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Here in Costa Rica, the only supplier of electric energy the state owned ICE has a system of tariffs long demanded by progressive environmentalists in Europe.

The first 200 Kw/h are really cheap 57 Colones (~0,10 US$) – between 200 and 300 kw/h you pay almost double 102 Colones (~0,20 US$) and from 300 Kw/h you pay 140 Colones (~0,28 US$).

This motivates users to save energy because they pay for the first 200 kw/h a bit more then a third as for the kw/h from 300 Kw/h per month. This is possible because the ICE is still a public company thanks to the social protests in 2000.

Unfortunately the ICE is not just doing good things. The actually try to build a hydroelectric dam in the south of Costa Rica which would replace 1000 of Costa Ricans, lots of them indigenous and create an environmental catastrophe.

I ve found a new home here in San José for the time of my internship. I m living with two young women in a house in “Barrio Escalante” – a neighbourhood which is close to everything interesting in San José. Especially if you are have a bicycle like I do since last week. I could not resist to buy one again. It s by far not as pleasant to ride a bike here if you compare it to Freiburg but I can t stand the buses and still feel kind of weird to take a taxi everywhere.

A few weeks ago I ve read a nice article (es) in the university newspaper “Semanario” about the security and public spaces here in San José. The article summarises a master thesis by Marlene Ilama Mora which describes the development of architecture in the last 40 years in the urban areas of Costa Rica. She argues that 40 years ago the properties have been limited by plants and low walls which did not impede the access to the property but showed its limits. Nowadays almost all houses in the metropolitan area of San José are fenced in by iron bars or walls with broken glass or barbed wire on the top.

Security became a marked attribute – some companies made fortunes out of fear of the people. They created a new model of social spaces characterised by fear, insecurity, the lack of socialisation and extreme inequality. Because of that the city is often perceived in a negative way and departs from the often cited peaceful traditions of the Costa Rican society.

Actually I hace experienced this feeling quite often. I remember that one of the most enjoyable feelings was the openness and the fact that big parts of the real life in Latin America took place in public spaces. Cuba is the best example for that. People are dancing in the street, play domino or play music. This is one thing I love about Cuba – the security! Even in big cities like Havana you don t have this feeling of insecurity which is so present almost everywhere else in big urban areas.

Well I ve still got one week until my internship starts. this week I m going to dedicate myself to the guitar, the books I ve bought and to the Latin American Film Festival which takes place these days in San José.

Pura Vida!

I ve just cam back from a beautiful trip to the caribbean side of Costa Rica. First I traveled with some friends from old days (07/08) to Puerto Viejo, which changed quite a bit within the last year. No that much of peaceful tranquillity down there. Lots of people getting everyday into town and as many leave it. Lots of movement for such a tiny village.

After  my friends left on Tuesday last week I called Celina form the Finca Tocori Verde in order to ask her if I could volunteer at her finca to help with the preparations for the gathering. As it turned out she does not have a phone but the guy I talked to told me that she definitely needs help on her finca. So I made my way by bus and walking to the finca.

There was a lot to do on the finca. I helped building a Fogón, cut bamboo, build a swing, kept fire going for cooking, prepared food, did a juggle workshop etc.

Now after 6 days on the Finca Tocori Verde I m back in San José. Sitting with my laptop in a bed at 4:40 am. Why the hell I m awake? Too much sleep in the jungle … well I m trying to go back to sleep!

After one week in San José I ve finally managed to go to the beach. We choose Santa Teresa, a surfer beach on the Peninsula Nicoya

There is nothing more to do then hanging around on the beach an relax if you are not a good surfer. I enjoyed the calmness and practised with my club-juggling and walking on the Slackline.

Somehow I m right back into the party feeling here in Costa Rica. Even though the beverages got more expensive in the last year and the best beer is not sold anymore (Pilsen 6.0). I m not really happy with all this partying since it is actually quite a big step back from the way I lived the last months back in Freiburg.

This weekend we are probably going to Puerto Viejo and after we may hop over to Bocas del Toro in Panama but get definitely back for the ICCCR Gathering at the Finca Tocori Verde Eco Community.

I ve continued a little bit in my investigation around available products in Costa Rica which are not produced/importet by Florida Bebidas or Coca-Cola. I ve actually found some few products.

The cooperative Dos Pinos produces dairy products as well as different juices and distributes them in almost all countries of Central America. This indicates that the cooperative is actually quite big and it is not that easy to avoid their products in Costa Rica. Actually Dos Pinos produces 85 % of the industrialised milk in Costa Rica.
But actually there are dairy products made by other cooperatives like for example Coronado or the cheese factory Monteverde.

Another product without connections to the Florida Bebidas is the Nicaraguan Ron Flor da Caña. According to their own website they do produce all sugar cane they need in an organic way and produce additional electricity which provides 8 % thermal electricity needs. A group of former employees of Flor de Caña does not share this point of view and call for a boycott of all Flor de Caña Products.

Yesterday I ve found as well an alternative to the beer produced by the Cerveceria Nacional, which is part of Florida Bebidas. A Microbrewery in Cartago, called K&S, produces four different kind of beers and distributes them to Pubs and restaurants almost all over the country. Unfortunately I ve not discovered and reseller of these beers so I can t buy any to drink at home.

I assume that quite some people in Europe and North America think, that in Central America, and especially in Costa Rica, most of the stuff you buy is grown or made here.

The discourse of the anti-globalisation movement has a big focus on their home societies. Since I ve lived already for a year here in Costa Rica and I ve got more into the topic of food production and distribution I m hopefully going to figure out how the system works down here.

During my first semesters here in Costa Rica we have bought the grocery for our house mostly in the PALI shop around the corner. It was cheap and looked kind of different to most of the other big supermarkets. How I figured out later it belonged (like MasXMenos, HyperMas & MaxiBodega) to Wall-mart Centroamerica. The convenient store AM-PM belongs to the BP, the worlds third largest global energy company.

These big discounter spread over the Valle Central and have some branches in bigger cities around Costa Rica. In the rural area most people buy their stuff in the Pulperias, little corner stores often run by Chinese people. This is not a real alternative to satisfy all the needs of a European or North-American if the individual is staying in Costa Rica for a long time but most of the everyday needs can be satisfied there. Obviously the stuff they sell is produced by big international companies. Most of globalisation critics would try to avoid drinking Coca Cola (for good reason) but what is the other stuff sold here in Costa Rica. Almost all the beer is produced or imported by Cervezeria Nacional aka Florida Bebidas. Somehow the Website of Florida Bebidas is down but archive.org still has some old pages. This means that the list is out of date (from 2007). Well not everybody needs beer – but even the water is by Coca Cola (Alpina) or Florida Bebidas (Cristal) – even Tropical (Ice Tea, etc.) belongs to Florida Bebidas. They distribute Pepsi, Heineken, 7Up and Gaterade. Tropical Bebidas is since 2002 divided in a real estate, a capital investing and a beverage company and expands all over central america with investments in the breweries in Panama and Nicaragua. So it s for sure not a nice local producer of lemonade.

Thats why I changed my consuming habits as much as possible buying food at the weekly markets and make lemonade with local sugar cane derived brown sugar an lemons from our garden. Now I will try to figure out where the food from the markets does come from and how it is produced.

Like i kind of announced in my last Blog entry I m out of Europe again for a while.

I ve flew into Costa Rica on Wednesday night and I m probably going to stay here until the winter in Europe is over (or almost over). During my time in Costa Rica I m going to make an internship for my antropology studies with Voces Nuestras from octuber until december.

Since its still August I ve got a few weeks for travelling before my internship actually starts. I m still in the process of getting here and meet up some old friends here in San José. Yesterday we (Lena and me) met up already with some of our old buddies and tonight there is going to be a birthday party where hopefully some more will show up.

By the way: Yesterday, the very first day of my stay in Costa Rica I got “robbed” for the first time in my travel-life. A young bastard begged for some money (like plenty of young people in the streets) and got mad because I didn t gave him anything. So he decided to steal my hat. Hopefully that is going to be the only robbery I ve got to face in Costa Rica in the following months.

I have wondered since my childhood what the machine we have down in our basement was used for. Last week my father told me that it s a mechanical press to squeeze the juice out of fruits.

Since we have plenty of apples and I was curious I ve went to our building supplies store where I bought the missing wooden part for ~ 20 €.

Then I collected the apples on the floor and picked some from the tree (there are still quite some left) and milled them. The milling was done with an electric device I ve lent from our Volxküche.

In the end of the day I had 20 Liters of fresh apple juice, produced with the apples right in front of our house with almost no energy used (Just the milling was done with an electric device).

To conserve the juice I cooked it once and filled it in bottles. Now we have apple juice at least for the next months. It s a pity that I leave soon for half a year. Hopefully the juice is still good by then.

I hope we are going to integrate the juice press in the Project “Schwarzer Rettich”.

This week I went with some friends to Geneva in Switzerland. The Idea was to visit a cooperative garden project which delivers food for 400 households in Geneva.

The food is produced on various gardens around the city. On Thursday the bags with the fresh vegetables and fruits get delivered to 14 different distribution points all around the city where the consumers pick the bags up from 5 pm on.

Around 1000 people get fresh, organic food which is produced just around the corner. But the consumers don t pay for the food they actually get. They buy with their membership in the cooperative a part of the entire production of the gardens.

Obviously the gardens, where professional gardeners organise the cultivation if the available land, don t produce the same kind and amount of vegetables and fruits during the year. So in winter the consumers do get collard, leek and carrots whereas in the summer the bags are filled with tomatoes, salads, beans and pepper.

This does help the consumers to figure out what is actually growing in which time of the year in their region and their diet gets more diverse. Additionally to the financial contribution of each consumer, which depend on the individual income and the size of the bags they receive, everyone works around four days at the community garden. This helps to dissolve the modern strict separation between producers of crops and the consumers. Additionally it helps to strengthen the community feeling within the cooperative. Consumers see and learn how the food they eat everyday is produced.

As a part of the cooperative around a dozen people sell products from the garden on local markets. Even though this group of people is kind of independent from the cooperative itself all profit goes into the cooperative and if there are losses the cooperative helps them out. The sales on the markets have the advantage, that the cooperative remains present in public and it makes sure, that the products from the garden get distributed within Geneva.

The project is called “Jardins de Cocagne” and works already since more then 30 years. Several other projects started since then and the idea is spreading fast in the last years. All around Switzerland and France several cooperative organised gardens produce food for a certain group of people. Not all of the projects are exactly like the Jardins de Cocagne but the idea is similar.

There are some people in Freiburg who would like to start a community garden inspired by the people of Jardins de Cocagne. During our stay in Geneva the project “Schwarzer Rettich” appeared kind of appealing to us. On the on hand it demonstrates, that we are about to introduce new vegetables to the diet of our members and the black refers, at least for me for an anarchism and autonomy, which describes the way I would like to have the new cooperative organised.

We still have a long way in front of us but the visit at Jardins de Cocagne was very very motivating for all of us.

Through a friend I got in touch with the topic of NoBorder Camps.

Since I still work in the Radio I did an interview with on of the activists more than a month ahead of the camp. By then I ve decided to show up at the camp to work on german media coverage.

Getting there was not as easy as I hoped. Since I ve just came back from Morocco I was not really able to organize a ride through any of the rideshare plattforms nor organize a host to store my equipment somewhere outside the camp. Fuck it – lets hitchhike I ve thought.

I ve first took a train to cross the border into France. A little bit north of Strasbourg I ve started to hitchhike. The first guy I ve asked went straight to Paris. That has never happened at any of my other attempts to hitchhike to Paris.
Anyway – I was not on the way to Paris so I left a few km before Reims. There I ve founf within 15 min a car going direction Lille. A few km before the junction of “Arras” I waited for quite a while until somebody took me to Dunkerque where they left me a t a shitty spot. I had to ask at least 80 cars vefore somebody took me at least at the highway exit of Calais.

The camp itself was a very nice experience which I m not going to describe further here. For any news check Indymedia UK.

The way back was even worse since the city was packed with cops. It s very hard to hitchhike if there are three dozens of riotcops right next to you…
A brave english guy finally picked me up and brought me on the A1 south of Lille. There I waited a long time and finally talked over a wicked woman who tried to give me a bible in french. With her I ve got to a gas station on the A26 direction south and from there I basicly hopped just from one car into the next one and got back on sunday night.