It’s already been a bit more than a month since I moved here. I’m sitting in the garden
wearing short sleeves, enjoying one of the last few warm days of the year. This is Dutch
nazomer at its best. It’s quiet. There is a gentle breeze. I hear a few birds tweet. Before I
know it autumn will come but still the leaves are green, not a single hint of yellow yet. Who
knew that I would be in an ecovillage in the Netherlands right now, watching the seasons
change?
Over the past few years, the word “ecovillage” has been in the back of my mind. Ecovillage.
Community. Self sufficiency, simplicity, quietness… However, it wasn’t until this summer that
I got around to looking for one to live in. I was running a café with a group of other young
people in Rättvik, Sweden, already living a kind of community life there. We were working
together, eating together, living together. It left a pleasant aftertaste. Then, I found this ESC
project in an ecovillage in Bergen, the Netherlands. 4,5 months of volunteering. However
scary and crazy it seemed, I was also thrilled. Maybe the time was now?
Someone might wonder: but why would I pick an ecovillage in a flat, overcrowded country
where there is hardly any nature? That’s a reasonable question, the Netherlands might not
be the first country that comes to mind when you hear the word ecovillage. For me it made
sense though, as I already had a connection with the country from the past. It began with a
long-distance relationship. Then I met Dutch friends in Lund where I went to university.
Gradually, I picked up the language. Now I had the chance to explore the culture even
further. The anthropologist in me just couldn’t resist: a foreign culture and an ecovillage, all in
one!
The first of September, I arrived at the house in Ecodorp Bergen where I was going to spend
the next few months. At the risk of sounding cliché, it was one of the most exciting days of
my life so far. I was staying with a friend in Wageningen a couple of days before and a
woman from the Dutch ecovillage movement who was coincidentally in Wageningen at the
same time came to pick me up. She had a warm aura, smiling from ear to ear. “I hope you
don’t mind the dog in the back seat,” she said. As much as I was super excited I had this
strange sadness creeping up on me, the insight that I was leaving my loved friend behind
and stepping into the unknown. And everything still felt very surreal. I couldn’t imagine that I
was actually doing this. So many emotions simultaneously.
My anxiety peaked for a bit just before we arrived. “Is this where I will be spending the next
4,5 months?” I thought to myself. Once I was introduced to all of the people in the
jongerenhuis, or the youth house, my anxiety slowly started to fade away. From the very
start, I felt welcome. My mentor showed me around the house, which looked much nicer on
the inside. There was a kitchen and a common area with red and grey sofas and a kitchen
table. Upstairs there were four bedrooms and a bathroom, and in the attic two additional
bedrooms. One bedroom for each six of us.
In the evening we all had dinner together outside, pumpkin soup with bread and many
spreads to choose from. Jars everywhere on the table. I thought: Why don’t I cook soup
more often? It’s so tasty. As the darkness fell I became more and more comfortable, but I
was still slightly overwhelmed. So here we were, sharing our very first meal. Already at this
moment, I knew that time was going to fly. And now it’s already October. So much has
already happened. So many insights, memories. I feel so safe in this place. Even though life
here hasn’t been easy all the time, I know that I’m going to miss it all when it’s over. But the leaves are still green and there are many meals yet to share.