Our "Everyday Meal"

There are 100 co-workers in Tamera, members of the community, and 30 children, permanently. In addition to this, about 30 to 200 guests (for different periods of time). In winter, during the rainy season, you will find just a few guests, but in the summer, during the Summer University, the place gathers more than 300 visitors from all over the world. Guests are also washing dishes…….

Without employees, without people from outside, everything is organized and it works perfectly, without syncope. Of course, most of them are German people - this is the best explanation I could get. Punctuality is the governing law. So, at 11 o’clock sharp we are all having meal.

The chef rings the bell, comes out the kitchen’s door (the kitchen is made of a few containers tied together with extensions in wood covered by plastic wraps) and together with his team of three, salutes the crowd and announces the menu of the day, baked cauliflower, lentil dish, salads, plenty of vegetable sauces, all cooked with love! We are standing on the terrace, near the entrance, smiling. The food stands right in front of us on two long tables, on trays, where everyone is free to serve himself. Of course, everything here is vegetarian. Three assortments of food, with plenty of lentils, chick pea, beans, sometimes as a paste, indeed very tasty. The food is similar to our hotchpotch, but under multiple presentations. The bread is black, with seeds, and you can’t always find it, to my sincere disappointment. The only exception seems to be the butter, recently introduced, after a long discussion, but not because it is vital for human being (there is a long discussion about animals to be, anyhow, anywhere, including cows, not being killed, but dying of aging and given to the wild animals…..)

Another table is full of lettuce, grated carrots, beets, red cabbage, sauces and spices. Jugs with lemon or elder tree water, herbal tea and coffee are always at hand. Tangerines or oranges, you will find all day long. Just like our apples, I think. Tangerines are little, of different sizes, and of course, tasty.

For the moment, only 5 percents of the food is being produced here. The rest is bought from the proximity farms, contracted by Tamera and producing under their guidance. All neighbors are pleased about this here, in the middle of nowhere.


You can eat as much as you want, 3 dishes, it doesn’t matter, there is enough food for everyone…… this is one of the 5 kitchens in Tamera, about 50-60 people standing at the wooden tables in the shade. Under another man-made shade, on the grass, you will find the kids table, with two mothers together with 10 kids - of course fair-haired.

Shades are everywhere - the masterpiece of architect Martin Pietsch, the creator of multizone architecture, looking like enormous flowers, wings of flying insects, sand dunes, and fabulous insects. Manufactured only from wood strips, cables and weaved meshes…. Green, white, all colors, they hold us together most of the time.

So we take any sit at the table, no matter where….…. Today, my table neighbors are from Greece and Portugal. We eat and talk, I ask how long are they living here, and I find out that for one month, they would like to start an eco village and they are here to find out more about this. There are 2 women about 30-35 years old.

Once in a while, with a bowl instead of a bell, two strapping fellows start singing, at the kitchen’s door….. a parody song from Jungle's Book movie, ending with the invitation to wash the dishes. 6 volunteers needed………… people is laughing and one by one, we have 6. This is what happens at every meal, a new song everyday, the more successful, more volunteers appear. Tomorrow will be my turn, I’m thinking now. I wish to know what does washing dishes in Tamera mean….

Once the meal finished, everyone cleans their own plate and the cutlery: in 3 waters in the 6 sinks by the entrance and put them on large trays, going to the dishwasher. Any rest of food, if there is one, more tangerine peels, is kept in pails and used to make bio gas.

I have the same feeling as in my childhood during summer camps. Some of the people here use to walk barefoot, in the sun, and everyone is ageless….. It is 12 o’clock now and the entire group has a meeting at the Student Centrum, Helena and Ria are waiting for us, they will be outr guised for the next week……

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Cloning Needed

I wish I could clone myself, only for a while, to have duplicates and let them put on paper what I am living, what I am thinking about and what do I believe, to run on the hills and post my thinking, to transmit them, because only here on top I have internet connection, to charge my photo camera, then my laptop, then my phone, even if I have forgotten my charger, to download my pictures, to select them, to upload them, while I am all ears…… for you to understand what I did this morning - I don’t have the two points key - 5.40 wake up, 6.20 sunrise ritual on the shrine of stones, then meditation on the same hill, 7.30 breakfast, 8.15 nursery of trees, watered by the firemen in the valley, 11 brunch on some other hill, 11.20 discussion with the scientific campus coordinator, 12 seminar about community on another hill, almost 13.30 mailing with the journalist for peace, 14.30 visiting the campus, 16  mailing with the country, 16.30 seminar about children, 18 documentary, 19 dinner and 20 (now) I am writing... finally, I do have time.

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The Morning, The World

In the morning, the world seems not so great, I mumble myself and I don’t understand how could I've been thinking that such a way of living would be proper for me! The showers are on the next hill. Meaning that: I get dressed, I get down the hill, pass through the valley and climb another hill! And back!

I take my towel, be careful to have all my bio cosmetic products, even my toothpaste and I leave, grumbling in my boots... On my way back I am strongly convinced that the best way to start your day is with a walk of 800 m on the hills! I will argue for this from now on!

There are no locked doors in Tamera……not where I sleep, not at the offices, not at the cafeteria, club, nowhere………I let my laptop and my camera in different places, in the Students’ centre and overnight, my luggage everywhere outside…….careless. Because here confidence must be total! Otherwise the community would not resist!

At 8:30 Sylvius is waiting for us at the guest room, he's one of the community’s guides, a lean man, tanned, with a happy look in his eyes. He is here for 11 years, with his whole family, including two boys. We introduce ourselves, for the moment we are only 13 people in the group attending the orientation week. We are of different nationalities, from Brazil, Canada, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, more from Germany and only one Portuguese, the youngest member of the group.

Tamera is lying on 134 acres of hills, as said and the shape of the domain looks like an eagle landing. They are here since 1995, but they did their first steps in Germany, since 1978. The founders are a theologian, Sabine Lichtenfels, a sociologist Dr. Dieter Duhm and the physician - and at the same time musician - Charly Rainer Ehrenpreis, all starting with the intention of creating an alternative universality, to teach the humanity to re-connect with the nature. All around this idea they immediately gathered specialists in bionics, architecture, cymatics, informatics technology, medicine, but the research center they have founded in south Germany did not last in front of the internal conflicts of the group………… same old stories hundred years old…. power, jealousy, money! Better knowing people, experts, all animated by the best intentions ever, wishing world’s peace, in fact, were not capable of living in peace and harmony together!

What are the chances for such a project, big or small, whatever it may be, to resist? How it is possible to heal, to create a solid basis for any common purpose? Like.. the peace of the world?

There were no studies in this respect, so the founders decided to experience for three years living inside a community of 15 persons, without the possibility of giving up, in order for them to understand and to be able to build on some other basis. They have studied the communities’ necessary decision structures and how to manage mistakes, among other issues. They have learned that they must be interested by each other, the value of real communication; they have learned to build trust. So the source of violence came to be deeply investigated and so has been reached a level considered very intimate and private, they have reached love, partnership, living together, God, and even sexuality.

Further more, all the experience has been transposed by Dieter Duhm in The Political Theory, whose main idea is that a little change somewhere on the Earth influences everything, just like inside a body, therefore global peace starts from local peace and ultimately from the peace between us and inside us.


From this theory ‘till Tamera - The Research Center for the Peace, the road passed through various conflicts with the church and with mass-media in Germany, of course, like other projects such as ZEGG - Seminars Center for Experimental Cultural Design in Berlin, research on dolphins, initiation camps in the desert in some different countries…………so they have arrived in Portugal, Alentejo, in 1995, searching a place for a camp where people could redefine and rediscover themselves, the unfamiliar conditions being most favorable for such an introspection. The land has been bought with the aid of some private donations, with a few people they started workings of reforestation, development, and soon here could start, inside some tents, a Summer University with more than 100 students, debating energy themes, ecology, research and education for peace, but realized by a community who had already learn to build herself in a different way.

And yet, now that I am telling the story, I am in the same desert!

Now we are going on a lakeside……. enormous, and then another and another…………. water lilies, reeds, enormous fishes, orange fish to be seen in the water……….. there are flowers everywhere, everything around is green, the air is just like in the mountains, it is damp and chill………

"We have called a specialist in design, Sepp Holzer, an Austrian", says Sylvius. We complained that we have no water and he replied that we have more water than needed! Make lakes! Lakes, when we only had a little source of water, we wanted to cultivate the land, to refresh it, because it is almost destroyed, were could we find so much water?

"From the rain. It does rain in the winter, isn’t it?" Sepp replied.
"Yes, but in the winter we don’t need it, in the summer it is getting dry, in the winter nothing grows."
Sepp showed them that on their ground, between two hills, the ones I am always mentioning, there comes fresh water, sweet, so they could make a pipeline up to Barcelona, over 1500 km, with a section of 1 square meter, every year! And the lake is to be done in a few months, with a dam from natural materials, local…………..
It took them a while to get used to the idea. Now, when I am telling the story, everything seems so easy, and I have passed near the lake ten times already. But we didn’t think about this……..How many situations of this kind are happening in the entire World! Places like India, where it is raining but people just think they only depend on Gange, diminishing…..in a glance?

How great would be for everyone to have a lake? How much water are we really receiving without seeing it?
Even for the floods we are passing through, this would be a solution! To collect the water in lakes and use it whenever this would be necessary?

We are all confused. This must be something extremely complicated, it is too simple……How much food could each community grow? Moreover the temperature and humidity’s changes? Furthermore the humus taken from the future riverbed of the lake and taken wherever necessary? How many valleys forming streams would be now transformed and would become a real blessing?

We are passing by three lakes, already, one of them has more than 12m depth, a few acres in surface, another one is now being formed, and another one is just at the beginning. It will take one or more years to be completely filled, but it will take three months to dig it and after the first rain, it can be used. Without pumps, engines, concrete, hi-technology, and costs with electrical energy…….. Add some fish naturally living, without artificial feeding, and all the ecosystem of the lake is self generating!

Many portuguese people visit Tamera and wonder………an oasis in the middle of the desert! They now have a project for 1000 lakes in Alentejo. And the project is an example for the entire world, as a key for water, as basis of world’s peace. If there is water, there is food, wood, heat, life... for everyone!

And I am even more amazed of how are all these connecting…………………... how many wars, how many misunderstandings and fights with neighbors could be avoided?
Certainly many of them, I think, in my assumed foolishness!

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Tamera, At First Sight

At first sight, Tamera is a sort of enormous camp…… up on green hills, a sort of oasis in the middle of a golden area affected by desertification, caravans, tents, unpretentious buildings, spread along some paths or bohemian dusty roads.

One must give away the idea of a resort or a conventional village, because here is where we see how to start from zero and build only what really is essential. Including the oasis, in the same desert spreading over thousands of acres. Alentejo is perhaps the most arid and less populated area of Europe.

Portugal is mild in terms of climate – here in the south part, from May until October it is the dry season, in the rest of the year it rains (or it should rain) – so the living in the caravans is possible. I am astonished by the number of caravans or tents, I widely open my eyes, I thought there would be wooden chalets, clay. On every hill, clusters of caravans or tents or containers are hosting the Tamera community for more than 30 years.

Only later I do understand that it is not at all easy to build, you need authorizations, here we have more than 200 permanent residents and another hundreds visitors, so many homes would be needed. But not even this seems to be the reason, actually a lot of people here enjoy living in the heart of the nature, not feeling the need to be surrounded by walls…… and after living for a period of time in a tent or in a wooden chalet, the concrete suffocates you. Try it for a while and you will see how hard you will let yourself built.

Tamera, pronounced by everybody with obvious love and pride, is a sort of enormous tribe, a community where everything is being done with the contribution of all, where people live together without the rankings and the administrative structures that we all know. There’s nothing like home! I am surprised, even though I knew it……………

There are 5 kitchens for the entire community: indoors containers surrounded by terraces with large tables made of wood, where everyone is dinning; there are no individual kitchens, just to let you know……

Should you know, the founders and most residents are coming from Germany, so everything is pragmatic, functional, no airs and frills, and punctuality is a basic principle, no joke.

More than that, Tamera is a research centre, where things are going upon a certain process; recipes with immediate effect do not apply in a hurry. For example, there is a group involving students in Architecture from Lisbon and other Universities in the world and they are all trying to understand the human needs regarding the living spaces and to conceive new formulas based on the main idea of living inside a community.

Forget about the living room, nursery and kitchen, storeroom, guest room, none of all these make sense here. I will get to explain you this.

People seem to be ageless, all sun burned, and having a free and non conventional attitude; there are more young people, an average below 35 years old, perhaps. You will even find three generations, grandfathers, children and even nephews! There are lots of women and lots of children, fair haired, freely and undisturbed walking among the others.

You can feel the strengthen and the force, the eyes are bright and friendly, noninvasive, we are soon feeling integrated, me and Cristopher, the Australian I came with from the train station.

Crisa is welcoming us, a Greek woman living in the community for 11 years; she is taking us directly to dinner where the food is really delicious, far away from the taste I usually associate with the vegetarian food!

She is bravely initiating us; we are talking together while having dinner, tomorrow will start the introductive week and we will be part of, than she shows us where we will sleep and she invites us to the Club, at 8 o’clock (or to the movie), showing us the direction across the hills surrounding us. Club and movie….I didn’t expect this!

Thank God I have chosen the wooden chalet instead of the tent, because it is a little bit cold outside…… inside the chalet it feels warm, there are 4 beds, but I am alone, which is great!

OPEN THE PHOTO GALLERY

I decide to go to the club, not to waist a moment... to see everything. I am not tired yet, even though I had a long trip today…… the club is somehow easy enough to be reached, even though the footpaths have no name, indicating signs or light! So I receive another hint from a woman I meet and I keep a star in the sky for guidance. The new moon is right behind me and I keep on looking how beautiful she is…….. Thank God I kept in mind where the moon was, because when coming back and after drinking a glass of tonic water (there was also alcohol in the club), I had to guide myself after the stars, after the bleating of the sheeps, the moon, but finally I have reached the hill where I am living, proud of myself for not being afraid, alone, through the dark, without knowing the way back, and reaching the chalet after only two attempts!

Tamera gives me the impression of a place full of profoundness, rich in meaning and knowledge, despite the modesty of its buildings, there is something in the air……I think I will love it!

Good Night, after the first day!

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The Road to Tamera, Portugal

It is six o’clock in the morning and I'm enjoying the airport feeling and a hot tea…… even though I have only slept for two hours and a half, I am pretty sure that I haven’t packed everything I need, I am smiling: it feels like I have received the ticket to Paradise…………….. I adore airports, I like the bustle of sleepy faces, experienced suitcases, bags full of their own importance, finally recognized, the mix of careless flip flops, shoes and boots, dreams, joy, business trips and holydays carefully planned passing through the same gate…………………. a mega crossroads with less time to think about our stories.

Where are you going to, why, who is coming with you, who is waiting for you, who is crying for you, it seems like we are playing a sort of mime, where everyone is trying to see the life behind the ticket…………. I love this game, I keep looking to people and I imagine their captivating life stories……………. so much that I am going up the last in the flight for Munich! A pleasant flight made with my eyes at three pictures in my laptop, and one hour of due sleep. I am so much captivated of what I am writing, that I am thinking about my seat neighbor who has many reasons to envy me. He is playing with his phone while I am writing the story of this trip……………….

Munich Airport, as always, is full of simplicity gushingly developed, impeccable. The refined order and the discipline did not hear yet about Bucharest! At the passport check in, the customs officer widely opens her eyes and says that this town does not appear; it is for the first time when she hears about it! My passport is again checked, the system is rejecting it, she asks a colleague, no one has ever heard about Bucuresti. Maybe Bucharest, but this is the first passport where she sees Bucuresti. Luckily on my identity card the name is translated, the customs officer is relieved, otherwise she would have had a case!
What an idea to translate names…..so I leave Bucuresti (AKA Bucharest) towards Munchen, I arrive to Munich and then I leave towards Lisboa, even if my ticket is for Lisabona. Anyway, strange, I say to myself. I prefer Bucuresti.

The story about writing on the laptop did not work, I have produced only one page, I write and I correct the lines, improve, polish, and come back, until the better kills the hoarfrost of good. As for this, from Munich I have bought a classical tool, a silver pencil, a faster one, without letting me change my mind. Write and be unable to delete. No return.

I am trying it in the airport, I have a brand new spiral notebook, 200pages……. the silver pencil is so brilliant that it is even writing brilliant……. Lord, I wanted a normal pencil with a normal color, I wasn't expecting such a surprise, especially because I don’t have a perfect…..eyesight! But the pencil seems to be bewitched, the words keep on flowing! I have already written 10 pages only during boarding! Thank you, Lord!
The plane to Lisbon, is full of gentle German people. I dare say, very gentle German people as they are sitting on a side of the chair, the one next to me is of 2 m high and countless.... kilograms. But I am not interested, as long as the words are flowing from my magic pencil, I fill an entire page, and than another page and so on and I am totally absorbed by my story……………………

I take a break only to eat something; Lufthansa serves us a cosmopolitan lunch. The menu is singing the International Hymn and also the European Union’s, the main course is called “Rindgulasch mit broccoli und polenta!” I am greeting the neighbor and friend people present in the holders’ plate, I am proud of being so successfully represented by our delicious polenta, even if I don’t understand why does it wear an Italian name. I finish my Toblerone made in Switzerland, I am looking inside the menu for something wearing the local color, made in Germany and I find the water, the milk for the coffee and the bread, and even though the water has a French name, it is qualified. I am overwhelmed by this internationalization, squeezed by the good breeding………….. so I am sinking back into my writing.

Up to landing, I have filled another 40 pages and I declare as first emergency buying another notebook, because I didn’t even arrive and I have already filled a quarter of the notebook got from home…….I didn’t even know I was such loquacious…………I am very surprised of myself. The brilliant pencil gave up somewhere over France, but left his legacy to a Bic pencil, as ordinary as it may be. I think writers are talkative individuals, feeling the need to communicate in some other ways instead? I am not a writer, I have never really tried to be one, but this plenty of words does not characterize me, you would rather say about me that I am a quiet person. I am wondering where all ideas are coming from, where all my thoughts are arising from…………., I feel that I am writing slower than my ideas are coming into my mind. I have no time to write everything I would like to say, that's the feeling……..

Lisboa! I have seen almost the entire Europe, but not Portugal……. waiting to land on a spectacular airport, dignified by a city with an astonishing architecture, but my expectations are soon betrayed and I declare myself proud of our new airport. There’s two more hours to travel by train from here, from Lisbon and 25 more km by car, until my final destination.

So.. to the train station! Simple and comfortable, a bus takes me to the nearest train station, from there I have a direct connection. It would be simple, if I didn’t have to wait two more hours near the luggage, because there’s no place where to leave it…… Oriente Station, I am feeling how its designer, Santiago Calatrava, created in fully effervescence, like a skeleton gracefully articulated in thousand points, making the cover of architecture magazines and re-writing the history. It is with great enthusiasm that I start taking pictures to the concrete cobweb, thinking about Oana, my friend, declared fan of the most sincere concrete, quoting her.

My enthusiasm decreases as the time is passing, everything is dry and cold, I feel that people is lost and somehow overwhelmed of such grandeur and I see no excitement in their looks. The view is spectacular, but there’s draught everywhere, you must stay in a cage of glass or underground, for protecting yourself, and moreover there is dust everywhere. I feel the nostalgia of the cast iron from the North Train Station in Bucharest, with a faint scent of Paris, to my totally astonishment.

There is a strike over here, and because of it there is a little chaos, the line for the train arrival changed in the last moment, an angel or something must have taken me away from taking pictures and rambling through the concrete thicket, made me ask earlier, so I caught up the right train

Again in front of the laptop, this time I have written out nothing less than 50 questions I have for the Eco Village. I hope having largely covered all aspects. It is just like an alien would come and ask us questions in order to understand us, so much to be redefined - WHO DECIDES, WHO JUDGES, WHO GIVES ANSWERS………..

I finish my list at about the same time the train arrives in Funcheira, somewhere in south Portugal, in the countryside: a small settlement, a small train station, with ceramic walls painted on the exterior, the name is also hand painted, in diagonal, on a placard just like in the 1920’s.

Bernhardt is there waiting - for me and another Australian from the same train - who immediately recognizes us by the hats, bohemian look and boots. Another 20 km are slowly passing, we meet a German gentleman, living for 23 years in the village, curious to find out how did I hear about Tamera, but we are more curious than him to find out everything……..

The placard Tamera - Healing Biotope, lets us know, with no fast and triumphant air that of course, we entered the field of 100 acres of Tamera! It is 19:45. This very morning at 6 am I left home; I find myself to the other extremity of Europe (and to the world that I know), from multiple points of view...

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First Thoughts

There’s one more day left for me…..a day to decide what should I pack in order to try a new way of living……..Does it sound dramatically or exciting?
Definitely, inciting for me! Change is a word that I adore. Just like my fellows, otherwise. My biggest "drama" - until now - is about the rubber boots: which ones to choose? the designer boots, 300 Euro or the Made in China boots, 10 Euro only. I thought the answer was obvious, but the arguments made me thinking. But I will share with you the entire dilemma some other time.

Where am I going? I wish I knew and give you an answer, like an organized and informed person, but - despite all my sincerity - I hope not to know... In fact, I hope to find a reality to take me by surprise. In some other lines I will talk about the way I’ve got, almost overnight, to have on my agenda the journey of my dreams, the journey around the world! It is not about tourism, not about ambition, it is more than that, it is a journey where I put my entire passion, where I need all my knowledge and all my abilities, for it is full of "unknown", I will be on my own, alone - it seems - and I hope to find the answer, actually the answers for many challenging questions for me: How does it look like the world we wish to live? How does happiness look like?

So, today I will leave on my journey around the world, looking for the seeds of the world of tomorrow knowing deep inside that they are there and that they have already sprouted.

Long story short: 

For the beginning, more than 12 Eco Villages all around Europe are awaiting for me….from Denmark to Greece, from Ireland to Corsica, Spain, Switzerland, France, Italy, Germany, my plan is to live in each one of this places for at least one week, to “taste” the experience. I want to know how much I will miss everything that I leave back home and what I will find instead. I want to know if people are fully accomplished there, I want to know who is leading them, how and why, I want to know what are they thinking, what did they think before... what they do not think anymore.

I have an agenda full of questions, a strange kind of curiosity: I want to know, a huge desire to understand and help. I wish to build bridges;

I also wish to share this experience, so that my followers would be able to pursue their dreams better and easier, to know what to choose and what is waiting for them along that road.

I will write every day on this blog if possible, so I have promised to myself... I am glad I have created and opened it, I say this to myself and I say this to you - reading here - Welcome! My first ticket is for tomorrow, the 23rd of May, to Portugal!

Have a nice evening; I'm going back now to the list of “to do tomorrow, before departure”.

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