Rural Europe on the move English_E_version_all | Page 132

CHAPTER 11
“You should not be worried when your energy
levels are depleted if you have given
your heart to what you do.”
4a. 4b. Contacts in Estonia during the SMT
1997: the premises of PREPARE adventure
Energy circulation -
onwards to new
adventures
Hannes Lorenzen opens the story
Through the 25 years of Forum
revitalised us. The Tour had given us
extra contacts in Estonia, Poland and
other countries of Central Europe;
and had made us aware that, ten
years after the collapse of the
Synergies’ existence, we sometimes Iron Curtain, rural people in those
came to a point when our energy countries were grappling with the
as an organisation was very low, transition from the earlier systems
especially when a new, young of the communist regime to the
project had left the house … but approaches in the European Union
we soon regained energy from which they aspired to join. This was
our network. We mention this a big transition and as key players of
here, because you should not be a new self-confident civil society, we
worried when your energy levels took up that role.
are depleted if you have given your
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adventure in Central Europe which
With open borders between
heart to what you do. Good energy East and West suddenly everything
circulates and fills you up if you stay seemed to be possible. The curtain
in touch with it, because this is the in our minds had opened. We were
very nature of collecting, breeding curious to meet people of other
and seeding what you believe in. cultures and realities, learn from their
When the Sustainable Mystery approaches to rural living, find out
Tour (SMT) ended by celebrating about their ambitions and perhaps
its ‘Agenda 2000’ in Portugal, our find allies in our own desires for a
batteries of energy were indeed more sustainable rural Europe in
exhausted. But then came a new Western Europe.