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Bantustan: We Need Your Help

2021-05-09T11:46:16+02:00

Our book, BANTUSTAN, is now available in English, after almost a decade in the making. As a small non-profit from a small country, we have little means of spreading the word about the book to any potential readers outside the Balkans. This is why we must rely on friends, acquaintances, and basically everyone we can think of who might be willing to help. But before that, let’s talk about what exactly you would be helping us with, and why.

The Travel Club is a community of travelers, explorers and creators founded on the ideas of free sharing, free movement, and personal exploration of the world. All our projects are crowd-funded and non-profit. Any money that comes our way is reinvested into the Club (for the running costs, or community projects such as The Travel House/School), or donated to charity. The bulk of the proceeds from the sales of the Serbo-Croatian version of Bantustan were donated for the schooling of several primary and high school children in Kenya, through two organizations: Osiligi, and Hatua Likoni.

The book sold well in the Balkans because The Travel Club had already had a vibrant community there, which allowed us to spread the word. This data visualization shows that the geographic area of our readership largely corresponds to the cultural space of former Yugoslavia. However, that is where our reach ends. Without any international following to speak of, the English version of Bantustan will remain absolutely invisible, just another drop in the vast ocean of self-published books by unknown authors from obscure places; it won’t even have a fighting chance. That is the curse of small countries and small languages: whatever sprouts in them is almost destined to remain trapped there forever; the chance to break through that barrier is infinitesimally small. But that is exactly what Bantustan is about: crossing the borders, climbing the walls, breaking the barriers that surround us - against all odds.

This is why we need your help. And we really, really need it. Seriously. Or we wouldn’t be asking for it.

So, here’s what you can do:

Buy the book. As always, our goal is for the fruits of our work to be affordable to everyone. The Kindle edition costs $3.99. The printed version costs $12.99, which is a modest price for a book of that size (360 pages, 16.99 x 24.41 cm or 6.69″ x 9.61″). To fully enjoy the illustrations, we warmly recommend going with the printed version.
Leave a review on Amazon. This is crucial for the rank of the book; if we reach a certain number of sales, ratings and reviews, Amazon will start recommending the book to other people. We need to hit that critical point where that starts to happen - an almost impossible goal, but well worth trying. Each and every sale, each and every review is a step towards that goal.
Tell your friends. If you like the book, please think of anyone you know who might enjoy it too, and let them know it exists. The word of mouth is a powerful weapon - and the only one we have. When recommending the book to someone, please refer them to www.bantustanbook.com rather than to Amazon; that will give them a chance to learn more about the book and its background story.
Spread the word even more. Do you know of any organizations, groups, online or offline communities, mailing lists, forums that serve as gathering places for people who might be interested in reading this kind of book? If so, you can help us by sharing the link there.
Join our mailing list. We hope to make many more Travel Houses, publish more books, and carry out other projects in the future, creating value for ourselves and others; joining our mailing list is a way to stay up to date with our activities. (If you are from the Balkans and already a member of our Serbo-Croatian mailing list, there is no need to join the English one).
Consider becoming a regular supporter on Patreon.

Yeah, but what about the dough?

Why would I help you guys line your own pockets? - we hear those more paranoidly inclined of you ask. Since its creation in 2005, The Travel Club has always insisted on transparent finances. So here’s the book price breakdown:

Paperback list price: 12.99$
Amazon’s share: 40%
Printing cost: 5.17$
Tax: 30%
Our profit: 1.8$

As for the ebook, we get 1.1$. So - no worries there, nobody is getting rich (except Mr. Bezos and the IRS).

Having an international audience will motivate us to create more stuff in English, which is something we’ve been wanting to do for a long time. It will also enable us to publish new contents on our English website more frequently, organize more community projects for travelers, and donate more money to those in need.

We hope you enjoy our book. We guarantee it is unlike any travelogue you've ever come across.
The Travel Club

The Travel Club Symbol

2018-07-06T23:29:49+02:00

When asked what the new Travel Club identity should look like, I pondered it for a long time. We all did, for countless nights. For months. We gnawed at shoes, globes and maps, but all we could think of came down to banal tourist brochures or hiking clubs’ logos. We wanted something more abstract, more powerful, unlike an ordinary, dead logotype. We wanted a living symbol.

Then I remembered a conversation I had when I wanted to buy a GPS device, and an old fantasy of mine that helped me fall asleep.

– So – she asks – what do you need the GPS for? Hiking?
– No – I say.
– Car?
– I can’t drive.
– What then?
– For… drawing.
– Drawing?

When I have trouble falling asleep, I picture lines. Each and every step I’ve made, from my birth till today, each route of mine, each one of my travels leaves a trace on the surface of the planet. It’s all recorded, coordinates are written down, longitudes and latitudes, peaks and azimuths, geotags, names of the cities, hamlets, gardens or kitchens, suburbs or antechambers, Pančevo, Asprovalta, Deliblato Sands and Portorož, Szeged, Moscow and Ulan Bator, Linz and Kigali, Burnaby, Hong Kong, El Nido, Pecs, Mostar, Köln and Dakar, Kotež, Sodara, Margita, Vojlovica and Hempmakers’ Levy – all of these are being put down on a large map. With every house I ever entered, each highway, subway, byway, river bank, airplane or donkey, each incidental greeting, change of plans, premeditation, change of heart, hairpin curve, each collision and each encounter. The lines are precise to a millimeter. Thin. Broken. White lines on a round black surface. Thickening around my native South Banat, untangling further away, getting thinner, hemming in the globe’s circle and disappearing into the oceans’ folds. What do they look like?

Dead of the night, I still can’t sleep. I picture the life pathways of my friends, parents, relatives, the life pathways of all people – dead, unborn, historical lines of migrations, encyclopedias of lines, lines of every human’s motion since the dawn of mankind, since we’d learned how to walk in the savannas and rainforests of East Africa. The map is no longer zoomed in, the black globe is slowly revolving in the aether, thick with white threads, looking like – what? A weaver bird’s nest? A larva, a cocoon, an ordinary wriggle, a blot, a spider’s catch? The dawn is cracking and I’m still struggling to picture it. Every journey is recorded there, since the creation up till today.

– And so – she says – you walk and the GPS records your route?
– Yes – I say. – It records geotags. That’s how a drawing is formed.
– Why would you wanna record that? I mean, it’s not like it’s gonna be a nice drawing. Unless – she laughs – you walk across fields and people’s back yards.

It’s still night. Every life draws a line. Every encounter – a dot. The pencil stops for a moment, two hesitant lines are tied into a knot or separated or travel together for a while. New lines are being born, the old ones end in cemeteries resembling a chaos of cables around a router. When you look at a line you see a person’s route. Their unique route. Jan Mayen, Srem, China, Antarctica, Macondo, Mecca, Gornji Milanovac, Prizren, Vladivostok.

It’s morning, shadows of the window blinds straddle the ceiling, I touch the lines on the map with my eyes closed. A random human being in the darkness of history, unwittingly, draws a dog, a penguin, a horse, a coat of arms, an Arabic letter, a signature in Glagolitic alphabet or the constellation of Orion. What kind of a line does a life make, plotted by pure chance?

And every night and every day, every moment, there are new lines being drawn, each one different. Like DNA. Each strand unique and unrepeatable, unlike any other.

– I’ll draw – I say – Brownian motion.
– What motion? The thing with particles?
– Particles in a liquid, yes. They crash into other particles and change direction with every contact. They draw zigzag lines – I look at her – just like us.
– And that’s why you’ll throw away your money on a GPS?

That is what Lazar, Marko and I wrote while preparing for our African journey: Brownian collisions of human particles. That’s what we wrote while planning any journey: there is no plan. You go from one dot to another, from one human being to another. The journey is born from random collisions – just like all journeys, since the arrival of human bipeds and their migrations.

When Monika, our designer, asked us about the general concept in order to design our new logo, when she asked us what The Travel Club really stood for, this is what we told her: Brownian motion. She drew the first lines. Remembering the long nights and the drawings I made walking with my GPS, I coded an algorithm that draws a new line, a new journey each time. Most of these lines were blurry and crumpled, so we chose the most beautiful ones – several hundred of them – and tuned the algorithm to draw these ones most of the times. Sometimes, however, a completely new, unrepeatable, random line is created. One that was never created before and will never be created again.

And our symbol became infinite, endless, the journey itself.

The Travel House revisits Athens this spring

2017-03-21T10:51:04+01:00

Inspired by The Travel House projects in 2012 through 2015, there will be an independently organized free place to stay in Athens, Greece, this spring in April and May. The concept is the same: they will rent an apartment for two months and make it available to everybody who is coming to Athens - as long as there is space. And there is a lot of space in a big apartment, when everybody is willing to reduce their private space and share. It's a place of solidarity, understanding and respect. A place to meet people and share stories, food and space to sleep. For free.

To see updates about when and where it will happen, check fb.com/afreeplaceathens. If you would like to contribute, there is a fundraising campaign running: https://www.generosity.com/fundraising/a-free-place-to-stay-in-athens.

So, get ready to come to Athens to experience things yourself!

See you there!

House For Everyone: Yogyakarta, Indonesia

2015-03-17T00:33:00+01:00

House for Everyone is currently located in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and it will be open for 3 months, until May 25, 2015.

—

RULES of the House

Composed on the base of the Rules of AVP House in Dushanbe–2010, Istanbul–2012, Krasnoyarsk–2012,Sevastopol -2014, Berlin–2014... Written by experience and life of hundreds of people in AVP Houses! Version from 5 of March 2015. Will have add-ons, look for a new version on the wall of the House.

COMMON REGULATIONS

House For Everybody is not a hotel. Organizers of the House are not obliged to provide you any service, conveniences, beds, will not take you to museums of Yogyakarta, volcanoes and other cities. You should sleep on the floor, take a shower according to common order, walk through the city or travel through the country according to your ideas, routes, and self-independence. If you want - organize somebody and go together, don't want - go on your own, don't want to go – don't go. Self-organizing is a key to your happiness!

In the House – it is strictly prohibited to drink alcohol. It is prohibited to bring alcohol, beer, drugs into the House. If the person is caught drinking alcohol or smoking weed he/she should be removed from the House. You shouldn't smoke tobacco in the House and in the nearby territory.

House management: Director is Anton Krotov as usual and you should listen to him; deputies director – Alexey Kuleshov, Ekaterina Boyarova, Ilnur Sharafutdinov. If they are absent, supervision after the House continue wise man, friends of A.Krotov. House management, collaborating with person on duty, accept new guests, determine the place for them to sleep, remove those, who are staying too long, determine the time go to sleep (usually 22.00) etc. You should listen to House Management.

We respect our neighborhood, don't walk very often in our street here and there, do not walk in the nearby streets without t-shirt, with naked belly, in beach clothes. We don't smoke in our neighborhood, don't force our neighbors to invite us to stay at their houses. We greet them politely. We spread peace and friendship between our nations, create in the House For Everybody example of united living, unity and love between different people, between different nations.

According to the agreement with the head of our neighborhood we keep silence from 21.00 till 6.00 am! In dark time we don't shout and run around! Don't frighten locals with the quantity of the people in our house, don't crowd on the street in front of the door, don't wait for someone on the street, if you want to go – just go.

There is a shared kitchen in the House, especially in the evening. It is happening by efforts of everybody including you, reading this. Try to do your best and do not wait for a command. If something is absent, don't complain, but go and buy it urgently, as much as possible. It is useful to buy cakes and cookies from the women, living in front of our house. Food is being cooked by the person on duty or by anyone who is willing to do so.

Every man and even you (!) is in charge of what is happening around, in the House. If it is dirty – make it clean! If it is wet – make it dry! If it is broken – repair it or attract the person, who can do it! If you are hungry – make the food for everyone! Everybody is responsible for the world to become a better place and we have no servants.

House For Everybody exists: a) with help of enthusiasm and time of those people who are renting it, and also: b) with help of donations of the people who wants to donate. All received donations (list of them you can read in internet) is not a payment for living, but a common contribution to the development of the project "House For Everybody". Leaving donations is voluntary; everybody in the House is equal, who leaves donations and who doesn't leave.

Our House is not a place for your domestic animals, leave them at home. Bringing of little children (who cannot read the rules and realize it) is possible as an exception. You should discuss it before your arrival with Management.

Your first arrival to our House is only possible during hours convenient for us — from 18.00 till 20.00. House is not a hotel with day-and-night reception of guests. Please call the telephone numbers, indicated in internet. Later, when you get accustomed, you can come here on your own.

The place, where we will meet you: railway station Lempuyangan, the main entrance (to the south) in the gates or in the tea stall in front of the gates. We don't reveal GPS coordinates of the House in internet.

You shouldn't scatter your stuff throughout the House. Keep your things in your backpack. Sign it and things which is easy to mix up. Only you are in charge of keeping your stuff safe. It is recommended to keep your passport and money always with you, not in the backpack.

In our Indonesian House there are two main languages for communicating – Russian and English. Now you can read the rules in both Russian and English language, soon we will translate them to Bahasa. You should get familiar with the rules and understand what it is about.

Your Indonesian visa and its extension is your personal care. Organizers of the house have no connections to visa people or any opportunities to extend your visa!

Everybody can join us and stay in our house. If you want it, you should know this phone numbers :

0812-8685-6289, Ekaterina
0813-2978-7700, Anton
0813-2911-8901, Alexey
0821-3850-9604, Ilnur.

Please, write all the numbers.

When you want to stay in our house, please come to the main gate of Lempuyangan station in the evening (approx. from 17.00), and call to one of this numbers. If the person doesn't answer, it means he is in mosque, or in toilet, or somewhere else, or on top of mountain... — try another number. Call and speak, for example:

— I am Johnie from Shanghai city! I at Lempuyangan station! Please, come and meet me!

We will appear shortly and bring you to the House, later you will be able to find it yourself. Don't try to find the House independently, disturb other locals and give them idea "here many strange peoples going".

You not need to make any reservation before, and do not come at night time (after 21-00).

Additional rules you can read below!

ABOUT THE MAIN FOOD

In the evening we make food for all. To avoid hungriness in House, here is list of main food components, which must be always here:

1) SUGAR.
2) TEA.
3) RICE.
4) SOAP.
5) KETCHUP.
6) SOYA SOUS.

Everybody, who found absence of any of these items, — should inform all other people and immediately go and buy it. If you have no money, you must inform all people immediately about absence of some strategic components!

You can buy also other components.

KITCHEN : every evening about 17.00 we started to prepare FOOD for all people (usually rice-based).

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR

Here is chief (director) of the House, Anton Krotov, and some vice-directors – Alexey Kuleshov, Ekaterina Boyarova, Ilnur Sharafutdinov.

Director has written Rules of the House, has paid the rent fee for the House (5 million Rupiah), has paid for most kitchen and house equipment (2,5 million Rupiah) and will pay for electricity. So, anybody can give the donation directly to Director Anton Krotov, or to other vice-directors. List of money spent and received are shown at the piece of paper on the wall.

All people who are staying in the House must follow the rules and instructions of Director. If Director is not here, — follow the instructions of vice-directors, and other persons, appointed by the Director.

Only the Director or authorized people can contact the owner of the House or local chiefs

If you want to make here some lectures (about your traveling or something else), please inform the Director about it. And make sure the date and time of lecture can be easily found by others.

HOW TO BE A GOOD MAN

Owr house – place for good people, not for sinners.

So, strictly PROHIBITED :

Strictly prohibited - Drinking alcohol, using narcotics, beers, vine, in the House and around it.

Those who was found drunk or drinking alcohol anywhere on the street, holding bottle of alcohol in his backpack or in his hands in the city limits will be prohibited from entering the House forever.

Strictly prohibited any drugs (narcotics), including marijuana.

Indonesia applies death penalty for drugs! House management is holding rights to treat suspicious items to check it for any forbidden substances.

Do not put any tents or sleep on the streets around the House.

Smoking tobacco anywhere in or around the House is also prohibited. Smokers, who can't survive a day without tobacco shouldn't stay in the House, but can visit us for events or meetings

Do not throw toilet paper into canalization or it will be blocked. For ass cleaning you can use water or put toilet paper into some bag and take care yourself to take it out of the house from time to time.

If you are accused in doing troubles from clause 1-3, you will be prohibited from entering the house and its region.

Other penalties will be issued by House management.

Important! It is important not to distribute negative attitude to different nations or groups, loud discussions about politics or religions is not what we want. Our house is not a political meeting, but place to create friendship, relaxation and mutual understanding of people with different citizenships and beliefs.

ABOUT THE PROPERTY

Our House is a place, where many people live together. It is open for everybody, and here is no staff or servants. So, you must be responsible for your behavior and all your stuff e.g. sleeping bag, money, passport, spoon, cup, socks, knife, charging device... All these things may be mixed together, or thrown away, or change the place or simply get missed if you wouldn't take care of them.

We advise to keep your Passport and money with you in all times.

If you leave us for a long time and want to leave something here, please put it all in plastic bag and write your name and city.

All the nameless stuff can be given to someone or sold to someone or just thrown away. Nobody will send you by post any lost items. When you go somewhere – check carefully and don't forget your items!

These Rules can be changed due to current situation and the newest version will be written on Russian language and will be shown in the wall of the House.

Anton Krotov, 07 march 2015. Jogyakarta.

Change of Name, Visual Identity and Concept

2014-04-17T15:53:18+02:00

After nine years of existence, Serbia Travel Club has changed its name to The Travel Club. In 2005, when we founded the organization, we were young and naive enough to believe that including the name of the country where it all started would lend us some authority and legitimacy when applying for funding; we were wrong. All it ever did was limit us geographically within national boundaries – paradoxically, the very thing we are fighting against.

We have also changed the logo of the organization; the worn-out shoe on a traffic sign has been replaced with a black circle with an arrow inside, meant to symbolize Brownian motion all around the planet.

The website was outdated and not very functional, so our developers have built a new one from scratch.

As for the changes of concept, we have realized, over the years, that traveling is not only a tool for understanding the world, but should also be treated as a tool for changing it, an act of wider social significance. Now we are focused less on traveling itself, and more on travel writing, publishing, lecturing, organizing Travel Houses and other projects that the global travel community (and, by extension, the community of human beings) can benefit from.

Unfortunately, 99% of all the contents of our website are still only in Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian-Montenegrin language, but once all the important technical things have been completed, we will focus our attention on building up English section.

Blind Cartographers: a Workshop

2012-08-17T09:14:19+02:00

Serbia Travel Club invites you to take part in the free workshop in Istanbul for everyone who likes to draw, aptly named Blind Cartographers. Learn how to draw maps to express your ideas and feelings, map out information, convey messages or tell stories.

The Travel Club in Lonely Planet Guidebook

2012-06-13T15:48:11+02:00

Serbia Travel Club has been recommended by Lonely Planet in their Eastern Europe guidebook published in October 2011, as a valuable resource for traveling in Serbia. This is an important step for our organization, which gives us motivation to keep working on building a global culture of independent, research and creative travel.

Seventh Annual Night Hiking

2012-05-09T16:17:51+02:00

Serbia Travel Club invites you to the Seventh Annual Night Hiking. We're going to Beljanica mountain in Eastern Serbia, on Saturday, May 26. We'll arrive at the foot of the mountain early in the afternoon, set the camp there and hang around until after midnight, when we'll start the ascent...

STC Sticker Art: Travel Stickers

2012-05-03T00:53:35+02:00

Serbia Travel Club has published a series of six illustrated travel stickers. This is our first sticker/street art project. We'd like to add an interesting detail to the streets - one that will amuse a passer-by, inspire them and provoke them to think...

The Travel Club at the SHARE conference!

2012-04-22T21:54:28+02:00

Serbia Travel Club will take part in the SHARE2 Conference in Belgrade! Lazar Pašćanović and Uroš Krčadinac will give a talk about the culture of independent and creative travel on Saturday, April 28, on 14:30h in the Americana Hall of the Belgrade Youth Center.

Independent Travel: A Lecture

2012-04-14T16:27:43+02:00

Earlier this year, we've given two lectures titled "Culture of Independent Travel", in Serbian cities Belgrade and Pancevo, in cooperation with the Russian organization called Academy of Free Travels. We have translated a couple of short excerpts into English and made the subtitles, so feel free to check it out.