A couple of weeks ago, David and I felt like trying out something new, and we had heard about an awesome new initiative called wandel.BAR. Wandel-what?
As a social venture thriving on eco-awareness, wandel.BAR’s principles rely on community, fun, creativity and sustainability. It is a platform for many exciting workshops and events to happen and meet like-minded people, with a goal that always remains the same: sharing knowledge and spending a good time together.
The wandel.BAR project was born in our quest for happiness. We think that fulfilling our everyday needs ourselves together with other people is one of the most rewarding and meaningful things we can do.
Johny, Swantje, Annick, Charel and Denis, the people behind wandel.BAR
So on Friday the 14th of November, as many other people rushed out of their busy week to head to an afterwork or to finally relax at home, we gathered our excitement and went to their very first workshop event. That same day we had also planned to pick up the organic groceries we had ordered from the collective purchase group Mesa Minett, which was also present at the same location for the delivery. When it comes to wandel.BAR, we didn’t exactly know what to expect, but we were happily surprised. As we entered into the workshop area of the Kulturfabrik, we saw a few people that already were there. On one side, the people from Mesa who were there to distribute the groceries, and at the centre of the room, a big table around which a few people were already busy chopping vegetables and preparing yummy salads.
Johny, one of the lovely people behind this initiative, greeted us in and showed us around.
The plan of that evening was to simply cook delicious food together, make delicious vegan spreads and have a good time. There was cooking equipment and facilities all around the room (an oven, a sink, stoves, a big table to chop veggies on), more and more people coming in to share ideas, and of course, lots of produce to work with: in the back of the room, all sorts of fruits and vegetables were scattered on a table, collected from the shop Mullebutz and the farmer’s market in town. A bounty of yummy foods, saved from being wasted into the trash! How amazing is that?
It’s great because just a while ago, just after reading Mark Boyle’s book, The Moneyless Man, or The Self Sufficient-ish Bible by the Hamilton brothers, while also browsing through different articles about sustainability, I was starting to get really interested in how you can prevent food waste, and I was actually looking for such initiatives that deal with throw-away food. And now we lived it.
We lived an amazing, beautifully genuine evening, cooking and eating delicious food while preventing food waste and meeting really interesting people. All for free. All in complete harmony with sustainability. It even seems too alternative to even happen in Luxembourg, and it was the last thing that I could have expected to live here, but it happened! Yes! And we’re not done with such initiatives in the country. There is a real wave of sustainability and social awareness that is growing at the moment. The people from wandel.BAR are definitely encouraged by this, and so are we!
Their next workshop is going to be around upcycling.
Follow their activities on their facebook page, and show them your support. They are awesome!