So very welcome to another episode of the Travel Diaries.
This time it's not so much about our current travel situation.
It's more about my reflection of the years we spent on La Palma in the Canary Islands.
And I needed to say that this time was really, really good for us.
It put life into a broader perspective because I come from a very boring background.
My parents are super boring.
At least the dad, my stepdad and my mom, who I grew up with, are very boring people.
And they always thought I'm a fucking freak.
And living on La Palma and meeting actual freaks made me realize that I'm not a freak
and I'm quite in the middle, I would say.
that was very healthy for me and I was able to work on a lot of things in these years I really
enjoyed that to go really deep into who I am what do I want and all these things to really narrow
down to yeah to the core maybe even so as this podcast is about education I wanted to share a
little bit about the educational things that went on on La Palma. Yeah I don't even know where to
start to be honest. So we'll start with the free school my son went to. Before I start I really
need to say that not all of our experiences there were great, far from it, but all of them were very
very valuable. Maybe you know this gut feeling when you meet someone for the first time or a
group of people even in your like something is off but somehow you I didn't trust it in this case
and it turned out like years later I was fucking right what a nice feeling in this case shitty
feeling because being right about these people meant also that yeah the whole story wasn't that
good but I really want to share this with you because from the educational perspective I think
this is quite interesting because if you choose to take the responsibility for your child's
education in your own hands you are going out there and you are looking at other people how
they do educate their children and all these projects are out there especially the projects
where a couple of parents come together and build something for the kids so I came there to the
Canary Islands with my son and I was really really convinced that I want to have a free school for him
like a very small project where he is close to the kids and can yeah really bond with the kids
have a good time there and discover life somehow so I was really really lucky to find a free school
from like kind of hippie community they weren't like not all of them lived together
but they were like quite close they lived all in the same area of the island
quite similar kind of people I would say
the funny thing is that always resonated in my head over the years like was in university I had
someone in my class and she was best friends with a hippie girl and she always told me
you know what these hippie people are the ones who are the most close-minded regarding
outsiders and I was always wondering if she's right so from my experience now I have to say
at least for the hippies I met on this island this is so true if you look different if you
have different living standards you're automatically out they would say in the
beginning it was like yeah bugging me a little bit because I really wanted to be part of this
hippie community and I know that I'm a hippie by heart and compared to the people I know in Germany
I also look very hippie from the outside but for them I wasn't hippie enough I already felt this
from the very first second but it is what it is I thought at least we agreed on what free education
might look like I thought so Pali started to go to the school it took us some time to to get a
place there and I had the feeling like they are not really welcoming other kids like that are not
having the same lifestyle i do understand because of course you want to shield your kid and you want
to keep the community close and you want to really yeah know the influences from outside i do
understand that fully so i think it was it was well there were about like 10 to 15 families
sometimes more sometimes less um and through working with these families like really close
because everyone had to take on some kind of responsibilities like from building stuff for the
kids organizing workshops or stuff like that the finance team and all these little things that
belong to some kind of project like this you really get to know the people and i i'm really
good in sensing first second how this how a person is what their weakness is what their ego is long
you know what I mean so seeing like the dark shadows of everyone which is not a bad thing
it's actually really cool if you're open-minded and you're able to work with it but I think we
weren't so connected that we were actually able to talk about these kind of things and I really
didn't care I need to say so I yeah I had the perception of really feeling into so many different
kind of families and personas very very interesting and in La Palma people are so
direct with who they are like they are so they put it on the table if you're a
I don't know part-time shaman who never really went to the jungle but is giving
out ayahuasca to everyone who feels like it and then you have like really
yeah all these yeah I would say healers lightworkers I know that you know
probably that not all of these so-called light workers or healers are really on a good path
I really figured out after all these years on the Canary Islands that most of them are so
fucked up that they I don't know that what they need is what they practice that is what I really
found out so within this educational community I really found that there was a queen and a king
and like this ayahuasca shaman the psychiatrist that really needs psychological help this is what
i found out this is how i felt um for example her kid i think her kid was already 14 and
she never washed not even one plate in the house she never cleaned anything which is okay and the
was always complaining she's never doing anything in the house did you tell her to do no she didn't
so these kind of um yeah people i really saw so many personas from from the distance because i
never really became part of the group but i spent so much time with them organizing all these cool
things and yeah having all these meetings with them so i really was able to uh yeah draw a lot
pictures. One family I really think was interesting. They were really really
nice parents, really awesome parents and they gave to their... I think their son was
two years old, they gave him San Pedro and I thought that is really interesting.
In the beginning I thought, oh my god you cannot do this and now I have a very
different perception of this because if you don't live in a society where these
things are like forbidden but it's a part of everyday life and what I learned
is that in Mexican tradition some villages some women take coyote when
they give birth so I think including this I mean we can discuss about if it's
okay to give it to a child but very interesting and I found that these parents were the
the yeah the ones with the yeah who were the healthiest so to say even though I wasn't friends
with them but from the outside I really thought how they raised their kid was beautiful because
they were full of love like real love and the others were like these were like fake
I call them om shanti shanti bitches if you know what I mean like these fake people
so I want to tell you a little bit about the project initiators the founders who
picture themselves or who present themselves as so open-minded so loving so acceptable to
all beings and everything that they are not really um but i found that out later and later i mean i
always had the gut feeling but i didn't have no evidence whatsoever so i trusted that
this was good enough to be a good school for my son what i found out over the years that these two
were leaders like in a sex cult that was I don't know present on the island for like 15 years called
the angels that is hilarious and they were really worshiping an old blind lady she's dead now I think
for a couple of years even and they had to have sex with each other like all of them in this cult
to clean their karma which I think is hilarious but everyone has different beliefs so I'm not
judging this what I judge is that they had a kid in this cult like the two founders of the school
and they raised him as the new king of the new world and these kind of things I think is
just an egotropy thing. I don't know. So I'm still not fully there understanding how you can tell
your child he's the king of the new world, which is interesting because in everyday life, before I
knew about this I always felt like he treated as the king of the school And I was always wondering why does this kid has more rights as all the other kids But I blamed it on he the kids of the founder and not he the king of the new world
And when I talked about other parents, I think I had like two parents that I was able to talk about these kind of things.
they confirmed that they had the same feeling and that they found it quite weird because it
wasn't the usual kid has more rights because it's the founder's kids it was worshipped also by other
teachers and you will understand why later on um yeah so this kid has had more rights
and I really think that in this community they said every parent is equal but I really felt like
some people are more equal than others if you know what I mean and so some had more rights and some
were told to have that they have rights to decide and to to vote and to create but in the end
nobody was able to create but who the founders thought were yeah good enough to create for them
I would say um and it was always covered with a layer of oh we all love each other we don't
criticize so it was really hard to talk about these things because if you if I'm an open person
and in all these meetings I always said hey this is not going right for me I would like to create
this or that and it was always like yeah yeah you can do this you can do this but when I actually
did it it was like forgotten and never talked about again so yeah in the beginning I wasn't
so involved with this but I'm going to tell you a bit more about this later so I think this um
let's talk about this general educational direction I would say um you have to picture it like that
This is a quite remote island and the north is pretty wild.
So even more remote.
And in a very, very small village where only German people live.
And it's a very small village.
This school was there, was located there.
So these kids never really left the school.
There was no adventure.
There was no showing them the world, showing them the island, all the options.
And this is a beautiful island with lots of indigenous heritage, beaches, wild beaches, forests, volcanoes, museums, little villages with a lot of history.
Food, you can explore food.
I mean, there's so much to do, basically.
Climbing, hiking, horseback riding, diving, sailing.
I mean you name it it's an adventure to live there but these kids were kept in
this school on this yeah like quite boring terrain and yeah it was for me it
was quite yeah I didn't understand why they were not exploring the island with
this millions of ideas kids have and why they were kept in this yeah boring
environment over there so yeah once I talked about this with them and they were like yeah
they don't need to learn those things because they don't need it for the new world it was basic
things even to support them learn how to read and these kind of things I'm not a strict person I
know that every child has their own rhythm but if you don't have a book you're not gonna read
and if you only have books that are like 30 years old or 20 years old and they don't
yeah that that are not interesting enough to you it's really hard for you to pick it up as a child
and learn reading from what from sitting in the same tent every day it doesn't make sense so
when i saw when i was talking about this with the founders it came really down to they don't need
those things in the new world so we are not gonna encourage them to learn any of these things
same time they were always like yeah we have material to learn how to read and to do maths
and all these things but it was never really child-led or supported by the kids interest it
was always a little bit more about their ideas and this is what I find difficult because I have
ideas about my life in the world but I try to stay open-minded what my child thinks that the
world is like and what kind of world he wants to live in I'm not a big fan of gaming but my son is
gaming so I think you have to draw a line where your personal belief starts and the personal
belief of your kids starts um I'm not a huge fan of brainwashing so I think kids are entitled to
explore everything and to have their own opinion and I didn't see that there enough
um and I also thought like even if they don't need these things for the new world whatever this
might be or look like what about now I mean some kids were really interested to learn but they were
somehow kept from it um and it was always said like the kids can decide what they learn and stuff
and I was always like from what they don't have material they don't have an access to interesting
things to play with and then they started to buy here and there some kind of lego and these kind
of things but the kids had to work for it they had to craft things and sell it on a yeah like
handcraft market and most of the kids they didn't even want to do it but they were pressured into it
And it sounds weird that I let this happen to my child, but it wasn't abusive or any way.
And my child always said like, no, I don't want to do it.
I did something else in this time with my best friend.
So he was choosing if he wanted to be part of that or not.
And with all the money, I mean, it wasn't a lot.
The kids had like a democratic choice what to buy.
and you can imagine some kids had more rights and to choose what to buy than others so it is what it
is in the end some kids had things they were interested in and some still didn't so this was
one of the reasons my child left because he said like I want to learn I want to experience stuff
but they keep me from it and you can imagine if kids have this boring environment and nothing
really to explore they tend to create drama inside the community to explore something even
if it's just this kind of emotions because kids want to explore and they want to have some kind
of adventure and so my child always told me like it's too much drama within the community
and not enough like adventure exploration outside of the community and I really think exploring
the social structures you can do this while hiking you don't have to sit around and and
don't do it the good part is um the kids didn't have to go to school if they didn't like it they
could just stay home and do whatever they wanted so i treated it like an option if he wanted to go
and if not and he had his two best friends in the school who were way more like him and the parents
yeah were a bit more open-minded so it was always quite nice for him anyway to yeah to get out of
of home and to be with his friends and these kind of things and I really think all these negative
things I tell you now of course it's it's not the whole story the rest of the stories they had
really great times over that they were playing a lot and they just had a yeah a very nice time
in general but not deep enough for my understanding and what I really didn't like was that these
founders they were always the one who were choosing the teachers and I was always thinking dude I'm a
teacher first of all I would like to have a say in this I would like to get you know these even if I
wasn't a teacher I'm the mom I'm paying for this and it wasn't cheap at all I really want to know
who these people are that are spending four hours a day with my child but you never heard a say in
this so they were really yeah choosing from my perspective like incompetent persons like basic
kindergarten teachers so to say but what I want for my child were like competent coaches
and in one situation the kids like at least my kid and two other kids they felt really
uncomfortable with one of the teachers like a male figure and they told me and so I told the
founders that there are some kids that don't feel comfortable and it led to such a disgusting
shit show that in the end it was somehow my fault that the third founder like the inventor of the
educational foundation so to say the educational idea left the school and in the end it was my
fault because i spoke up and so the minute you talk about what you feel like is in misalignment
you were the one to blame for the misalignment and this is what i found out quite late
because I was gaslighting gaslighted into believing I mean it didn't work because I'm
not stupid but they really try to gaslight people into believing that if they talk up
they are the problem it worked for some parents they made them leave the school later on these
kind of things if they yeah really wanted to change something in the school which is their
right if it's a community project so they were like asked to leave the school these kind of things
really really crazy yeah so what I really thought what is interesting was the finance issue because
I've been in the finance team for quite some time and I always had the feeling like I'm doing the
maths and still there is money missing and I'm not stupid I can't count and I have a calculator
and I have the expenses and incomings of the school right in front of me and still I always
have the feeling of money's going somewhere which I couldn't really yeah understand and after some
years I really found out why and you will find out too because I'm gonna tell you and I need to say
the whole time I've we've been with the school the school was taking the location was the founder
house I mean what is that they all were always complaining about oh my god all these kids every
day around our house we want to have some privacy but the same time they were responsible for finding
a new place they wanted to be responsible for this there were really other parents that wanted to be responsible for this and they didn let them and they never found a place but they kept on
complaining. They wanted to solve it like that. They wanted to manifest a rich person stepping by
and I'm not kidding you to buy them a house for the school. So this is what they were manifesting.
it never happened in all these years i've been with these guys i think i know them now for five
years it never happened the school doesn't exist anymore for good reasons um yeah so basically the
founders decided what free education is like they decided where the school is located they
pretty much decided everything um and in the end they started to pay themselves for like really
basic jobs every parent had to do but they paid themselves from the school money because they were
like yeah it's on our land and it's not it wasn't even the land so they've been living there for free
um and so on it it just showed a kind of misbalance um yeah but it is what it is they then started to
really walk around naked and my child confronted them he was like yeah I don't really like that
because you are strangers to me and I don't really want you to talk to me while you're naked or
running around naked where the school is taking place they never told me about this I mean my
kid told me of course and after a couple of times this happened I called them out I was like dude
the kids told you they don't like that they feel uncomfortable that you're running around naked
and talk to them while you're naked and I think this is crossing uh like a line uh it doesn't have
to do anything with not being allowed to be naked because they wanted to make it about yeah you're
uncomfortable with being naked and these kind of things and I really think you have to separate
if it's your home if it's school time and how comfortable are the kids with it and I know that
in the overall village community that doesn't touch the school but if they had a problem within
this community they were living in everyone had to sit in a circle naked even the kids the
teenagers and I think I would draw a line there because in the end you make kids do it
especially teenagers to solve a problem and I don't really understand why kids have to be part
of it especially if it's not your kid I mean if it's your own family and you want to solve problems
like this it's okay I guess but making other people do it I think it's yeah everyone can
decide for themselves but i thought it's at least for my understanding was a bit too much
i mean i'm an open-minded person but i wouldn't i wouldn't want to be naked in front of kids i
don't know all the time and talk to them i mean what is that yeah so all in all uh after i think
two and a half years he attended the school one and like with every crazy situation that came up
it was enough for me it didn't make sense anymore and my kid didn't want to go there anymore because
he felt like he's wasting his time it's more drama than actual support or coaching so and I really
felt like they tried to gaslight me and yeah I wasn't allowed to organize anything for the kids
even if they asked me like yeah we want to know more about podcasting we know more about bitcoin
we want coaching we want adventures and i try to really organize all these things but
it i was never allowed to carry it out so i invested a lot of time and money into
yeah these beautiful kids when yeah in the end nothing happened
yeah and i remember one meeting uh that i made them speak about the problem in general that i
think that we are not communicating in a good way that we agree on yeah we want to change this
uh in yeah in balance between the parents and it's more like lip service than anything else
and everyone had to vote on if we can go on like this or not if we believe in this change like it
was very vague it wasn't really anything concrete and I was really the only one opting out I was
like dude who's believing that I don't and I was the only parent who was like no I'm out of this
and the parents of my kids best friends they already left school like months ago I was the
only one left like the rebellious one they they said this was really the point for me that I
thought okay you're all brainwashed by these founders there was never any change initiated
the last 10 times we talked about it so why should it be like that this time it's like a ridiculous
clown world that let's let's leave it like that and i think one thing that really fucked me up
seeing no compassion whatsoever by the founders like compassion for themselves yes but anything
else no they um attracted i mean they had to attract new people for the school because they
were losing a lot of parents every year because they were dropping out because of the circumstances
that were not really satisfying for parents nor the kids.
So I know that two families moved from La Gomera to La Palma.
One of the families even bought a house over there
so the kids could attempt this school.
And yeah, like false marketing,
this vision crumbled and the curtains fell.
The parents, these two families, they moved back to La Gomera.
They had to sell their house.
they had to buy a new house on the other island I mean that's just crazy for me I would really feel
bad but they didn't they were like yeah not everyone is in for this mission and I really
felt bad because it was just false marketing they yeah were like yeah they were like
lured into something that is that wasn't it but it is what it is
um so when my kid left the school I was like okay leave it like that whatever is is going on there
let it let it let it be because the other families were quite happy in the end there
were only three other families that didn't leave the school so it was a very close-knit circle
and I was like they like this way of living so that's not my business anymore I was just
happy for all the nice times we had together and it really called it a day so to say
and a couple of nights before we left La Palma for good the former teacher called me and I really
tried to talk about all these issues with her because she was always out of all these things
she was yeah I'm just the teacher please don't involve me in anything else and I always thought
that this is weird because we were only like a couple of people why don't you want to be involved
but i respected that a lot because it was a lot of drama and i tried to talk about all these issues
with her and she was like no you are wrong you see all of that wrong it's it's they're great
people there's nothing to complain about you're really just out of your mind and for a second i
was like this is crazy maybe I'm I'm a weirdo it might be that was what it is but in the end I
talked about this with my kid and he was like no she's quite basic she she might not had the chance
to grasp the like to see the bigger picture so I was like okay let's see and yeah she called me a
couple of nights before we left the island and she would confirm everything that I told her and
even worse at some point she was like they didn't pay her anymore because they told her
they run out of money which I think is hilarious because with all the fees the parents had to pay
how can you run out of money it's you have no rent to pay no nothing no bills no electricity
crazy no material it was being bought just one teacher so then when the money stopped flowing
she started thinking and she started discovering late but at least she did it so she left the school
immediately and she confirmed everything to me and she also said that when we left the situation
became worse and worse because the founder invited more and more so to say teachers or
helpers from their cult. They never called it a sex cult. They just called it their community.
And the former teacher, she really felt weirded out by the people that have been presented to her
as their new colleagues. And then one day she understood what was happening there, that these
people were not harmless at all that they were quite involved in a yeah in a direction that is
not educational but yeah personal motivation in terms of yeah personal connections between them
and the cult leaders the school founders so the former teacher she thinks that all this money
was flowing in the pockets of the owners which I think is quite funny because they always made me
feel like shit for wanting to work wanting to make money and all these things in the end and
they loved my money because I spent quite some money on that school for materials that never
came and these kind of things yeah so in the end I was right that was a nice feeling what wasn't so
nice is that I was right about dark things going on in the background of some people's lives and
that yeah I'm just happy that never any child was being harmed or yeah I would say
yeah there was no harm for these kids it was always a for the kids quite positive environment
that was more about yeah the social structures within the group than real education
so a bunch of free kids roaming around which is really nice they were in nature they were free
whatever to do they were free to spend time only with their best friends and
just connect with the group for like lunch and these kind of things and
I would say it was a really nice time for them Also I told you now the background story this is not what the everyday life of the kids was about if i if this was the case my kid would have attended exactly one hour and then this would
have been it but i can say these two and a half years i've been involved with them two years
were very very nice for the kids and the last six months i would say were more and more complicated
when the whole story or the cart house was falling i would say but even then these kind
of background stories were never brought to the kids or anything like that it was yeah
that was the good thing i need to say about all these dramatic things going on between the parents
when it came to the kids we were all very aligned with that they have to be free and that they
should not be involved in any of these things so they were always pretty much protected by every
parent by the teacher herself she was the horde of the school every kid loved her too
i really they loved her and so they really had just a good time chilling out chilling in the sun
what I think is it was way too boring and way too dramatic I mean way too boring for the kids
and way too dramatic for the parents and yeah what I really learned from this that
I really need to trust my gut instinct way more because I mean I don't regret being involved in
all of this because I made friends, my kid made very good friends, the friendships are lasting
till today, it's beautiful and I learned a lot about this fake prophets, fake shamans and fake
light workers, healers and what you want to call it. I learned a lot about human beings, about
people, about personas, about personalities, ego, all these things and what I really think is
beautiful none of them were vaccinated they were all like living a really cool lifestyle like
everyone was super interesting and if you just took one of the families like I would say really
90% of all these people were really beautiful interesting people that I really enjoyed spending
time with. So I would say this whole drama thing made up like 10% of the whole story.
And yeah, but these kind of stories aren't told enough because I know so many people now that
tell me very similar stories from their projects the kids attended.
and it's somehow being pushed under a rock but it is what it is
and in general what I really think about spending so much time on the Canary Islands
I had to flee from two wildfires one volcanic eruption which had like crazy earthquakes
5.2 I think was the the maximum earth cake it was really really interesting to
to witness something like this because when in your life I mean in my life I
never witnessed a volcanic eruption and with every earth cake I mean the house
was shaking it was really like a moment of oh my god am i living my life right and nobody died i
mean a lot of people lost their houses their homes their jobs which is very unfortunate and what i've
seen is that even on the canary islands where the government is so small even there nobody cares
about you even they were neighbors they all know each other but still help is uh yeah helping the
people is is none of their business i i think i think and there were still like old people living
in containers still it i think the volcano erupted in 2021 yeah that's crazy and what i really learned
to love is the indigenous culture like the indigenous people that lived on these islands
that were wiped out by the Spanish people it's really nice to see their places and their
petroglyphs and to see and feel really what their life could have been like because there are
pyramids on the Canary Islands nobody talks about that as well and this beauty of nature
this wild nature the wild atlantic ocean it's just something else i mean i got used to be in
this wilderness and to really face strong winds strong waves and fire and volcanoes and
it's fucking beautiful and now that i'm not there anymore i miss it so much
what I really don't miss is this crazy German hippie community over there that is really
something else but I wouldn't miss out on this opportunity to get to know so many crazy people
because of their interesting world views their history their personal yeah quirky behaviors I
really think it is beautiful all in all and yeah maybe one thing about this school most of the
details like the disgusting details i found out in the last couple of weeks before i left before
we left the school before it was just a gut feeling and yeah what i really think pictures
or describes this
the hippie community on this island
quite well is
that they are welcoming the new earth
where everyone is loving
everyone else and
we are all at peace and one
in harmony
but they live quite the opposite
like quite the opposite
of what they preach
but anyway I wouldn't want
to miss this time
I really yeah I think it's
a beautiful experience um but i need to say it for me it was um too boring to go to this even the
most beautiful beach you can i personally cannot spend years and years and years going to always
the same caves to to explore always the same wild beaches that's too boring and i really wanted to
see more of the world like after yeah discovering and experiencing so many crazy stories on this
island um i really thought like i want to have more of this and more somewhere else um because
i really came to this island with the yeah thought yeah with this that i didn't like people at all
and after all these crazy people I met there
now I think like I want to learn so much more about people
I want to get to know so many more people
learn about their stories
about their craziness and all these things
I think it's beautiful
it's fucking beautiful
and unfortunately the island is not what it used to be
in the four years I lived there
there were quite some changes
from being a wild, wild spot to being a smart island and you can see it.
The changes are real and they are fast and I wouldn't want to live on a smart island to be honest.
So I decided that with all the stuff that is going on in this world, exactly that island I choose to live.
And I would, maybe I would have spent even more time there.
but living on a smart island where you are followed by drones if you're hiking the wrong path
if yeah civilians and there's a lot of military action on on the island as well so for me it was
like a a hard decision that took me quite over a year to take and to prepare for but in the end
I don't regret leaving the island I don't regret spending so much time over there because I learned
so much I met my very very best friend who's the exact opposite of all these preaching praying
hippies she looks nothing like a hippie and she's the in her heart the most hippie person I've ever
and she's all about love and it um yeah really i a little i lost a little bit like this
trust in humanity because of all the crazy people i met in the school um because of the story but
she my best friend she really showed me the opposite of that and that made me re-fall in
love with life and people i thought it's i wanted to share that to make you see not only bad vibes
on this island
yeah so what i think is quite interesting i lost two so-called friends i mean we weren't close
friends but when i told them that i would leave the islands they never they ghosted me basically
and they don't even live on the island i don't know what their problem or conflict is with me
leaving the islands but i found that quite interesting that people like you because you
live at a certain place whatever for whatever reason they never visited me over there
never intended to quite interesting so if you have some i don't know interesting experiences
with educational projects or anything like that.
I would love to hear about it.
Thank you so much for listening.
Oh, my God.
Thank you so much for listening.
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You