Contents:
Meet the Member: Steph Ryan
You can never save enough carrots by Tanja Caron
Glimpses of Prague
Food Makes Me Happy
My Trustroots Experience
HospEx Recordings Available
Open Hospitality Network Created
Trustroots volunteer opportunities
Share your moments
Relevant Links
Greetings Trustroots Members and Newsletter Subscribers from Around the World!
Travel is beginning again in many parts of the world, yet some parts remain closed off and working to recover. We hope you are well wherever you are and that if you are traveling again, share with us some of your stories and feelings. Write to us at [email protected] and we can highlight your stories here on our Newsletter or social.
In this issue, we have some stories around food sharing, hitching, recent photos of Trustrooters and also news about Hospitality Exchange in general. We hope you enjoy it and happy reading.
Meet the Member
Interview with Steph Ryan
Why did you join Trustroots?
I heard about Trustroots on Hitchwiki around the time it started. I had been involved with BeWelcome and Couchsurfing, but this felt different. As a hitchhiker, using a platform designed by fellow hitchhikers had a huge appeal. In Trustroots I have found friends, comrades, and safe places to lay my head. I have found hitchhiking partners and kindred spirits. It felt and feels different from other hospitality sites in that it’s not rooted so much in exchange—which can end up feeling transactional—as in solidarity… it’s a space for travelers who love and support fellow travelers!
What was your best moment with a host?
Ooh, it’s hard to choose just one. I’ll share a favorite Trustroots experience: While hitchhiking through Massachusetts, I stayed with Olivia, a fellow hitchhiker who is one of the most generous and down to Earth people. The two of us hitchhiked together to the Appalachian Trail, where we hiked and camped a bit together, before returning to her space. There was friendship, adventure, and a chance for respite. A lovely experience.
What was your best moment with a guest
Not exactly a guest, but six years ago I received a request on Trustroots from someone to meet up. She turned out to be a rad human and a friend—we hitchhiked together, but I also introduced her to my sister. The two went up to Alaska together for years, where my sister met her current partner. I love that a connection made through Trustroots, which was beautiful in itself, led to so many other deep and meaningful connections.
What’s your favorite way of traveling?
I love slow travel. I like to choose a place to set as my home base, hitchhike there, do some sort of work or hospitality exchange, and explore the area slowly and intentionally. It feels good to develop a relationship with a place, and the people who move through it!
In terms of personal projects, I have a DIY zine for solo female hitchhikers. I also am compiling a zine of female hitchhiking stories. Reach out if you’d like to participate! Also, reach out if you’d like to come visit the desert.
You can never save enough carrots by Tanja Caron
It only takes one spark to light a fire and that is exactly what happened when Nick got introduced to the world of foodwaste. Living in Germany at the time and wanting to spend his IT experiences for community purposes, he came across the project “foodsharing.de”. It’s a more organized way of dumpster diving where agreements are made with local shops to pick up food which is seen as waste. Through foodsharing the project yunity emerged. And it was through an event they organized, that Nick had his first dumpster dive experience. At the event he and some of the other participants went out on the hunt to look for discharged food. Because of their experience of knowing where to look, they collected a big amount of food in a really short time. Being in front of a big bin of a supermarket, Nick realized how much perfectly good food is thrown out on a daily basis. For various reasons food is tossed away. It can be as little as a brown spot on a banana. The fire was lit. When he returned home he started to explore local dumpster dive possibilities with a friend.
Talking about foodsharing at the yunity project with others, another project was born: Karrot. Not another organization but an international tool for groups to start their own grassroots community. This tool can be used for more than just sharing food but many groups who join are connected to the original idea of foodsharing. Through the foodsharing project Nick came across another way of saving food: Gleaning. Visiting the project Kanthaus, which origin is also foodsharing, he went on a gleaning pick up. “Modern harvest methods result in many produce is being left on the field”, he says, which is the first stadium where you can save food. Going to a carrot field the amount of carrots they came across was stunning. Even the small van they brought to carry all their saved carrots was too small. The next weeks there were a lot of carrot based dishes on the menu of course, which tasted even better because now they weren’t going to waste.
Even when he’s traveling Nick goes dumpster diving. He looks up an online map and marks all the nearby supermarkets. After that he just goes from one to another to see what treasure can be found. He loves the creativity of cooking that dumpster diving brings. “When you collect random items, it’s always a nice challenge to see how you can turn these into a good meal”. A big bonus is the saving on food moneywise of course. In a three week bicycle trip in Germany he spend no money on food. Some finds show really well how in many cases it just about a simple thing as a date. “The weirdest is the salami, it’s literally designed to last for ages, but still has a short expiry slapped on it and to the bin! I bet it’ll keep for weeks/months still”, he posted on his Mastodon after a dumpster dive. So, do you feel inspired yet to try out dumpster diving on your next trip? There’s even a wikipage, Trashwiki, dedicated to this topic where you can find more tips and tricks. Happy diving!
Want to know more about Nick or the projects he works on? Check his Trustroots account or his decentralized Mastodon.
Glimpses of Prague
How would you respond, when posed with the question, “Want to harvest the bees?”.
As the small local bus climbed the winding mountain path, I stared incredulously out the window, my chin resting on the travel backpack in my lap. An hour outside the gorgeous historical center, nestled in the trees, lives Petr, my Trustroots host, his lovely wife, and their baby daughter. They welcomed me into their alternative lifestyle for two days. They taught me to pick wild elderflowers for tea, brush bees from honeycombs, and we ate delicious casserole and apple crumble made from dumpster-dived ingredients. I still can’t stop smiling at the amazement in their eyes when I put on my nightly face mask. Apparently, in all his 50+ years, Petr has never seen anyone wear one before. — Shirley Xu
Follow Shirley on Instagram | @xiaolin.ninja
Food makes me happy!
This is me, smiling, because I found a nice tree house on my way to Czech Republic with my Ebike. And also food always makes me happy. Additionally I was very lucky as I found spontaneously a place to sleep with Trustroots in Könnern Saxony-Anhalt. I guess today was my lucky day! — Sérgio
Follow Sérgio on Instagram | @planetserg
My Trustroots Experiences
Pictured left: Alan hosted his first guests from Trustroots, Agnese and Térez. “They were very lovely to have around and exchange experience.“, he said. Few weeks later he had hosted another guests coming from Paris, Timothée and Margaux. Alan enjoy introducing Lisbon to travelers visiting the city. — Alan Caetano
Follow Alan on Instagram | @alanncaetano
HospEx Summit Recordings Available
On May 8, over a hundred thought leaders in the Hospitality Exchange network came together to discuss the most pressing items facing “HospEx” today. Are paywalls necessary or do they prevent long term community growth? What are all the major platforms doing today? How can everyone work together in the future? Check out the recordings at HospExSummit.org to watch and learn more. The next one will be in September. If you or someone you know is interested to participate as a speaker, write to [email protected]
Open Hospitality Network Created
A group of developers and hospitality exchange advocates have are building a new platform utilizing the same software as Trustroots.org for the bicycle touring community.
They will be implementing some federation features, so that both platforms can communicate, show hosts on each others networks and that users can easily move from one to the other.
If all works well, it plans to abstract the protocol so that BeWelcome, CyclePlanet and Couchers could join the network as well. In the long run, the goal is to make it easy for new communities, such as Host a Sister, to have their own platforms, tailored to their specific needs and governed by their own rules.
The Open Hospitality Network is more than an infrastructure for others – those that already exist and new ones – communities than a new hospex community by itself. We’d like people interested in joining us to join and help, and people interested to re-build bicycle touring community in the new place to join Trustroots team as for now and self-organize from here. To Learn more and get involved, check out https://openhospitality.network
Trustroots Volunteer Opportunity:
There are volunteer opportunities at Trustroots, where you develop or learn new skills in software development, support, design, user experience and social media. Reach out and join here to get started.
Share Your Moments
Every newsletter we’re looking for stories and photo’s to share with you, our community. Besides the newsletter we’re using our social media channels to inspire and show people who don’t know Trustroots (yet), what we’re about.
Do you want to share your story with the community? Email us at [email protected]. There’s also the possibility to share your favorite moments with us by uploading them through this form: https://forms.gle/HgjtibEEQsYCy15c8.
If you photograph frequently, have an active social media account or a huge database with amazing photo’s, you can simply leave the link to your personal account at the form, so we can take a look. In the form you’ll also find the general terms and conditions. Together we make this platform what it is, so why not share your amazing moments?
Relevant Links:
Facebook Group
Facebook Page
Whatsapp [Announce]
Whatsapp Community Chat
Telegram Community Chat
Instagram
Github
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