Have you ever heard of ...sustainable tourism?

What plans do you have for the next holidays? Are you going to a peaceful beach in Australia or to a crowded and modern city like New York? Are you going to stay in a cosy hotel? Or maybe in an incredible one? Are you going to go to fantastic restaurants, and buy a lot of souvenirs, and pay for transport, aren't you? Would you visit a lot of museums, too?
In fact, you probably are going to pay a lot of money to a travel agency to stay a few days in a country.


Last summer I discovered another extraordinary way to travel. I read in a magazine an unpopular type of trips that are very interesting and not too much people know about it. I'm talking about the solidary tourism, also known as sustainable tourism. It's about a type of holidays organized by NGO agencies which want to go further than usual agencies: they allow all the volunteers to discover the country by the hand of local communities. These countries are always undeveloping ones. Do you know where the volunteers sleep? They accommodate in local people's house, who they also give some food to the volunteers. In this way, the volunteers have only to pay the transport from their rich country to the undeveloping one. Don't you think it's a cheap way to travel at the same time you learn a lot of things?
And what do the volunteers do in the country? These trips are made to collaborate with a project which contribute with a necessity of that country, so the volunteers help some NGO doing several activities, for example they help building schools or helping women and child's rights.


It's true: it's impossible to solve world problems in seven or fifteen days. Solidary trips expect to involve all volunteers in microprojects of local NGOs leaving them some time (weekends, for example) to sightseeing so even though the volunteers help local people and NGO doing solidarity activities, they also can visit cultural and natural sites.

Do you know that with only a quarter part of all milion travellers that travel around the world do it through this type of trip, poverty would finish? It was said by a director of one of these NGO. Actually, the number of these travelers are increasing gradually.

How these volunteers are like? Although the majority are between 27 and 50 years old, everybody can collaborate, except under 18 that must be accompained by an adult. They are eager to learn from different people and they usually have a high social consience. All want to cooperate and make this world a better place.


When the destination has been chosen, it starts a period of training for the volunteers that prepares them for the activities they will have to do in the country.

I have read in a magazine what some volunteers said about their experience. When I had finished to read it, I would have liked to leave home and go to one of this NGO/agencies at that moment. I'm waiting to have 18 to collaborate with it. It's one of my biggest dreams.

"When volunteers arrive to the country, they think they can do more than what really do" "You learn more from them than they from you" " It's a chance to live your holidays from inside the country" " Since I came back I don't worry about things which before I was worried about and they were a problem" "Travelling in this way, you teach, you learn and the most important thing, you share" "Move, travel, know, contrast....it will change your life..."

The 20th anniversay of the Berlin fall down wall

I had heard several times of these theme, the fall of the Berlin wall, in the last years, but since I haven't read a Mark Levy's book called Las cosas que no nos dijimos I haven't noticed what an important event it was.

It's incredible how a book can change your thoughts and make you to notice about things that weren't very important for you before reading it.

It isn't a book of Berlin's history neither it talks about the Berlin wall. It is a romantic history but there is a moment of the main character's past that takes place in Berlin, in the fall down wall moment because she was in the city when the wall fell down! And the book explains it very well...it explains how she and all the other people felt at that moment and how she met her first love there...it was very romantic at the same time I learnt a lot of things.

I didn't know that this book talks a little bit of this German event, so don't you think it's a little bit ironic that when I've just read this book it's also the 20th anniversary of Berlin fall down wall? These last days I have been very attentive to any TV information and I've seen the news and some reports on TV which talks about this important event.


On 9th November of twenty years ago, a big and new change entered in many German's life. It was the Berlin's moment of freedom that turned world history.

That terrible wall was built by German Democratic Republic (GDR: the East Germany) in 1961 and it separated the German Federal Republic (the West Germany). It also divided the Berlin city in two parts. It was the most well-known symbol of Cold War ( a war after the Second War World between USSR who was comunist, and United States and its allies, wchich were capitalists). Well, Germany was divided in these two ideologies, so the wall symbolized the two worlds (the Iron Courtain).

It was 155 km long and can you imagine your city divided in two? It was almost impossible to cross it and whoever who tried it he was a dead person! What happened with families which the parents were living in the East of German and the daughter in the other side? Undoubtedly we sometimes destroy ourselves, and it's a very very sad truth that I hope someday we will learn about our mistakes and start to help the planet and the others, not to destroy it.

"Twenty eight years and 91 days!" said the elated east Berliner I met walking up the Friedrichstrasse soon after the wall was breached. On the day the Berlin Wall went up, 13 August 1961, his parents had wanted to go to the cinema in west Berlin, but he, then aged 11, had been too tired. Next morning, they awoke to the sound of tanks. In all his adult life, he had never been to the western half of his own city. He told me how moved he was by an improvised poster that read "only today is the war really over". Timothy Garton Ash (The Guardian, Monday 9 November 2009)

I am not writing this "chapter" to remember how terrible was that wall and how many people suffered, but to "celebrate" the fall down of that inhuman invent and how the world celebrated it last Monday 9th November.

Here there are two videos. They are both on 9th November, but with 20 years of difference:








While I was watching these videos, something inside of me was moving...I felt nervous,happy, free... What a touching videos! As time goes by the feelings are the same for Germans. I think all Germans were out of their houses, celebrating the most important event of their lifes, the day that gave them the freedom. Although they were milion of people, they were like one heart together which beat at the same time, with the feeling to make this world a better place. They felt stronger than ever, like they can break down any wall, like they can reach the sky!

I HAVE NO MORE WORDS TO DESCRIBE THIS AMAZING DAY.