Places: Amiens, Fr => Basel, Ch => Geneve, Ch => Fortcalquier, Fr => Dijon => Landsberg, Germanica => Treviso, Italia => Ljubljana, Slovenija => Banja Luka, Bosnia
Date: 23 Novembre 2008
Musik: Harmonium, Godflesh, "Peaches" The Stranglers, Edith Piaf
(english version coming after the french one)
"J'aurais voulu être un artiiisteee
Pour avoir le monde à refaiiire
Pour pouvoir être un anarchiiisteee
Et vivre comme ... un millionnaiiire!"
Pour avoir le monde à refaiiire
Pour pouvoir être un anarchiiisteee
Et vivre comme ... un millionnaiiire!"
- Claude Dubois
Dans ma si typique tradition d'avoir un très mauvais timing, cette fois-ci à cause que je me suis quelque peu adonné à une vie luxueuse, luxuriante de bouffe, de savoirs et de moults agréables rencontres dans le squat des Tanneries à Dijon (salut au kamarad Robinsky, en passant!), je dus me résoudre à pédaler parmi les contrées frigorifiantes des régions alpines germaniques et italiennes, faisant un parcours quelque peu singulier, en ziguezaguant parmi la Suisse profonde, le sud conservateur de l'Allemagne et les paysages et humeurs plutôt moches de l'Autriche et du nord de l'Italie. Je me cherchais une façon de traverser les Alpes en évitant autant que possible les dizaines de hauts cols qui font généralement dans les altitudes fort humbles (du moins du point de vue de ces cyclistes qui n'ont rien de mieux à faire de leurs fins de semaines que du cyclotourisme léger) de 2000-3000 mètres hauteur. Vu que j'ai fait la quelque peu dérangeante expérience de descendre à bouts de freins durnat une bonne heure un col de 1600 m sur une étroite route nationale achalandée comme une autoroute et escarpée comme une piste de ski, et en pleine noirceur s.v.p., j'ai convenu que les rout
es de ce coin des Alpes n'étaient pas vraiment faites pour moi, surtout dans ce froid et avec le tout le poids que je transporte sur ce vélo. "Ouf!" comme un con de bourgeois dirait... Mais rien de vraiment extreme pour autant. Ma folie, c'est pas la temerite.
Ça, c'était après m'être aventuré à travers les Alpes françaises pour rejoindre ue vieille communauté autonome perdue dans la Provence profonde. Longo Maï est une sorte de mouvement de coopératives agraires basé fondamentalement sur des principes communiste d'autogestion collective hérités des utopies sociales de Mai '68. Le premier siège de ce mouvement est la communauté de Fortcalquier, un peu au sud de Gap, qu'ils développent depouis les années '70s.
Bien que l'organisation dans la place cartonne et ne cesse de rouler comme une grosse machine soviétique qui a des tentacules (ou engrenages?) un peu partout en Occident, elle s'est quelque peu conciliée au fil des années avec la machine de loin plus puissante et persistante qu'est l'État capitaliste que plusieurs des habitués de Longo Mai aimeraient sans doute voir s'écrouler un jour. Mais quoique les gens de la place baignent un peu trop dans la culture surprenamment conventionnelle et envoient leurs enfants à l'école publique, c'est quand même un lieu où on peut rencontrer les plus farouches renégats de la dite extrême-gauche des dernier 30 ans ou du fameux mouvement anarcho-autonome de ces années-ci (et certains se complaisent même porter la tenue provencale classique!). Et il y a des gens à cet endroit qui ont une connaissance scientifique de la permaculture. Rien de trop subversif comme organisation, soit, mais son histoire en vaut vraiment la peine d'être étudiée, que ce soit par intérêt sociologique ou simplement pour constater comment ça peut être possible d'organiser les choses en-dehors du système économique-politique dominant. Une utopie qui a fonctionné, mais toutefois peut-être pas celle qui ait le mieux fonctionné, du moins pas selon les goûts de tous-tes ceux-celles qui désirent réaliser une utopie du genre...
Après mon un peu trop long séjour à Dijon (qui a toutefois été trop court pour que j'y rate de seulement quelques putains de jours un concert un concert des Subhumans, un des plus grands -et vieux- groupes punk que l'Angleterre ait pu produire comme virus mortel), et une traversée plutôt inutile et éprouvant à travers la Suisse -alors que j'aurais pu simplement passer tout le long par l'Allemagne à partir de l'Alsace- je suis abouti chez une petite famille dont les parents étaient une brave est-Allemande quelque peu nostalgique de l'ère soviétique et d'un british, fervent chrétien et pourtant franc et fort "parlable", travaillant aujourd'hui comme graphiste, qui a jadis passé une bonne dizaine d'années à se promener partout dans le monde, en Asie, au Moyen-Orient, en Amérique, et surtout à vélo. Une sorte d'effet de miroir s'est produit entre moi et lui, me forçant à réfléchir sur ce que je pourrais devenir si je décidais de mettre à profit mes talents et ressources pour quelque chose de sédentaire et de plus permanent, dans un éventuel avenir, quelque part dans le monde, une fois que j'en aurais fini de cette vie de nomade. Ce que je cherche maintenant, c'est le lieu pour faire ce genre de choses... et les gens avec qui le faire.
Je suis tombé sur une délicieuse petite ville typiquement italienne nommé Treviso, un peu du nord de Venise, et y ai passé une réjouissante matinée ensoleillée à contempler la riche architecture baroque alors que j'apprenais que Othello venait de gagner ses élections aux USAs contre Iago Bush et sa bande de chauvins anglo-américains. Un bref rayon de soleil parmi un long passage froid, gris et pluvieux parmi une Europe riche, fasciste et juste généralement merdique.
Une escapade plutôt socialement intense dans la ville de Ljubljana m'a fait découvrir des liens insolites entre le l'art dadaïste des Balkans, le régime nazi, la Yougoslavie socialiste, le mouvement des squats et Nikola Tesla.
Je dois me résoudre à traverser les Balkans pour une terre plus chaude et colorée, en grande partie par d'autres moyens plus expéditifs mais bien plus coûteux que le vélo, car déjà ici dans le centre de la Bosnie, la neige a recouvert le sol...
... ..... .. . ........ .... ... . . . .... ..... ...
Chilly chilling far away from Chile (and still no chili!)
For some subconsious reason I had to enjoy for perhaps a bit too long the lavish life that is squatting in a self-managed space in Dijon called "les Tanneries", for the second time this year. Tons of friendly encounters, food in abundant quantities and marvelous quality, precious, rare books and punk shows that you could'nt even dream of (I even missed a Subhumans concert by just a few stupid days... bitches!) were good reasons to probably justify me staying in this place for a bit more than 3 weeks, but I guess there was also the even more important subconscious need to hang around with people of more or less the same variety as I am... like nomads, twisted hippies, warriors without a cause and anarcho-activists who dare to care supporting their gypsie neighbors. And this is nothing big compared to the joys of spending hours chatting and joking with fellow free radicals as we were working in the garden. My only slight frustration, actually, was to be unable to cook some real, good 'ol vegan chili, just because one of the guys there was allergic to cumin. Well you know it's direct democracy, or libertarian communism or whatever you wanna call it, but I still had the chance to almost-intentionally avenge myself by making the chili a bit too hot for their tastes ;) Mark my words, les Tanneries is a great place for getting in contact with the whole autonomist movement in France (and even Europe), although it's not like all the hype can lead you to believe what it is. There's plenty of other great squat projects in other French cities that are unfolding, and sometimes struggling to stay alive these days. These people do have an issue with unresponsive squatters who just invade the place like stupid tourists (or German reformist hippies;) and they really gonna appreciate you when you contribute to the place and behave in a not too invasive way. This freedom fortress has grown and self-sustained like an hummus-fed garden for years, and its gonna last as long as there is good in this world, no matter the number of idiots on speed that can take it over in the busy weekends. Not the most groundbreaking revolutionary place out there... really just a nice, relax place held by some unquestionably good people who really do something for building or defending concrete social justice outside of their lair.
That's only the front of their main building.
But that came right after an adventure through the Jura mountains in Switzerland and the French Alps, on to a an autonomous community lost in deep Provence. Longo Mai is this kind of cooperative farming movement fundamentally based on communistic principles that derived from the revolutionary social experiments and theories surrounding the May '68 popular uprisings. The first base of t his movement is the community of Fortcalquier, located a bit south of Gap, that's developping since the mid '70s.
Although the organizing in this place works at full regime like a huge soviet collective machine that has its surprisingly long tentacles (or gears?) reaching many parts of the Western world (they've even got a feet in the ground in Costa Rica), it has somewhat compromised itself over the years with that even bigger, more powerful and persistent machine that is the capitalist State, the very same that many of their members would like to see crumble one day.
Although the folks in this place seem to be surprisingly entangled in the very same conventional culture than "outside" (you actually don't really feel that there is an outside... as it is mostly everywhere inside, as if they had hesitated to make this big jump into the unknown of living without arbitrary rules) and they just send their childrens at public school, this is still a place where you can meet the fiercest renegades of the so-called extreme-left of the old days, and the now (in)famous anarcho-autonomist movement of today. Big names of the more politically reformist vague of the spectrum, such as he president of the Human Rights League, are regulars here as well. The major leagues... this is the place where you can find them!
But I had my issues with some authoritarian, repressive or simply moronic behaviors of some of the people there, and it's somewhat frequent that some guys get into a fight during meetings or in the kitchen. The mood in this place is usually heavy and grey, which may be either a cause or consequence (or both) of these internal frictions. Their common kitchen looks just like these bland, static hospital kitchens, with not even a single poster or artwork anywhere and people are cooking just like robots, stressed, grim and oriented on productivity rather than the whole sensuality of cooking. It sometimes feels like a huge cult, and its history is at times cheesier in scale than any Robert Ludlum's cheap political fiction, and is often subject of many urban legends (like they once used military vehicles and weaponry to defend themsleves against the French government). Nothing subversive -or worrying- in general as an organization, really, but its history is really worth studying, no matter it it's by simpole sociological interest or to just plainly realize how possible it is to organize things outside of the dominant political-economic system... at least within a netwrok of small communities. Longo Mai is indeed mostly interesting when seen as its network of groups and self-managed autonomous collective farms, that's based on about ten centers in France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and Eastern Europe, and that has gained some strong political ground over the years, no matter if it's for defending its collective interests or to give some powerful and concrete support to more global struggles like organic farming rights, and refugees without status.
(I still do... no matter what!)
For these reasons I ended up having the discomfort of cycling through the most mountainous area of the entire Europe in times where the frost didn't only follow my tracks, but caught me a few times while I was climbing a mountain or camping into some wild setting. On the more pleasant side of things, Switzerland and Germany are fortunately places where its ridiculously easy to steal things in corporate stores or to do some good food or bicycle parts recycling (like that almost new, high-quality bike helmet I once found). Because of that, I was finally able to steal a damn laptop computer. How? Just by hacking its combination lock and then putting it under my jacket! ;) I eventually sold the thing for 300 Euros as it was too addictive for me and a bit too much of a hassle to carry in my bags. Aside from that, the landscapes were pleasant as well, with these immense and neverending mountain ranges dominating over the land from thousands of meters in the skies, but it was all shallow and uninspiring grandeur compared to the moody feel that the Balkanese wilderness (both natural and human) puts under your skin...
Laibach
In the tree most important cities of the late Yugoslavian republic came a subversive (not-so-)underground art movement known for its obsession with enigmatic black crosses and sarcastic use of totalitarian regimes, both fascists and socialists. Its commonly known as "NSK" ("Neue Slovenishe Krunst"), or "Laibach", which is also the name of the industrial music band that has grown directly from this movement, who are actually doing decent stuff -although a bit trendy maybe- and is still a lot active these days. One of the former band members, the keyboardist, I think, was a wacked-out nerd who once took part into developing a huge autonomous space in an abandoned bicycle factory from the late socialist era, called the ROG, right in the center of this city, by the beautiful riverside, and also built up some weird cult to Nikola Tesla... giving everyone the false promise that he would build some of Tesla's most unearthly free energy devices. The guy eventually burned up a large part of the building by accident, due to his goth habit of using too many candles in his vast living space (the kind of shit that always happen when you're messing with fire), went totally insane and exiled himself in an asylum in Iceland. Most of the rest of that legendary squat was deteriorated or destroyed by junkies over the years, at the expense of the "resident" squatters becoming somewhat paranoid about weirdos getting into the place, and having a vigil of the municipality at the entrance (the kind of shit that happens when you let collectives autonomous spaces too open, with no control of any sorts). Still, the squatted building still had a few decent places where to live, and it gave me the opportunity to spend some good time, and have some coffee every morning, with a passionate spanish girl who was there for studies, and a talkative german hippie guy with his poor old sick dog that gets him amazing girlfriends. Oh and there was also this mad Israeli circus guy, who's self-inflating, spectacular ego kept waning on the borders of being a total narcissist. I actually caught myself being able to tolerate his being around most of the time, as If I'd not be for that unstable way of life I have, would not have happened this way. Treating him like an equal person rather than a stupid loonie actually had a good effect on our mutual tolerance. Something anyone should experience.
Laibach -now more largerly known as Ljubljana, the urban center of Slovenia, is a beautiful little city full of both local and international (many disguised as goths on friday evening) getting drunk everywhere in the streets and especially in their famous urban punk fortress called "Mithalkhova", a bunch of squatting buildings who've been actually taken over by artist collectives over the years, where you can get to see some very cool new bands of the german/balkanese/british undergroud. Although the criticism I share with many other locales concerning the place having mostly sold out to capitalism and the State (they receive frequent visits from the mayor and his delegates... and have a damn youth hostel on their site), it gave me the opportunity to discover an awesome new band from Austria, called Tumido, just two guys who make some incredible industrial/jazz fusion with only a bass, a drum and a few basic sounds effects. The most authentic, and freaking disturbing music I heard for a very, very long time... and the crowd -me and my hippie buddy included- went literally shocked by the dark mechanical energy of their sound.
Laibach's obsession with recycling fascist imagery is not as ambiguous as it may seem, as I kinda understood that it's a way of unveiling the too-thickly-covered ties between Slovenia's politics and the Nazi regime since the '30s. Today they even got some politicians in the social-democrat government who seemed to have enjoyed Nazi Europe a lot in the '40s, and moved to Argentina when WW2 ended, just as thousands of German and Austrian officeers and scientists of the Third Reich did -somewhat in secret- at the time. The Serbs, who turned out to be the toughest opposition to the Nazi regime (Yugoslavia defeated the Nazis even without the help of Soviet forces, with their own military industry and organization), still know today how the whole Slovenian/Croatian society was corrupted by fascism, and this is something that could explain some of the tensions between Serbs and Croatian/Slovenians. Actually, that's quite preposterous that in the West it's ironically the exact opposite of what's being told to the masses about that war, as the mainstream media and history teachers are so determined to portray the Serbian regime of the '90s as some sort of neo-Nazi regime... so contradictory for a population mostly made of jewish and orthodox people! In Ljubljana and Zagreb they have a huge problem with neonazi skinheads attacking young "liberal" kids in venues and parties, just as every friday night in Mithalkhova.
As I was leaving the magical and yet terribly capitalistic city of Ljubljana, anarchists were beginning to do some apparently serious organizing to tackle the problem, and I unfortunately could'nt stay there to help them, but I just hope they'll shake things up and put an end to this. Well, the weather wasn't very good to hand around the place, but I'm really looking forward spending more time in Serbia next year, as I quickly liked the direct, frank, yet warm approach of these people. They're like the indomitable folk of Europe, and I like people who don't let themselves be bossed by some foreign invasive political forces. I mean they used to kill members of the royalty here... before they've been sending their children in the streets to throw molotov cocktails at Nazi officers after the class! (they really did that) If the French would have been that strong against fascism, there wouldn't be a countrywide DNA database program, and Sarkozy would still be nothing more than a mayor today, or perhaps even his janitor...
My trip across the Balkans has been somewhat intense and -unsurprisingly- short. It took me one or two days to get over the cultural shock that I felt while crossing the mountains between Croatia and Bosnia, but at least this time I was on one of these romantic trains from the good old days, and not cycling like some demented masochist in the frost somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The Balkans is a rough, tough-looking and dirty region that could be quite easily labeled as "developing countries", but never it was so easy to get in touch with people in the streets, cafes or bars than in this place, and to even end up spending some precious, enjoyable time with them, either at their house or on the road (or on the train). This is how I got to spend a cold weekend right in the center of Bosnia with a young couple of Srbs with a strong taste for sarcasm and a lot of generosity. I even took off with a bottle of homemade rakija, a very strong wine-based spirit that kinda flames the devil out of your bowels (I'm pretty sure you'll never find any other damn canadian with this in his luggage!) that I had the pleasure to drink with a vagabond French-Serbian guy, who had the best of both worlds in terms of sense of humour, and who kinda gave me the whills about going to Thailand, and a friendly 80 years-old Macedonian men on the train to Greece who gave in a lot of energy into teaching me a few words in serbian.
Now I finally made it to Saloniki,a place that feels like Barcelona, but is in many ways sweeter, simpler and smaller than that big ultra-touristy mediterannean urban nightmare. I still have make my experience of living (and struggling and fighting and squatting) in here, and eventually set sails to Crete, but that'll be for another one of my colorful blog commentaries about being a crazy nomad on a bike run against capitalist civilization...
See ya!
es de ce coin des Alpes n'étaient pas vraiment faites pour moi, surtout dans ce froid et avec le tout le poids que je transporte sur ce vélo. "Ouf!" comme un con de bourgeois dirait... Mais rien de vraiment extreme pour autant. Ma folie, c'est pas la temerite.Ça, c'était après m'être aventuré à travers les Alpes françaises pour rejoindre ue vieille communauté autonome perdue dans la Provence profonde. Longo Maï est une sorte de mouvement de coopératives agraires basé fondamentalement sur des principes communiste d'autogestion collective hérités des utopies sociales de Mai '68. Le premier siège de ce mouvement est la communauté de Fortcalquier, un peu au sud de Gap, qu'ils développent depouis les années '70s.
Bien que l'organisation dans la place cartonne et ne cesse de rouler comme une grosse machine soviétique qui a des tentacules (ou engrenages?) un peu partout en Occident, elle s'est quelque peu conciliée au fil des années avec la machine de loin plus puissante et persistante qu'est l'État capitaliste que plusieurs des habitués de Longo Mai aimeraient sans doute voir s'écrouler un jour. Mais quoique les gens de la place baignent un peu trop dans la culture surprenamment conventionnelle et envoient leurs enfants à l'école publique, c'est quand même un lieu où on peut rencontrer les plus farouches renégats de la dite extrême-gauche des dernier 30 ans ou du fameux mouvement anarcho-autonome de ces années-ci (et certains se complaisent même porter la tenue provencale classique!). Et il y a des gens à cet endroit qui ont une connaissance scientifique de la permaculture. Rien de trop subversif comme organisation, soit, mais son histoire en vaut vraiment la peine d'être étudiée, que ce soit par intérêt sociologique ou simplement pour constater comment ça peut être possible d'organiser les choses en-dehors du système économique-politique dominant. Une utopie qui a fonctionné, mais toutefois peut-être pas celle qui ait le mieux fonctionné, du moins pas selon les goûts de tous-tes ceux-celles qui désirent réaliser une utopie du genre...
Après mon un peu trop long séjour à Dijon (qui a toutefois été trop court pour que j'y rate de seulement quelques putains de jours un concert un concert des Subhumans, un des plus grands -et vieux- groupes punk que l'Angleterre ait pu produire comme virus mortel), et une traversée plutôt inutile et éprouvant à travers la Suisse -alors que j'aurais pu simplement passer tout le long par l'Allemagne à partir de l'Alsace- je suis abouti chez une petite famille dont les parents étaient une brave est-Allemande quelque peu nostalgique de l'ère soviétique et d'un british, fervent chrétien et pourtant franc et fort "parlable", travaillant aujourd'hui comme graphiste, qui a jadis passé une bonne dizaine d'années à se promener partout dans le monde, en Asie, au Moyen-Orient, en Amérique, et surtout à vélo. Une sorte d'effet de miroir s'est produit entre moi et lui, me forçant à réfléchir sur ce que je pourrais devenir si je décidais de mettre à profit mes talents et ressources pour quelque chose de sédentaire et de plus permanent, dans un éventuel avenir, quelque part dans le monde, une fois que j'en aurais fini de cette vie de nomade. Ce que je cherche maintenant, c'est le lieu pour faire ce genre de choses... et les gens avec qui le faire.
Je suis tombé sur une délicieuse petite ville typiquement italienne nommé Treviso, un peu du nord de Venise, et y ai passé une réjouissante matinée ensoleillée à contempler la riche architecture baroque alors que j'apprenais que Othello venait de gagner ses élections aux USAs contre Iago Bush et sa bande de chauvins anglo-américains. Un bref rayon de soleil parmi un long passage froid, gris et pluvieux parmi une Europe riche, fasciste et juste généralement merdique.
Une escapade plutôt socialement intense dans la ville de Ljubljana m'a fait découvrir des liens insolites entre le l'art dadaïste des Balkans, le régime nazi, la Yougoslavie socialiste, le mouvement des squats et Nikola Tesla.
Je dois me résoudre à traverser les Balkans pour une terre plus chaude et colorée, en grande partie par d'autres moyens plus expéditifs mais bien plus coûteux que le vélo, car déjà ici dans le centre de la Bosnie, la neige a recouvert le sol...
... ..... .. . ........ .... ... . . . .... ..... ...
Chilly chilling far away from Chile (and still no chili!)
For some subconsious reason I had to enjoy for perhaps a bit too long the lavish life that is squatting in a self-managed space in Dijon called "les Tanneries", for the second time this year. Tons of friendly encounters, food in abundant quantities and marvelous quality, precious, rare books and punk shows that you could'nt even dream of (I even missed a Subhumans concert by just a few stupid days... bitches!) were good reasons to probably justify me staying in this place for a bit more than 3 weeks, but I guess there was also the even more important subconscious need to hang around with people of more or less the same variety as I am... like nomads, twisted hippies, warriors without a cause and anarcho-activists who dare to care supporting their gypsie neighbors. And this is nothing big compared to the joys of spending hours chatting and joking with fellow free radicals as we were working in the garden. My only slight frustration, actually, was to be unable to cook some real, good 'ol vegan chili, just because one of the guys there was allergic to cumin. Well you know it's direct democracy, or libertarian communism or whatever you wanna call it, but I still had the chance to almost-intentionally avenge myself by making the chili a bit too hot for their tastes ;) Mark my words, les Tanneries is a great place for getting in contact with the whole autonomist movement in France (and even Europe), although it's not like all the hype can lead you to believe what it is. There's plenty of other great squat projects in other French cities that are unfolding, and sometimes struggling to stay alive these days. These people do have an issue with unresponsive squatters who just invade the place like stupid tourists (or German reformist hippies;) and they really gonna appreciate you when you contribute to the place and behave in a not too invasive way. This freedom fortress has grown and self-sustained like an hummus-fed garden for years, and its gonna last as long as there is good in this world, no matter the number of idiots on speed that can take it over in the busy weekends. Not the most groundbreaking revolutionary place out there... really just a nice, relax place held by some unquestionably good people who really do something for building or defending concrete social justice outside of their lair.
That's only the front of their main building.But that came right after an adventure through the Jura mountains in Switzerland and the French Alps, on to a an autonomous community lost in deep Provence. Longo Mai is this kind of cooperative farming movement fundamentally based on communistic principles that derived from the revolutionary social experiments and theories surrounding the May '68 popular uprisings. The first base of t his movement is the community of Fortcalquier, located a bit south of Gap, that's developping since the mid '70s.
Although the organizing in this place works at full regime like a huge soviet collective machine that has its surprisingly long tentacles (or gears?) reaching many parts of the Western world (they've even got a feet in the ground in Costa Rica), it has somewhat compromised itself over the years with that even bigger, more powerful and persistent machine that is the capitalist State, the very same that many of their members would like to see crumble one day.
Although the folks in this place seem to be surprisingly entangled in the very same conventional culture than "outside" (you actually don't really feel that there is an outside... as it is mostly everywhere inside, as if they had hesitated to make this big jump into the unknown of living without arbitrary rules) and they just send their childrens at public school, this is still a place where you can meet the fiercest renegades of the so-called extreme-left of the old days, and the now (in)famous anarcho-autonomist movement of today. Big names of the more politically reformist vague of the spectrum, such as he president of the Human Rights League, are regulars here as well. The major leagues... this is the place where you can find them!
But I had my issues with some authoritarian, repressive or simply moronic behaviors of some of the people there, and it's somewhat frequent that some guys get into a fight during meetings or in the kitchen. The mood in this place is usually heavy and grey, which may be either a cause or consequence (or both) of these internal frictions. Their common kitchen looks just like these bland, static hospital kitchens, with not even a single poster or artwork anywhere and people are cooking just like robots, stressed, grim and oriented on productivity rather than the whole sensuality of cooking. It sometimes feels like a huge cult, and its history is at times cheesier in scale than any Robert Ludlum's cheap political fiction, and is often subject of many urban legends (like they once used military vehicles and weaponry to defend themsleves against the French government). Nothing subversive -or worrying- in general as an organization, really, but its history is really worth studying, no matter it it's by simpole sociological interest or to just plainly realize how possible it is to organize things outside of the dominant political-economic system... at least within a netwrok of small communities. Longo Mai is indeed mostly interesting when seen as its network of groups and self-managed autonomous collective farms, that's based on about ten centers in France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, and Eastern Europe, and that has gained some strong political ground over the years, no matter if it's for defending its collective interests or to give some powerful and concrete support to more global struggles like organic farming rights, and refugees without status.
(I still do... no matter what!)
For these reasons I ended up having the discomfort of cycling through the most mountainous area of the entire Europe in times where the frost didn't only follow my tracks, but caught me a few times while I was climbing a mountain or camping into some wild setting. On the more pleasant side of things, Switzerland and Germany are fortunately places where its ridiculously easy to steal things in corporate stores or to do some good food or bicycle parts recycling (like that almost new, high-quality bike helmet I once found). Because of that, I was finally able to steal a damn laptop computer. How? Just by hacking its combination lock and then putting it under my jacket! ;) I eventually sold the thing for 300 Euros as it was too addictive for me and a bit too much of a hassle to carry in my bags. Aside from that, the landscapes were pleasant as well, with these immense and neverending mountain ranges dominating over the land from thousands of meters in the skies, but it was all shallow and uninspiring grandeur compared to the moody feel that the Balkanese wilderness (both natural and human) puts under your skin...
Laibach
In the tree most important cities of the late Yugoslavian republic came a subversive (not-so-)underground art movement known for its obsession with enigmatic black crosses and sarcastic use of totalitarian regimes, both fascists and socialists. Its commonly known as "NSK" ("Neue Slovenishe Krunst"), or "Laibach", which is also the name of the industrial music band that has grown directly from this movement, who are actually doing decent stuff -although a bit trendy maybe- and is still a lot active these days. One of the former band members, the keyboardist, I think, was a wacked-out nerd who once took part into developing a huge autonomous space in an abandoned bicycle factory from the late socialist era, called the ROG, right in the center of this city, by the beautiful riverside, and also built up some weird cult to Nikola Tesla... giving everyone the false promise that he would build some of Tesla's most unearthly free energy devices. The guy eventually burned up a large part of the building by accident, due to his goth habit of using too many candles in his vast living space (the kind of shit that always happen when you're messing with fire), went totally insane and exiled himself in an asylum in Iceland. Most of the rest of that legendary squat was deteriorated or destroyed by junkies over the years, at the expense of the "resident" squatters becoming somewhat paranoid about weirdos getting into the place, and having a vigil of the municipality at the entrance (the kind of shit that happens when you let collectives autonomous spaces too open, with no control of any sorts). Still, the squatted building still had a few decent places where to live, and it gave me the opportunity to spend some good time, and have some coffee every morning, with a passionate spanish girl who was there for studies, and a talkative german hippie guy with his poor old sick dog that gets him amazing girlfriends. Oh and there was also this mad Israeli circus guy, who's self-inflating, spectacular ego kept waning on the borders of being a total narcissist. I actually caught myself being able to tolerate his being around most of the time, as If I'd not be for that unstable way of life I have, would not have happened this way. Treating him like an equal person rather than a stupid loonie actually had a good effect on our mutual tolerance. Something anyone should experience.
Laibach -now more largerly known as Ljubljana, the urban center of Slovenia, is a beautiful little city full of both local and international (many disguised as goths on friday evening) getting drunk everywhere in the streets and especially in their famous urban punk fortress called "Mithalkhova", a bunch of squatting buildings who've been actually taken over by artist collectives over the years, where you can get to see some very cool new bands of the german/balkanese/british undergroud. Although the criticism I share with many other locales concerning the place having mostly sold out to capitalism and the State (they receive frequent visits from the mayor and his delegates... and have a damn youth hostel on their site), it gave me the opportunity to discover an awesome new band from Austria, called Tumido, just two guys who make some incredible industrial/jazz fusion with only a bass, a drum and a few basic sounds effects. The most authentic, and freaking disturbing music I heard for a very, very long time... and the crowd -me and my hippie buddy included- went literally shocked by the dark mechanical energy of their sound.Laibach's obsession with recycling fascist imagery is not as ambiguous as it may seem, as I kinda understood that it's a way of unveiling the too-thickly-covered ties between Slovenia's politics and the Nazi regime since the '30s. Today they even got some politicians in the social-democrat government who seemed to have enjoyed Nazi Europe a lot in the '40s, and moved to Argentina when WW2 ended, just as thousands of German and Austrian officeers and scientists of the Third Reich did -somewhat in secret- at the time. The Serbs, who turned out to be the toughest opposition to the Nazi regime (Yugoslavia defeated the Nazis even without the help of Soviet forces, with their own military industry and organization), still know today how the whole Slovenian/Croatian society was corrupted by fascism, and this is something that could explain some of the tensions between Serbs and Croatian/Slovenians. Actually, that's quite preposterous that in the West it's ironically the exact opposite of what's being told to the masses about that war, as the mainstream media and history teachers are so determined to portray the Serbian regime of the '90s as some sort of neo-Nazi regime... so contradictory for a population mostly made of jewish and orthodox people! In Ljubljana and Zagreb they have a huge problem with neonazi skinheads attacking young "liberal" kids in venues and parties, just as every friday night in Mithalkhova.
As I was leaving the magical and yet terribly capitalistic city of Ljubljana, anarchists were beginning to do some apparently serious organizing to tackle the problem, and I unfortunately could'nt stay there to help them, but I just hope they'll shake things up and put an end to this. Well, the weather wasn't very good to hand around the place, but I'm really looking forward spending more time in Serbia next year, as I quickly liked the direct, frank, yet warm approach of these people. They're like the indomitable folk of Europe, and I like people who don't let themselves be bossed by some foreign invasive political forces. I mean they used to kill members of the royalty here... before they've been sending their children in the streets to throw molotov cocktails at Nazi officers after the class! (they really did that) If the French would have been that strong against fascism, there wouldn't be a countrywide DNA database program, and Sarkozy would still be nothing more than a mayor today, or perhaps even his janitor...
My trip across the Balkans has been somewhat intense and -unsurprisingly- short. It took me one or two days to get over the cultural shock that I felt while crossing the mountains between Croatia and Bosnia, but at least this time I was on one of these romantic trains from the good old days, and not cycling like some demented masochist in the frost somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The Balkans is a rough, tough-looking and dirty region that could be quite easily labeled as "developing countries", but never it was so easy to get in touch with people in the streets, cafes or bars than in this place, and to even end up spending some precious, enjoyable time with them, either at their house or on the road (or on the train). This is how I got to spend a cold weekend right in the center of Bosnia with a young couple of Srbs with a strong taste for sarcasm and a lot of generosity. I even took off with a bottle of homemade rakija, a very strong wine-based spirit that kinda flames the devil out of your bowels (I'm pretty sure you'll never find any other damn canadian with this in his luggage!) that I had the pleasure to drink with a vagabond French-Serbian guy, who had the best of both worlds in terms of sense of humour, and who kinda gave me the whills about going to Thailand, and a friendly 80 years-old Macedonian men on the train to Greece who gave in a lot of energy into teaching me a few words in serbian.
Now I finally made it to Saloniki,a place that feels like Barcelona, but is in many ways sweeter, simpler and smaller than that big ultra-touristy mediterannean urban nightmare. I still have make my experience of living (and struggling and fighting and squatting) in here, and eventually set sails to Crete, but that'll be for another one of my colorful blog commentaries about being a crazy nomad on a bike run against capitalist civilization...
See ya!
Carpe Diem,
Memento Mori
P.S.: To fellow cyclist/punk travellers, don't hesitate to send me a message if ya need more infos and how to's concerning the stuff I'm writing you about in this blog.
