Leila
Leila and Hartwig are the first full-time inhabitants of Ecotopia, a new developing sutainable coliving community on the island of Ithaca.
"The key words that connect me to Ithaca are very big gratefulness to be here, a feeling of being part of land, part of the island, and part of the people."
"On this morning, the first thing that went through my mind was quietness again. Usually, there are no thoughts in the morning."
"My main motivation for living here is to live in peace, to have a feeling that everything is cool and going smoothly. It's very easy to be peaceful here, very easy to stay in my centre, in my middle, to feel connected ..."
"On the other hand, I don't perceive myself as being different from the people here. I feel very close to them and what I share with them, but I see big differences between a middle European person and the people here in their expectations for themselves and of what the other person should do. [on the bus to Vathi]"
"All my life, I was very much used to be a stranger, a foreigner, even in the country I grew up in. But here, I feel like I am completely normal; it makes me feel very, very good ..."
"All my life, I have been trying to harmonize and fix things, because I feel the energies of something going wrong around me, something that most people don't. When something is going wrong or it falls out of balance, I can feel it. It's the same if I am cooking or talking to people ... I see the relationship between farming and healing. The relationship between them was growing and developing in peace ... My father is from Iraq, but I do not know Arabic except for a word which means a place -مير , where a living being can live and develop to be at peace with oneself."
"We started the farm in Austria in 2002, but now we don't have it anymore, we changed it in 2012, moved to a very, very small place. The farm was 10 hectares, 3/4 fields and meadows, so it could feed you in a very good way, but it didn't feed us ... So Hartwig had to go to Vienna to work every day, and it was too much for him. At the farm in Austria, we had 4–5 people helping us as volunteers at all times. During very busy times, we had 14 people all together, including friends and volunteers."
