Now we have visited a third eco-village: Land van Aine in Ter Apel. Every time I visit to a new eco-village I feel so uplifted!
This time it takes three hours to drive one way. We drive over the Afsluitdijk, a 32 km long dyke that stretches between the provinces of North Holland and Friesland. It was built in the 1920s to facilitate land reclamation and protect the country from flooding. The Netherlands is very well known for its dikes, so it is fun to drive over the Afsluitdijk! It feels like it makes me get closer to this country in some strange way.
In Appelscha, we stop for a lunch break. I giggle for a long time at the name Appelscha. While Petra warms up pumpkin soup in the van, the rest of us kick around a tennis ball we find in the parking lot. I really enjoy the playfulness of the youth house, and I am reminded every day of how much fun you can have if only you allow yourself to play and be silly.
At Land van Aine, our guide Louise meets us. Louise is very tall and has orange dreads twisted into a bun on top of her head. She takes us on a tour of the area. The entire eco-village turns out to be located on a site where there used to be a potato starch factory. Of all things. All the buildings here used to belong to the factory. For the last forty to fifty years, many of the buildings have been empty and abandoned. Louise tells us that according to the agreement with the municipality, they are allowed to repair the buildings, but not to destroy them. However, they can let them fall into decay if they want. She laughs: “Apparently we are not part of nature. But we can create, that’s what we can do as human beings.”
Almost every weekend, people come illegally and organise rave parties in the abandoned buildings. We also learn that part of the eco-village’s income comes from people who want to rent the premises for photography or filming. Wedding couples. Or bands that want to make music videos. After looking inside the houses, I understand why they are so sought after; they really have this rough, post-industrial vibe to them. It’s raw, untamed, and wild, and I LOVE IT. I’m in love with this place. I feel so inspired in this environment. It is also so powerful how the trees grow in the concrete. Yeah, this place made an unexpectedly strong impression on me.
Just like Ecodorp Bergen and Ecodorp Boekel, Land van Aine is quite unfinished. However, you can tell that the villagers have big ambitious projects underway! For example, they are busy building a number of bio-based houses, and in fact they are already preparing to have a hundred residents in the village in the future. Louise shows us the place where her future house will be built. The plan is to use straw bales as the framework instead of wood, since straw bale houses have a much lower climate impact. Wow, there are so many realistic ways to build climate-friendly that I had no idea about before.
As a conclusion to the visit, we sit indoors and drink tea. A fire is pleasantly burning in the corner, spreading a warm, yellow light. In Land van Aine, they eat together in this room every day, Louise tells us. That sounds so cosy! In Ecodorp Bergen, we only eat together on Mondays and on Fridays when we have our meewerkdag. I think it does a lot for the cohesion in a community to share meals, so that’s a shame actually.
I am curious about Louise and ask if she would like to share a bit about her background.
As an eighteen-year-old, Louise travelled to South America. “This is so underdeveloped, I thought then.” When Louise returned to the Netherlands, her perspective on what is underdeveloped had shifted: “It is the Netherlands that is lagging behind! Why do we live in this strange way?” The reverse culture shock sparked a longing to travel to other countries. After some time in India and Russia, she came into contact with permaculture in the Netherlands. It then dawned on her that it might be possible to live the life she longed for even in her own country, but she still hadn’t found a suitable lifestyle. When she had children, she felt quite lonely. She laughs: “It takes a village to raise a child, but where is the village?” After several years of searching, she felt it was time to settle down. Then, she ended up in Land van Aine almost by chance nearly two years ago and felt: wow, this is where I want to be. “Finding a place that really suits you is not that easy I think,” she says.
Now Louise is no longer in the honeymoon phase. A lot of time goes into working in the eco-village, and at times it’s difficult to manage life. Living with other people in this way can also be very intense: “Community life is always ongoing. You constantly have to feel your boundaries, and when it becomes too much, you need to take a step back.” However, she still thinks it’s really nice to live here. They are now planning to host ESC volunteers for the first time. This means that Land van Aine will be the second eco-village in the Netherlands to be accredited to receive ESC volunteers! I can’t help but feel a little jealous; I also want to do an ESC here! Such a lovely, inspiring place. I actually think this is my favorite eco-village in the Netherlands so far. The overgrown ruins, the cosy common spaces, all the interesting ambitions they have. But I still wouldn’t trade my experience in Ecodorp Bergen for anything in the world!
