Apostolos Sianos, 31, quit his Web designer job in Athens to help establish the Telaithrion eco-commune. Here he mixes food for the commune's dogs.
Apostolos Sianos, 31, quit his Web designer job in Athens to help establish the Telaithrion eco-commune. Here he mixes food for the commune's dogs.
Facing their country's worst recession in a half-century, many young Greeks are leaving for jobs abroad. But Apostolos Sianos, a 31-year-old Athenian, decided to buck the trend.
Two years ago, Sianos quit his lucrative job designing websites in Athens to help establish an eco-commune, called the Telaithrion Project, in Aghios, his family's ancestral village on the island of Evia. The idea was to teach people to be self-sufficient at a time when both money and opportunities are drying up.
"This means they may be taught simple things like baking your own bread or more complex things like building your own house," says Sianos, who helped build the commune's yurts the giant, rounded tents favored by Central Asian nomads. About 20 people live on the commune at any given time, and Sianos estimates more than 2,500 people including many outside Greece have visited in the last couple of years.
A recent visitor was 26-year-old Julia Friedrich. She traveled from Berlin to spend a week learning about organic farming, something she wants to try back home in Germany. "I brought my sleeping bag and my mattress," she said, showing the corner in the yurt where she slept. "They have mattresses and some blankets and pillows, so there's everything you need for a good night's sleep."
Friedrich had spent the day cleaning walnuts with 24-year-old Myrto Vournia, who quit her low-paying waitressing job in Athens to work on the commune. "We'll make dinner with [the walnuts] tonight," says Vournia, who's lived here for a month. "Later, we're preparing sun-dried tomatoes."
Julia Friedrich, 26, traveled from her home in Berlin to spend a week on the eco-commune, where she learned about organic farming and foraging.
Julia Friedrich, 26, traveled from her home in Berlin to spend a week on the eco-commune, where she learned about organic farming and foraging.
Those who visit the commune also learn to forage for nuts and wild greens, restore discarded furniture and even make their own toothpaste (a mixture of clay, baking soda and peppermint).
Sianos and his partners chose Aghios as the site for their project in part because they wanted to find enough land to eventually expand the commune into a school that teaches sustainable living in a cash-free economy.
"We searched all over Greece," Sianos says. "Most of the people we talked with said to us, 'Don't go somewhere that you don't know anybody.' "
His father, Giorgos, already lived on Aghios. Before the recession hit five years ago, the elder Sianos left his import business in Athens to return to the village where he had grown up. He introduced his son to the conservative villagers of Aghios.
"At first, they were skeptical because rural Greeks tend to be suspicious," he says. "It helped that they already knew me. So the locals embraced him, and some villagers lent [the commune] their fields to cultivate."
Giorgos Sianos now stocks his taverna with fresh produce from the commune, which is vegan and cultivates 80 percent of its food.
Dionysis Papanikolaou, a 30-year-old chemist from northern Greece who has lived on the commune for six months, plants sage, rosemary and lavender. He says working here has taught him to blaze his own path.
"I don't think a country can provide opportunities," he says. "I mean it's up to the individual if they want to grab opportunities or create opportunities for themselves."
With a doctorate in chemistry, Papanikolaou could work anywhere in the world. But he says he wants to stay in Greece. He says it's a land he's just begun to cultivate.
Create Your own Quizzes, Stories, Polls, Lyrics, Poems, Journals ... Create original quizzes, stories, fanfic, lyrics, polls and surveys on Quizilla. Old Gold & Black Wake Forest University Posted by Meenu Krishnan & Renee Slawsky on Sep 7, 2012. RNC, DNC platforms shape future of young voters Four more years! Fired up, ready to go! U.S.A ... AmericanTowns.com: Online Local Community Network - Connecting The ... Welcome to AmericanTowns, your local community link to the people, issues and activities. Chose a state below: Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com Watch the latest breaking news, politics, entertainment and offbeat videos everyone is talking about at CNN.com. Get informed now! Philippine News for the Filipino Global Community A portal of daily newspapers covering Philippine news headlines, business, lifestyle, advertisement, sports and entertainment. Also delivers Manila and Cebu news. Socrates - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the ... Troubled Greece: fears of 'first domino' to fall as austerity is ... Greek's leftist party Syriza says recovery depends on a renegotiated bail-out and access to European structural funds Desperate Greeks flee to the countryside to escape crisis ... The arrival of young, city-dwelling Greeks returning to the countryside in the hope of living off the land, is being watched with a mix of pity and hope by those who ... Icarus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In Greek mythology, Icarus (the Latin spelling, conventionally adopted in English; Ancient Greek: , karos, Etruscan: Vikare) is the son of the master ... Topic Galleries -- chicagotribune.com - Chicago Tribune: Chicago ... Topic galleries provide easy access to stories and photos about people, places, organizations, events and subjects of interest to you. They bring together rich ...
No comments:
Post a Comment