Sophie in Annecy

Sophie Franklin took time out from her Easter break with her family in France to visit Cheltenham's twin town of Annecy for us. Here is her report:

In view of the difficulty in getting to correspond with our Annecy counterpart at the Borough offices, Morgan asked me to go and see what I could find out on the ground, which I did.

I had found out that there is an officer solely working on the environment for the town of Annecy, so I knocked on the door of the municipal Offices and asked to speak to him.

Unfortunately, he was away on a course, but the receptionist was very friendly and helpful and I promised I would contact him by email on my return.

In the morning, I also tried to speak to someone at FRAPNA, but they are a Federation of local associations which deal with all sorts of local environmental problems, but really nothing that matches up with Cheltenham.

So I then went to Prioriterre, with whom I had established contact before going and who were really hospitable and helpful. Prioriterre is an Annecy organisation trying to empower people to protect the environment in whichever way they want, green buildings principally and renewable energy, through consultations, talks to schools and colleges, etc.

Prioriterre’s new building is carbon neutral, even better, it produces more energy than it needs. Even the armchair in the reception area are made of cardboard... Very comfortable too, but the staff don’t think they will last very long, not the perfect sitting room armchair as it might age rather quickly!

I explained what we did and that we wanted to establish links with like-minded organisations, especially in order to organise exchanges between young people. They said they would certainly find youngsters interested in going abroad to one of our partner organisations, like Kisumu, and also possibly to go to our next Youth conference in Slovakia.

I met Anne Hughet, who does not speak much English but some of her colleagues do, so future contacts should be easy.

Their web address is: http://www.prioriterre.org with a couple of pages in English.

Anne also gave me the address of another organisation “La Terre en Heritage”, specialising in sustainable consumption. I really look forward to finding out more at a later date.

Jana Eyssel visits Ramnicu Valcae for Global Footsteps!

Jana Eyssel from Gottingen, a long time member of Global Footsteps and part of the Footstep 12 conference management team paid a visit to our Romanian link, here is the first of four reports on her Global Venture.

Morgan Phillips had asked me to help with organising the next Global Footsteps conference in Cadca, Slovakia, in August 2010. My job was to visit communties, which are part of the Global Footsteps network, to identify community capacity building projects and to invite project representatives to the forthcoming Footstep 12 conference. Therefore, I prepared myself to travel to Ramnicu Valcea, representing Romania in the Global Footsteps network. Irina Sandulescu, whom I knew from the Footstep 10 in 2005, was my contact person in Valcea and organised my stay on ground. She is working for the municipality and thus has a good knowledge of projects in her town. Before my departure, she presented me a list of projects, among which we hoped to find one or two, that could be part of the conference and the future network.

First day in Romania, 14th March 2010

After a very long ride on the coach from Leipzig to Romania, which took about 26 hours and served as a nice introduction to the country of my destination, since I was the only German on the trip and everybody spoke Romanian, I finally got off the coach in Sibiu. Irina's husband was in town and picked me up. Since we had to wait for Irina’s brother who would arrive a few hours later from Italy by coach, we went for a drink to the historic centre of the town.

Sibiu is situated in Transylvania and for a long time has been the centre of the Saxons living in Transylvania, or Siebenbürgen, as they call it. This German heritage is still apparent, for instance in the architecture. Some streets reminded me of old German villages, which seemed very paradox to me, as I was quite far away from home and was being prepared to discover a country and a culture very different from mine.

The town also hosts a great deal of sights and has an important cultural heritage. In 2007 it has been the European Capital of Culture and therefore the picturesque historic centre is very well renovated. To profit from our time in this nice place, we visited the Brukenthal Museum, which exhibits a large collection of paintings and beautiful furniture from the 18th century.

In the afternoon, having picked up Irina’s brother, we left Sibiu for Ramnicu Valcea. Irina had prepared dinner for us and later brought me to the room where I could stay during my days in Valcea.

Overland to Sochi

Overland travel is coming back into fashion in a big way at the moment. Fans of Michael Palin have enjoyed his tales of life aboard trains, buses, rickshaws and various boats for a long time and more recently Ewen McGregor and Charley Boorman have recorded epic cross continental journeys. Others such as record breaking cyclist Mark Beaumont have shown us the joy of the real connections that can only be made when travelling on rather than miles above the land and sea.

The joy of Slow travel is once again being recognised as part of a more wider promotion of the art of slow, Slow Food, Slow art etc. In our ever faster way of life with the stresses and strains of work, university, family and friends, it is often hard to just sit back, relax and take things a bit less hurridely! It is worth reading Carl Honore's book: SLOW for more on this!

Guardian columnist Ed Gillespie spent a year travelling around the world over land and sea and loved every minute of a life changing adventure. Hits on the train travel specialist website 'The Man in Seat 61' have been rapidly increasing as people strive to avoid souless airports, stuffy planes and carbon footprints. When you travel overland you get a far better sense of where you are going, you watch the climate gradually change, you see people going about thier business in rural backwaters, you meet fellow travellers, you have time to listen to that audio book you've never quite got round to, or to read that novel that has sat for months gathering dust on the bed side table. Slow travel buys you time, time to yourself, time to meet fellow 'real' travellers.
At Global Footsteps we are promoting our Global Ventures programme, we have contacts in towns and cities all over the world and we want you to visit them, connect with people to see how they really live, to understand what drives their behaviour and to appreciate how we are all interconnected.

Masha Koschalka is a director of The Rendezvous Society and comes from Sochi, a busy city on the Black Sea coast of Russia. She now lives in Cheltenham with her husband Dan and two young daughters. In July and August this year she will be travelling home to Sochi to visit friends and family and would love someone to join her there and to experience the wonderful Russian culture and hospitality first hand. This is a fantastic opportunity for a young person to have an authentic experience of life in Russia and to have a fantastic adventure travelling overland by train to get there!

If you want to be our latest Global Venturer please get in touch with the Global Footsteps director, Dr Morgan Phillips by email: mail@becominggreen.co.uk