From July 19 to August 5 I have been traveling slowly through Europe to attend the first Green Silk Road Summer School. The place were was held was in Transilvania, Romania. a beautiful region in the hart of eastern Europe. The Green Silk Road scope is "connecting regenerative projects across Eurasia while finding alternatives for air travel". Originates in India, in Auroville, a long standing extraordinary experiment in growing humanity in harmony.

The GSR approach to learning aims to involve all of ourselves: head, heart and hands. Just like travelling to the projects along the route, the act of living together on site is as much part of the curriculum as the reading and writing.

So I did, by trying to stick to the slow travel principles in full. Since the experiment was later founded by an Erasmus+ found, I treated myself with the less impactful way to travel, that still is the Train. With some surprises.

I took a Interrail ticket and thought it was the same as in my youth yet more expensive, and found that the scope of the ticket had changed completely from being a tool to travel cheap through all Europe to a privileged way to hop from capital to capital. But was nice to take time, to visit friends along the way and to arrive to Romania and back having a load of stories and allowing myself to carry some gear as well.

About the GSR learning process I publish here some stuff from my self evaluation after the fact. About the teaching I did, I have lot of learning, both about how to set up a good situation and about how to allow myself to be without taking role if there is no space to do it without friction. It was a great learning experience, and made some kin -as was my scope from the beginning- in the process.

As a follow up a beautiful collaboration started with The Green Silk road and now I am looking forward to the next event, discussion, catch up or project.

I want to thank all participants and my fellow leading learners, Gijs, Tanin, Milad, Naimeh, Omid, Kamnoush, Aire &Lili and J. And I want to thank the local organizers as well.

Self evaluation

do i have an ability that i did not have before?

• I learned useful skills for my art practice about natural colors and way to extract them and use them.
• I learned useful skills about collaboration and alternative methods of education design
• I learned new strategies to build collaborative camera movement in dance film
• I learned from everyone of the participating people something

did i learn something new?

• I learned a bit about Transilvania nature, socio economic values and lore
• I learned about the type of soft skills that are popular between younger generations.
• I practiced slow travel and learned a lot about the current status of train travel across europe.

About myself?

• is about practice more than "learning". Practice of letting go
• to the effect of other people dynamics and fears on me and how they effect my expectations or my own ability to give or take
• That I am often right in my intuition but this does not make me particularly happy

About something else?

• confirming me that there is no problem: there is people and the space between their dreams, their words and their actions. In this non problematic space useful knowledge and human kindness are abundant. That alone can be a source of constant wonder. One's ability to listen, recognize and pick what's needed is one's own. all kind of knowledge or skills can be thought and learned in a positive situation.

would I change something in my lifestyle after being here?

• i will travel even more often slowly
• i will advocate for sure slow travel more loudly
• I will apply what I have learned.
• I will try to campaign for better long distance trains across europe writing my experience.

will I see someone from GSR again?

• I hope so
• I will work to let it happen

would I stay involved in gsr and how?

• I will. Will try to help organise GSR friedly hubs along the way, will talk about the GSR core group a lot and hopefully will manage to set up other experiments in the future with similar characters and invite the participants to join and share their experience

will I participate-support again a gsr project?

• with joy

how would I organize a gathering themed prefigure alternative futures

• I would try put more attention to the context, designing a intervention that can hok up with locals and be open to their participation.
• I would abandon totally any form of "lesson" setup with central point of activity and give more space to artistic expression and informal learning. I would add some place for technology through a finalised construction lab activity. Usually a final show is a good boost for this learning sprints.
• The core-more experienced group should be experienced with learning community methodology and open to leave or take lead in some activities when a leading learner is necessary

what would I change why and how

• place
• total transparency regarding the stakeholders (budget, resources, goals)
• core group has to have shared part of the road building trust one to the other and personal knowledge
• transparent and through system of selection of participants and hosting partners

what new question am i leaving with?

• how much of all the valuable knowledge I was not allowed to get, share or encounter and is still there to be found?

has the program met my expectation and how?

• I had no expectations but to meet the GSR after many years of contacts with some of their core people and formal or informal exchange. In this sense participating to the program has met fully my expectations

will I do more slow travel? How?

• At present time BUS that is not a perfect system, is the tool that better allows me to slow travel europe.
• Most of the train experience was negative in terms of cost for kilometer and comfort. The network, especially in Germany, is badly designed. This means you must change many trains if you travel long distances. The Interrail app, that you need to use to show your ticket is a nightmare of usability. For most long distance train the interrail needs you to pay an extra fee, that is almost impossible to pay directly from the app. Most of the times you fail booking your place while traveling, luckily this is well known to operators that let you board anyway, but not always and it is a their discrection or with extra costs. The reservation is not re-usable for another train if the coincidence is not met (happened many times) resulting in 30% extra costs on an already costly way of travel and unnecessary stress in traveling. Interrail should be flat fee without extras and added difficulties to the traveler. It should not be marketed as luxe travel (because is not at all a luxe service you get). Is simply the most energy wise way to travel in europe and should be encouraged. To do so I summarise:
  • Price of travel by train should be generally calculated with a flat fee not dynamic
  • Price should take in account at least the CO2 emissions as well the type of energy (fuel versus green).
  • South europe has bad connection with east europe, I needed to resort to bus from Cluj-Napoca to Trieste and the Bus could not pass through Serbia, adding many hours to the trip. It was impossible for me to find a connection via train passing from Novi Sad or Belgrad.
  • The land border between Hungary and Romania takes hours to pass if you pass it, with over aggressive vigilance from both sides and no application of the shengen treaty, this should be at least made clear to travelers when you book the trip that passes these type of fronteers

what would I do differently?

• I don't have things that I would do differently, friction is inevitable and a good source of learning.