…Our adventure began with the desire to be the change we wish to see in the world. Our passion for a safe climate future motivated us all to try a low carbon approach to traveling to this year’s climate talks and the journey was a great success!

Our main objectives were:

• to show the difficulties of low carbon travel in our current system, but that it is possible

• to connect with the global south and an interconnected youth movement who will be central to the global transition to a just future

• to utilise the media in education and inspiration

What’s more, we achieved…

• an enormous reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions by choosing not to fly, of 40% in total from door to door (this includes the flights to get to Singapore – the reduction would have been much greater without).
• we learnt how to organise overland travel
• and we experienced an adventure as a team, which no airline can provide, connecting with the people and the environments of every country from Australia to Poland.

We recognised that it was idealistic and ambitious, but that is what we, the youth, do best.

Before we started, I was very concerned with the value of our trip. I had great concerns about the time it would take to travel and to organise, the financial strain, our ability to deliver our message and the responsiveness of audiences. What’s more, my friends and family in my immediate community, who I rely on for support, provided me with a mixture of encouragement and discouragement. Some responses included, “Of course, I can’t do that,” and “Just catch a plane.” I questioned the real value of what we were doing. Some even said it was “crazy.” In all honestly, I very nearly pulled out. Looking back now, I am glad I left Brisbane on a bus.

The trip was long and at times it seemed strange that it would stop. We traveled nearly 23,500 kilometres for over 40 days through 11 countries, 10 border crossings, using 8 trains, 4 buses, 6 different visas, a few taxis, a few tuk-tuks, 10 bags, and a lot more books.

It was a terrific experience, unlike the piecemeal and relatively disconnected way I had traveled previously. For the first time, the world really felt like a continuous flow of people, environments and cultures. The cities were buzzing, the rural landscape was largely being cultivated – I sensed the earth as alive with human activity.

When we arrived, we were welcomed first by our other members of our delegation, those who had flown out of Australia, and I wondered if there was a meaningful difference between me and them. I was praised and congratulated, but I didn’t feel like I had earnt it, nor that I meant to. When we met other youth delegations at the Conference of Youth in the days leading up to COP14, the praise continued and so many people asked me how my experiences were, but frankly, I was surprised they were so impressed. I did not feel any distinction between myself and the other youth delegates that could explain the extra attention.

This morning, at the International Youth Meeting of COP14 on Wednesday the 3rd, held for the first time in an official function room, another youth delegate shared her pride in the youth caucus for having Australian delegates who had done the necessary journey overland. She had attended a transport conference the previous day, where the main speaker acknowledged that all the delegates present had flown to Poland. The main speaker went on to say that no-one would catch a train from Australia, with an assumed air of authority, when the youth delegate present spoke out. “Uh, Actually, we have 5 Australian youth delegates who made the journey overland. It took them 40 days and they are now here at COP14.” According to her report back to the international youth meeting, the transportation conference broke out into applause and amazement. She said that the speaker wants to meet us and assist us with media and funding in returning, overland, to COP15.

The great unknown delegates to the UN climate talks had applauded us. On hearing this it dawned on me that I had changed whilst on the surface journey. Before I left, I was skeptical too. My community was uninterested and my doubts dominated my plans. But my outlook has changed. I now feel differently. The journey was not hard, it was easy and fun; It was more aligned with my wish for a safe climate future; I can share it with others and I will do it again. The paradigm I was working within has changed and I was lucky enough to observe that. Everyone knows that it starts at the individual level. I now feel more empowered to enact my agency for change.

Nic Seton at Poznan UN Climate talks.

P.S. There are now plans for a ‘Copenhagen Convergence’ where 500+ may travel overland and oversea to the UN next year, from all nations around the globe.

First of all, a rather obvious point, but one worth bearing in mind: if you’re travelling via Brussels and you want to see some of the city (maybe to get an evening meal), make sure that you leave longer than three hours between trains. We only had a couple of hours, and had to settle for eating in the rather ugly and uninspiring district that the station sits in.

On the night train to Berlin there were nine of us from UKYD travelling together, and we sat in a cabin drinking from a shared bottle of whisky. Inevitably given the purpose of our trip, and the common theme that tied us all together, conversation quickly descended into a full-blown and wide-ranging debate about climate change, and how realistic our efforts in dealing with it are.

When we got to Berlin the group split, with some going immediately on to Poznan, whilst myself and a few others explored the city. The central station is within easy walking distance of the main city centre, and I suggested that we join a walking tour that I had done last time I was in the city.

Berlin is absolutely brimming with fascinating cultural and historical knowledge, and the guides at the Free Berlin tour are excellent at conveying it (they aren’t paying me to write this!). Because of our limited time we were only able to catch 90 mins of the 3 and a half hour tour and when we said goodbye to the Amercian-Bulgarian guide I was touched by his humility and felt that we had had a truly human experience – taking people around monuments to Holocaust victims, the place where Hitler’s body was burnt, and the site of a Communist massacre is not a job to be taken light-heartedly. Going on the tour really brought home the value of cultrual interaction, and how imporrtant it is that we keep learning about each other, especially as we localise our economies and reduce emissions from travel.

In the evening I went for dinner with my friend Ellie in a marvelous jazz club. I need to go out to more jazz and blues and I wish there were more places like that in London. Another friend of Ellie’s who was with us made the apt observation that people in Berlin behave more like ‘provincial people’ than city-dwellers, despite the size of the city, and the community atmosphere was very evident as drinkers enjoyed the live music.

I’m now in Poznan, and I’m going to make a rather crass observation: everyone on the train looked like they were from the eighties.

Photos: net_efekt, net_efekt,

]]> http://loco2travel.com/2008/12/en-route-to-poznan/feed/ 1 http://loco2travel.com/2008/12/overland-to-poland-2/ http://loco2travel.com/2008/12/overland-to-poland-2/#comments Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:43:35 +0000 AYCC http://www.loco2travel.com/?p=132 This week we follow the overland travelers as they cover thousands of miles in luxurious second-class train compartments from hot and humid South East Asia to the icy shores of Poland.

NIC SETON, The Australian Youth Climate Coalition

The Great Northern Train

Having spent the last two weeks catching trains around South-East Asia, the weather hasn’t so far changed much. Hot and humid largely describes it – the start of the wet season. The longest we had spent on trains so far was two nights, with one day in the middle and only half-days either side. Now it was time to really get a handle on long-distance train travel…

So far we had taken two weeks to cross over 9000kms. Now, in one fell swoop, we would cover over 4500km over three nights, sharing close quarters with the other four travelers, and no way to escape. Would we make it out alive? This was to be considered a warm-up to the big trip, the five-night journey from Beijing to Moscow via the trans-Siberian.

Beijing

We arrived in Beijing on the 48 hour train from Hanoi, passing through the south of a rapidly developing Chinese countryside. By some estimates China is set to build as many new buildings in the next twenty years as the entire current building stock of Europe. Walking around Beijing it is easy to see this as possible – the city stretches for over ten kilometres in every direction, the majority of it medium or high-rise development. With 3 days to fill before catching the trans-Mongolian railway to Moscow, we had a rare opportunity to take a break, and explore a bit of this sprawling city.

It was interesting to talk about the development of the city, in part because of its sheer scale, but also because of the recent attempts to ‘green’ Beijing. Apparently the city was traditionally dominated by the bicycle as the most affordable and efficient way of getting around. However, the trend towards private car ownership, largely the product of an increasing economic divide, has seen pollution in Beijing deteriorate further. Of all the ‘green initiatives’ heralded at the Beijing Olympics, the single most effective was taking half the cars of the road for two months through an even/odd numberplate system. This measure alone reduced emissions by 850,000 tons.

The ‘Ulan Baatar Incident’

The highlight of the trip to date has definitely been what will henceforth be known as the ‘Ulan Bataar Incident’ on the trans-Siberian railway (which is technically known as the ‘Trans-Mongolian’ when you travel from Beijing to Moscow via Mongolia.

The train stopped in Ulan Bataar for half an hour, and all of the overland trippers got off to have a look around. When it came time for the train to leave, only Katy and Nic were on board – the other three overlanders, Jack, Ollie and myself (Anna), had read the timetable incorrectly and thought the train was stopping for an hour, instead of the half-hour time that was actually allotted. So we were wandering around the local shops, separately, thinking we still had half an hour.

Ollie had made it back to the platform, but refused to jump on and thereby leave me stranded in the middle of Mongolia. Jack saw the train leaving, sprinted up the platform and jumped onto the train as it started to slowly pull away. At this point, I was shopping for condensed milk and ramen, not noticing the commotion going on only a few hundred metres away.

With a cry of ‘It’s insane to leave someone on their own in the middle of Mongolia!’, Ollie was still standing on the platform arguing with train officials. (Thanks again Ollie!) Jack, with his wits about him, figured that he could help this situation more on the ground than from the train, so he jumped from the moving train back onto the platform, and with Ollie, watched the train pull away, before running around the shops to find me.

Nic and Katy had delayed as much as they could, and now they were left on the train with most of our possessions (not to mention all our operating mobile phones), wondering if they would see us again before we reached Poland. The Trans-Mongolian only runs once a week!

They looked pretty surprised when we jumped back on the train five hours later, US$200 out of pocket, with a story of a -1 degree Celsius Mongolian winter, and dangerous taxi driver!

Photos: cmaccubbin, Rosa

I went out with her and some of her friends on Friday night. One’s learning English so could hold proper conversation and she’s cool. The club we went to was surprisingly good and reminded me quite a lot of Urban Gorilla (good breaks but a bit of garage unfortunately, wicked cosy venue though, female DJ, which is apparently far from uncommon).

Then last night I went out on my own to a drum and bass night I’d seen advertised. Some of it was good, big fat Polish man MC-ing which was quite amusing (MCing in Polish sounds quite good). The club was really cool. It’s in the middle of a park by the 3.5km sandy beach, apparently it used to be a public toilet! Grimy. Met a bloke there called ‘Kuba’ who is an actor and plays the drums so I’m going to go and discover the Polish underground with him (he was pissed off that the club we were at was going increasingly commercial).

It seems that there is a special group in Polish society (or at least in this part of the country) that calls themselves ‘artists’, encompassing people who paint, act, play music etc. The girls I went out with on Friday have disdain for them and think they’re posers, whist ‘Kuba’ loves it, and says things like “it is impossible for me to do anything with my life except act”. He wears a big tweed jacket and a stripy beanie… He’s got something to say for himself anyway so I’m going to get to know him a bit, and play his drums.

Tonight I’m hopping on the train to Gdansk to meet Agatha (what a name), the girl who is learning English and is really sound. We’re going to a party her friends are putting on with fire (assuming poi and staff etc) and music. Should be good. Have had some bloody great discussions about politics and history for those who are interested.

Agatha’s granddad helped Jews hide during the Second World War and eventually he got shot by the SS. When I was in Berlin I was reminded that 3 million Polish Jews were killed, it’s so unbelievable. And the fact that there were some non-Jews will to stand up against the tidal wave really touched me, and it obviously meant a lot to Agatha. The first shots of the Second World War were fired in Gdansk as the Nazis invaded Poland by sea, and the city was the one area in an active war zone for the longest time out of anywhere, basically the full six years.

Even when the Russians liberated Gdansk from Nazi control in 1945 they continued the destruction of the city because it was at the time called Danzig and therefore they saw it as part of Germany. So obviously after 1945 Poland was under Communist control, and in 1970 the Solidarity movement started when some workers at the shipyard in Gdansk striked. They were shot dead but the movement continued to build until in 1989 it finally executed a peaceful revolution and threw off Communism (in the meantime the late Pope, who was Polish, visited the city and offered his support to the movement).

Now (this was written in late 2006 the country is run by two twins: one as President, one as PM (the former appointed the latter). The government is a coalition and one of the parties in it, the ‘Family Party’ is deeply homophobic (linked to the high levels of Catholicism in Poland). Strangely though, apparently it has the highest levels of membership by gay men out of all the parties (this seems very odd and I want to read up on it). The majority of the population is rural and a lot of them take as gospel what is said by a very powerful priest who has his own radio channel and TV show. The country is supposedly secular but he has a lot of sway and the educated girls I was talking to are very worried about his influence. Also, the aforementioned Family Party has underground militas (not publicly linked to the party) similar to the SA in Nazi Germany, or the RSS in India (Hindu fundamentalists linked to the BJP).

I am interested in trying to get to the heart of what young people see as their political orientation, or duty, since they are the first generation to grow up in the post-communist era. There were some quite heated debates over drinks on Friday night, and in true geeky fashion, I was absolutely loving it.