Austria is coming to mean many things to me, many unexpected things: nature-inspired work, developing dreams, budding love, age-defying friendship, one-of-a-kind experiences...
Last Saturday, I was invited by the DreamAs of Dream Academia to Burgenland (easternmost state in Austria about an hour from Vienna) to harvest grapes for a small, organic wineyard. Hermann and Katzi--the two main founders of this loose group of Dream Developers--always have amazing adventures to share, so I jumped at the opportunity to spend the afternoon with them.
Vinyards in Burgenland, Austria
Luscious Fields of Soon to Be Wine
We arrived in the middle of gorgeous fields of grapes on a breathtakingly sunny day. I didn't even make it fully out of the car before Katzi was hugging me and welcoming me back to Dreamicon Valley, their special name for this part of the world. The last time I was here, I spent a day working at the Dreamicon Valley headquarters: a small rundown shack in an agricultural field that is being renovated into a dream development co-working space. When I say working, I wasn't there with my computer to develop some new project, if you remember from my last post about them, I was there to work with my body cleaning up the storage container and creating a new path.
And in true Damanhurian and DreamA style, this time we did meditation with our hands and bonded over grape harvesting!
For several hours, this mixed group ranging from 22 to 70 years of age (plus one dog), picked grapes to prepare for this year's wine. The highlight was meeting Saitoti from Kenya. This is his first time out of Africa, first time on a plane, first time seeing a big city, and many more first times!
Hermann and Saitoti
Saitoti founded a non-profit called, Maasai Duka to empower the women of his village. Inspired by his own mother, who is raising 10 children, he wanted to give the mamas of the tribe the opportunity to sell their artisan wares at a fair price to fight poverty, promote fairtrade, support education, and share the love embedded in each piece. From their website,
We are asocial enterprise that seeks to connect you with the thousands of village,slums and refugees artisans products who live in vulnerable conditions, in order to boost their development and contribute to their well-being. We combine their traditional crafts with pieces designed for you, creating products with a positive impact both for those who use them and for those who use them.
Picking grapes with Saitoti, and the other DreamAs and DreamA friends, was such a treat. It reminded me of being back at Damanhur havesting grapes at the annual Vendimia at the Porta della Terra nucleo community. You can say that in addition to the friendships and good times, it is a way to directly connect my community to this community.
We must have filled like four of these
After hours of picking under the hot sun, we headed back to the winery to celebrate our work with a good meal and lots of wine! There was finsihed wine, wine in the middle of the fermenting phase (I wish I remembered the name), dessert wine... well, you get the picture. I sat across from Saitoti to listen to stories of his village. He told us about how they are laid out physically and socially, his personal family, the chief, and all the male-female dynamics that are changing in his African country.
An African, and many other DreamAs, in Austria
Yesterday, Hermann, Saitoti, and I went on a sightseeing adventure in Vienna and today, we head back to Burgenland to have brunch with the founders of the Karma Kitchen, another fantastic project that I will tell you about another day.
I only have a few days left in Austria before I head back to Italy, and I hope to spend as many of them as possible getting to know my fellow DreamAs. Earlier, I was able to consult with Claus from Fryraum and SchnetzerPils on an upcoming sustainable, cutting-edge, cultural, co-living project being planned outside of the city, and later in the week I will meet with Manuel from StereoChrome, who showcases "What can I do as a single individual to make the world a better plance." Super excited to see what type of collaborations come from it!
Bioversum - Nature Inspired Solutions, Dream Academia, Fryraum... so many inspiring projects flowing out of this little part of the world. And they are all doing international outreach: Bioversum is currently in Greece, Dream Academia has several projects in Africa, Fryraum is building in Switzerland, connections and collaborations to manifest Dreams into Reality around the world. The perfect place for a person with my life mission:
To Make the Dreams of Others Come True
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