We are on our way to Germany, having organised to spend a
week volunteering in a community called ZEGG, on the outskirst of Bad Belzig in
Eastern Germany. Our long train trip
from Copenhagen meant that we would arrive too late for the introduction to
this community. We arrive around 4.15pm
We replenish ourselves with coffee and cake and keep
plodding on…
Dragging your luggage along a cobbled stone road is not
great. In Ireland by now we would have
found someone who would have offered to drive us there. After 2 months on the road, travelling
through countries where English was widely spoken we are confronted with the
fact we are now in East Germany where English isn’t as common. Historically, Russian was the second language
taught in school and it is only since the Wall came down that people have
started to mingle with travellers from the West and learn English.
ZEGG, which in German stands for Centre for Experimental
Cultural & Social Design was founded in 1991. People were initially drawn here because of
their desire to explore ideas outside the mainstream including those of free
love, open relationships and polyamory. The
community live on the grounds formally occupied by the Stasi. It is a little disconcerting to think this
place was once a training ground for the East German secret police. When the Russians left East Germany, many of
these buildings were left vacant and provided a useful solution for communal
living.
Today ZEGG provides an alternative to the profit and
consumer driven mentality. It has now broadened
its focus to also provide an alternative way of living for those concerned
about the impacts of climate change and peak oil on society but I feel this is still
secondary to the development of ideas for cultural design. Looking through the German brochures of
workshops offered here I glean that many of the topics deal with the Secrets of
Tantra, Intuition & Meditation, Body, Mind Presence, Drumming, Contact Jam,
Circle Songs, Theatre Improvisation, Polyamory – the list goes on, but I don’t
find any brochures that deal with issues of sustainability. However, the community is a member of the Global
Eco-village Network (GEN) and perhaps the issues around sustainability are
discussed at the forums organised by GEN.
ZEGG offers a summer guest program where volunteers such as
us can exchange skills for board and accommodation. We’ve come to spend a week here to learn a
little more about this community.
We found ZEGG to be a very well structured community. There appeared to be a positive vibe around
the people we met and a sense that everyone knew each other at some level. There are about a hundred long-term residents
with a much larger transient population in the summer when the numbers can
reach up to 300 during the summer camp. The
Guest House, a motel and tents cater for these visitors.
Many singles lived in shared detached houses but higher
density housing such as flats also cater for the community here, especially
young families. To reduce their exposure
to electro magnetic radiation WIFI is not available in the community but there
is an internet café with computers and cables for visitors to use. While ZEGG is not self sufficient in food,
the garden provides a plentiful harvest in fruits, vegies and salads. Each adult member pays a fixed amount for
food but has a choice of either eating communally at the restaurant or picking
up what they need from the cellar and cooking at home. Each community member also takes his or her
turn cooking for the restaurant and cleaning each week. The community is vegetarian but food is also
provided for those who chose to be vegan. Something I loved about living here were the
fruit trees laden with delicious summer fruit… they call it an edible
landscape. Apples, many kinds of plums,
peaches & pears – all there to be picked and eaten as you wander through
the grounds.
The community is working towards self-sufficiency in energy
and water. They have a closed water
cycle thanks to the former espionage school that dug deep wells, caring little
for rules and regulations. A reed bed
system takes care of their waste for now. They use a number of different renewables for
energy including solar panels, wind and wood chips.
There are a number of spaces that also lend themselves for
creativity and recreation. Besides the
restaurant there is a small village pub, a café, a meditation room, an outdoor
swimming pool, a sauna, a wood fired pizza oven, and a sweat room for those
really communal evenings. Large meeting
rooms provide the space required for internal/external meetings, forums and the
seminars that are run here. ZEGG has
also played host to many external conference gatherings and the next Glocable
Eco-Village Network (GEN) conference will be held here.
We also loved the private spa only a few minutes down the
road, where heated indoor and outdoor thermal pools provided the perfect
opportunity to get away from the community for a bit of rest and
relaxation.
As in many of the countries we had visited so far, bikes
were a common mode of transport and they also had a communal electric car. The train station of Bad Belzig is a short
drive away and the bus stop was just outside.
One of the other interesting features of ZEGG is the Kinder
(Children’s) House. In the early days,
kids could choose to live together in the house with their peers giving them a
lot of space from the watchful eyes of their parents. This was a fairly radical idea, giving the
children the chance to be influenced by their peers and other adults to a much
larger degree than would normally be found in mainstream society. It also gave the children a lot of social
confidence at an early age where they learnt quickly to be very
self-reliant. Today, kids come here
after school and are usually picked up by their
I’m glad we have come here to volunteer at ZEGG and my next
post will detail our time in the community.
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