped for me and took me to Astorga, where I found internet, a cheap Chinese restaurant and an undeveloped bit of land on which I stuck my tent, and even slept reasonably well despite the cold hard ground. I´m beginning to think about getting a roll-mat.

A Short Stay at Matavenero

From afar the village looks very magical. Houses made from stone, wood and other assorted items of all shapes and sizes are stacked higgledy-piggledy up the mountain slope. Clouds drift gently past them. Down at the bottom is a big bright yellow geometric dome. Hmm. I wonder who lives there.

The first person I meet on entering the village is a girl of around 12 years old. I begin asking her the way in Spanish, but she turns out to be from London. Her name is Chloe and she has lived in the village for four years. Chloe directs me to the Communal Kitchen, where guests can sleep. It´s very dark inside when I enter and is almost exactly how I picture the “Worlds End” Inn from the Sandman books. A huge wood burning stove sits in the centre of the room, with a big pile of sticks just in front of the door. At the far end to the right is a big table with candles and people sitting around talking, playing music and smoking. To the left is a raised platform with four mattresses in a row and another platform the same above it – like a giant bunkbed with space for 8 people, or a lot more if you all squish up. Smoke, music and banter fill the air.

I say hello and sit down at the table, exhausted. I am given a black cat to warm me up and people come over and ask who I am, where I´m from and how I managed to find this place. All of the other guests have come from the Rainbow*. Most are from Spain or France, except David, who seems to be from everywhere, and Rachel from Oxford. Rachel and I immediately begin looking for the missing link between us – the person we both know in common – which turns out to be Martin Shaw. It´s a small world, oh yes.

*A quick note about the Rainbow. Almost everyone I know looks down on Rainbow People. For example, at Escanda, when I mentioned Matavenero, Itay scowled and said he thought it was mostly Rainbow People there. I decide to suspend judgement. Everyone seems nice so far.

There is a pizza party happening in the Panaderia next door, but I´m exhausted after a long days hitching and take opportunity of the silence with everyone else out. Too tired to be sociable. I will go out tomorrow night. I find a bit of mattress and spread out my sleeping bag. Earplugs firmly in.

I awake ten hours later to the sound of chatter and the stench of stale smoke. Eurgh! All I can think of is fresh air! – fresh air! – fresh air!

I go for a little walk. I find the biblioteka (library), just above the Communal Kitchen, where the shop is about to open in a room leading off from it. The village shop opens for two hours a few days a week, and sells honey, herbs and tinctures from the village as well as bread from the Panaderia (aparently, I didn´t see any) and some other stuff like milk, choolate and fruit. In the shop I meet Stefi, who is part of the shop group and working there. She reminds me of a German version of my friend Mindy, and I like her immediately. Stefi knows a bit about herbs and, more importantly, she knows about my armpit. Although she can´t remember the name, she has a friend with a similar problem, and she can give me some of the herbal tea she has made to help with it

There are other communal spaces in the village. There is the bar, which does not serve alcohol and the panaderia, where they make bread and also where the Pizza Party was held. The Panaderia also has… A TRAPEZE!

The Communal Kitchen is really more of a basic hostel, with a box for donations, where village guests eat, smoke, sleep, smoke, play music, smoke and sleep some more. Maybe it´s not usually like this, but with the dregs of the rainbow gathering, it´s like a big stoned soup of smoke, dreadlocks and guitar playing.

A French guy with long drown dreadlocks, big brown eyes and a skirt looks at me sorrowfully. “Problem?” I ask. “Yes. I have problem. No chillum. You have chillum? You have chillum in bag?” “Um..No.. Sorry.”

Later the same man gives me a very earnest half hour leture in broken English of the various health benefits of “drink pee-pee”. I have no idea what prompted him to impart this information.

I have to say that apart from Anna, David and Rachel, Rainbow People are living up to their reputation. This says nothing about the actual residents of the village, very few of whom I have actually met. Rachel is very keen to stress to me that this is NOT what Rainbow is about.

Because of the noise and the smoke, I go in search of a new place to sleep. I take my tent and my torch and wander down the path towards the yellow dome. The fog is thick and I can´t see more than a few inches in front of me, even with the torch on. I have to move very, very slowly. For some reason, I have an irrational fear that I will suddenly see a horse. There are horses here, and although I have never been afraid of them before in the daytime, I feel certain I will be afraid of their big dark eyes in the fog.

I reach the yellow dome. I have been told it is in fact not a house, but a space they use for gatherings and concerts and things, only at the moment it is full of water. I look inside. It does have a lot of water in, but only at the front. Despite the fog, the dome is illuminated by some light from nowhere and has lightly glowing triangular panels at the top. It looks a bit like a 1960s idea of a spaceship. It´s dry at the back and it´s not too cold. There´s a carpeted platform, which must be used as a stage. I decide it will be a lot easier to sleep here than putting up my tent in the dark. I see a bit of horse shit and put a table across the open doorway. I don´t want to wake up with a horse staring at me… or standing on me!