The author is Valery Khiltunen. Source www.ug.ru
In 2001, my friend and I decided to hitchhike around the perimeter of Europe together on a dare. And somewhere to go on foot. Imagine — you are walking along the coast, one foot in the oceans, and the other on land, and you just listen to the names: Boulogne-sur-Mer, Cannes, San Remo, Monaco, the island of Rügen (the same Buyan, by the way, from Russian fairy tales!), Brest-French, Gibraltar …
So, not far from San Remo, we accidentally stumbled upon such a structure. We named it «Object Double Seven Hundred». It began to be built about seven hundred years ago, gradually acquiring more and more new premises — and now there are about seven hundred apartments not apartments, caves not caves, well, a sort of unusual human habitation.
A few years ago it was completely empty. Monaco can be reached by bike from here, and the standard of living in the principality is one of the highest in the world. And there is always a need for tall and strong casino bouncers, police officers, waiters. It is no wonder that the Italian peasants, generation after generation, descended lower and lower from their high-mountain village, and gradually the vineyards withered here, and in the evenings fewer and fewer windows burned, until the last one almost went out. But then came the eccentric ecologists, of whom there are many now wandering through the mountains and valleys of the zau.e.zhya. We slightly corrected the half-rotted sign “ECOvillage Torri Superiori” and began to settle down. Without pesticides, gasoline, asphalt — in general, in complete harmony with nature. It was one of the happiest nights of my life. They gave me a bunch of keys and said — go choose, there are a lot of places. True, they warned that only a few dozen “caves” were renovated, the rest are medieval exotic and a little damp out of habit, but visiting thrill-seekers prefer to inhale this particular smell of centuries, free will. Here, as in Rabelais in the Thelema monastery, the slogan is: «Do what you want.» True, with a postscript: «If you are noble, generous, curious, and so on through the entire correct alphabet.»
There were Italian songs by the fire, a bit like our bard ones. There was the joy of recognizing “ours”. Two people understood Russian here: Luchilla once wrote a dissertation on Pushkin, and Josef migrated here to live from near Bratislava. He is one of the uncompromising «greens» — never in his life did he allow himself to drive a car, this fuming monster …
We drank, sang, ate, poked around a little in ecologically clean beds, together with the kids from the ceramic studio tried to burn pots, and we were not gods in this matter, but I experienced about the same joy as once, when one artist almost forcibly planted me at the easel and gave me a palette of oil paints. I then drew, as best I could, a little big man on a multicolored horse, the same as I saw in Damangur, but it was already the next morning when we saw the second, main miracle. It turned out that Torri Superiori is like an outpost, a remote outpost on the outskirts of the great and bright mystery of mankind.
… We were awakened late at night. A head stuck out in the doorway, very similar to the one that Harry Potter fans would easily recognize, but who doesn’t recognize him — bearded, fat and loves dragons. But I hadn’t seen the movie that day, so I didn’t recognize it. Well, bearded, persistent — you, he says, passed the test, now you can already go to Damangur. Go, they say, you need to go strictly to the north, to the North Star, but dawn is coming soon, and therefore it’s time for you — and here’s a lantern and a cake for you …
We hobbled, hobbled — the journey, I must say, was not easy, and not short. Pelicanikha met us. She turned out to be the spitting image of the second character from Harry Potter — that strict aunt who from time to time turned into a pussy. Only, perhaps, thicker. But the same badass. While we were following her in single file, she reminded us five times that on the territory of Damangur you can do a lot of things, but no smoking. God, just some paranoia! Well, we don’t smoke, we haven’t smoked, we’re not going to smoke, and we wouldn’t smoke even if they started torturing us … The Pelican didn’t have a beak — it’s something like a nickname or, as it were, a pseudonym. In Damangur, everyone has all sorts of wonderful nicknames, you know, fantasy works, after all, it was necessary to pick up or invent at least seven hundred funny words. Again this number. Maybe, I think, the seven hundred caves of Superiori are their emergency territory in case of an atomic war or a global flood? I was a naive person. Damangur is one of the few inhabited places on the planet that can withstand a direct hit by the same bomb that fell on Hiroshima, and that was by no means the smallest of the bombs. However, since the Damangur people continue to deepen the underground part of their republic, they will soon not be afraid of any rocket at all. Five years ago, when the people of Damangur announced their construction of the century, the eyes of the first guests popped out of their heads. A delegation from the Guinness Book urgently flew in — they called Damangur the largest man-made dungeon on the planet, dug without a specific economic need for forty years of hard round-the-clock work by a group of eccentrics who decided to save this world, and at the same time themselves.
This is very funny, but the second character we encountered here in the Alps, after Pelicanikha, was a crest, and he was eating something on the roof. The second Ukrainian, also from near Lvov, was dragging a large log. It turns out that since the time when the Damangur people finally came to the surface and launched a stormy construction on the ground, they needed working hands, but the roaming around the world from Podl’vov immediately sniffed out their benefits.
The main points of the Earth
The underground part of Damangur is something like a multi-storey Hermitage (this is for those who were in the Hermitage), and for the rest I inform you that almost everything, except, perhaps, flying panicles, that Harry Potter saw at Hogwarts, and with it the moviegoers, they could be seen in Damangur. Sliding walls, mysterious tunnels leading somewhere to the underworld, huge halls full of various equipment, which I would not hesitate to call scientific only if it was proved to me that alchemy, astrology, perpetual motion machines, time machines, philosopher’s stones It’s also, after all, science.
Long years of work in the science department of Komsomolskaya Pravda completely confused me in terms of the boundaries separating common sense from a miracle. To us on Pravda Street, on the sixth floor, inventors came in shoals, sometimes carrying such things that you can’t tell where is the truth and where is the six-story lie. Yaroslav Kirillovich Golovanov forbade us, yellow-mouthed, to yawn, listening to perpetual motion machines and all sorts of power energy flows that wash our planet both outside, in heaven, and inside, under the earth and sea. And when he was young, Dudintsev also bequeathed Golovanov not to miss a grain of genius even in the most muddy stream of vigorous delirium. Let the descendants figure it out and evaluate who we have here is a vigorous schizophrenic, and who is Leonardo da Vinci, who also expressed himself not very clearly to others.
So it was easy and simple for me in Damangur. I again pretended to be yellow-mouthed, remembered the lessons of my great teachers on Komsomolskaya Pravda and CAREFULLY listened to the Main Points of the Earth, where the energy flows of the living field of the planet intersect. These are, as it were, communication nodes, pain points, they need to be groomed and undead, and in no case should they be allowed to “sick” with the same diseases that the rest of the planet suffers from today. It will explode — it won’t seem enough, worse than any weather war, ozone holes and floods. Such points, according to the Damangur people, are located either very high in the atmosphere, or too deep underground. And only two are close enough to the surface. One is the one called Shambhala. Well, the second one — you probably also guessed where … If it were NOT in Damangur — why would you overstrain and equip it — just like good people clean springs with living water, which bad people just as diligently pollute. The only difference is that the springs can be dug in during the day, without much fear of others, and the Damangur people had to work in pitch darkness, and in secret from others, because if they found out about them in the year 1968, then their little the stupid pit would certainly have been filled with garbage, and the first handful of enthusiasts would certainly have been deported back to Paris, where many were from. Disillusioned with barricade ideals, a fairly large part of the conscientious youth took up the practical creation of a new world — communities, communes, eco-settlements, and there was a lot of nonsense there, far-fetched, flimsy, but there were such grandiose projects like Damangur. It is said that the writer Rowling in her youth was also not alien to free-thinking and made friends with radicals, although, however, those who are not radical in their youth are not in order with their hearts. It is also believed that everyone who has NOT lost his illusions and desire to make humanity happy with age, on the contrary, is not all right with his head.
But, therefore, there are exceptions to this old rule. Or am I crazy too. But my friend, a completely earthly and practical man, also had something to talk about with the Damangurians!
They seemed to know everything about medicinal herbs and those zirconium bracelets that buzzed our ears from TV screens, and even about GASIFICATION, which was quite strange. And it’s just that the Italian government, believing in the Damangur people, asked them to get involved in the implementation of serious socio-economic problems of the local hinterland — ordinary, above-ground, from where, like ours, young people are increasingly fleeing to cities where nature is sick and reserves are withering.
The people of Damangur, having consulted, accepted the offer of cooperation with the state. Now it’s not dangerous for them to stick out — you can’t close them, and if someone in their right mind decided to bury their hole, the noise in the press would be about the same as about the Afghan Taliban who blew up the giant Buddha.
… Lev Anninsky, a stubborn and caustic critic, simply itchs his hands to give a resounding slap in the face to any half-wit who dares to raise his hand to «How the Steel Was Tempered» in his presence. Because it is MORE than literature. It’s like a staircase There, to the world where tired, disappointed people don’t go («smoked» — as they would say in Damangur). And so I read from the same Anninsky that a frenzied interest in the transcendent, in its most diverse forms — from Tolkien to Rowling — is the call of the times, a sign that our children are no longer conceivable without wings. Who argues — a person WITHOUT grounding, with an eternally overheated antenna, is ridiculous and even dangerous to others. But still, Cervantes wrote his saga about Don Quixote, without him the adventures of Sancho Panza would have become, perhaps, clearer, but only without salt, somehow insipid …
Our children have almost drowned in a rather petty world, which we have drawn and built for them here.
Creativity and the gray man
… To my persistent questions, which I sent to Damangur by e-mail already from Moscow and after watching Harry Potter, did Rowling live with you, the Hogwarts entourage is painfully suspiciously similar to yours, — they didn’t tell me “no «. From which I did not draw conclusions, but wound something on my mustache.
I liked everything in Damangur, every detail hit both the eyebrow and the eye. When the lift lowered us to such a depth that my head was spinning out of habit and I better understood why the miners were banging their helmets on the Humpback Bridge with SUCH fury, we saw an incredibly beautiful mosaic laid out by the hands of all the inhabitants. The Battle was depicted there — each person, drawn in two faces at once, fought with himself. Seven hundred couples. Close your eyes and imagine. Well, I said, I understand, but do you really not have some kind of common enemy? My question was tricky — I knew that it was on it that all sorts of sectarians, manipulators break down, but I didn’t want to be zombified in my old age, turned into some kind of obscure faith, so that I also dug and rolled uphill here stones, like that unfortunate Sisyphus, deprived of the right to choose. … They led me through a long unfinished tunnel into some absolutely hellish hole, and at once a dozen lanterns illuminated a pretty, as it seemed to me at first, face of some indistinct color. Gray Man. Enemy number one for every Damangurian and for the entire federation as a whole. Devil, right? No. Much scarier. Stop man. To whom everything is already clear. Which puts an end to the place where everything just begins.
Then there was all sorts of poetry, but in a summary, I already read this in my childhood with Bruno Yasinsky — “do not be afraid of enemies … friends … be afraid of the indifferent”, let the reader remember, and why should I not enroll in such a sect, let me be processed to the fullest I don’t see any trouble here.
True, obtaining citizenship in Damangura is not much easier than in Monaco, where centuries-old genealogical evidence is required that you are a Monegasque, and not just some “trash” that came here only in the eighteenth century.
In Damangur, they don’t ask for genealogies — there are no surnames there, just nicknames. It is not the noble, but the creative essence that excites. Here everyone is at least a Master in something, others do not take root here. Here, every thing is inspired by love and beauty, otherwise no one needs it here.
There are HUNDREDS of workshops, studios, a parade of master classes, special courses. Once upon a time we were told in the old Komsomolskaya Pravda: if you dip any stump with ears into the saturated intellectual solution of THIS edition so that it can at least listen, in nine months a thinker will be born from it, and a clicker, and whoever you want …
Here, in this smart whirlwind — the smartest boys and girls in Russia. If Damangur, according to the definition of world futurology, is one of the model eco-villages, then any village — check with Dahl’s dictionary — consisted of “ends”: Tatar, Chukhon, Muslim … Well, then why not build a Russian End here in Damangur? Or in one of hundreds of other, albeit not so exotic, but also very attractive Schengen eco-villages?
… I inhaled in these settlements with full breasts the half-forgotten spirit of that sixth floor, the Scarlet Sail, the Curious Club, it was easy for me, I understood everything from a half-word. After all, all these mottos hung on the walls in those years: “Every business is creative, otherwise why?”, “Our goal is the happiness of people!”. And there was also a postscript “It can’t be otherwise!”.
Tower
Another photo shows one of the dungeons of Damangur. It’s hard to shoot there, and I’m not a photographer, sorry for the quality.
And in the picture — the author in the vicinity of one of the Finnish eco-villages against the backdrop of the Tower. If anyone carefully watched The Lord of the Rings, then he probably recognized the outlines of Saruman’s abode. This tower, as the old-timers say, was visited many years ago by an Englishman with the complex surname Tolkien, which was first translated into Russian as Tolkien, then as Tolkien, and only then settled on the familiar word Tolkien. Let’s not be obscure and cunning — it was not Saruman and Gandolf who lived in this Tower, but an ordinary person — however, with a big weirdo. He was a Scandinavian rich man, who was pissed off by millions, and he built something like an observatory in the thicket, only without a telescope — and locked himself there for several decades. With whom he talked there at night, only God knows or the devil. When he died, they almost forgot about the tower, or maybe they were afraid of ghosts — only it stood forlorn for almost a century, and they repaired it (attention, mysticism begins here again!) In the same year when Damangur opened its underground gates for guests.
For those who are still afraid of hitchhiking, we inform you that we know one inexpensive trail to this Tower, you can agree with fellow travelers that the round trip (Peter — Tower — Peter) will cost an adult seven euros, and a child will also get a discount can be knocked out. Only you need to go in a group of at least a class. And, excuse me, with passports and Schengen visas. A fairy tale is a fairy tale, but the Finnish border guards are only seemingly slow. How they click, how they seize the violator, they will not look at any pedagogical merits.
We will not reproach those who are depressed or weary in this place: what are you, you have already moved to the XNUMXst century — a century of freedom of movement, but you have not acquired a passport. Better tease the experience of Finnish schoolchildren. Once a year, for the Easter holidays, they all — young and old — take off and go somewhere far away from home. At least to Africa, which, by the way, is cheaper. True, no one goes to Russia — they were so intimidated by television with our horrors. And those Russians who most often flicker there also do not really add a desire to get acquainted with SUCH a country. How could they know that in the depths of the Siberian ores there are still boys reading Pushkin, and that, fortunately, not all Russian girls still look like ruminant ciliates in shoes?
EARN on trips themselves. They hold charity fairs, auctions, where they sell their own crafts, do not consider it shameful to perform paid concerts — in general, whoever is willing to do anything. All year long they crawl on all fours on geographical maps spread on the floor — they argue about where it is better to go, where it is more interesting. Oh, to lure these diligent children into the Russian outback! And then, after all, the Russians judge Western youth sometimes only by the gobblers from Hollywood horror films …
Homework
So, the idea of the Great Educational Tour is maturing. Short for BOT. This gives us reason to call small (preparatory) educational tours Boats. And here the name of Peter the Great comes to mind.
The author, as you read, offers to travel around the perimeter of the entire continent, with special stops in those places that are especially popular with children and teachers from all over Europe. There, beyond the dollar, judging by the circulation of books and box office receipts in cinemas, everyone has heard three names. Harry Potter, Frodo Baggins and the protagonist of The Alchemist Santiago. Spielberg took Potter seriously, Frodo will make his triumphant journey through the auditoriums for many more years, Nikita Mikhalkov is going to take on the film adaptation of Santiago, according to rumors. So children’s interest in these characters and realities is guaranteed for us for the next ten years.
And any teacher will tell you that the MOST important thing is to ignite and support a spark of at least some interest. Oh, this chewing generation with headphones on their heads … They themselves saw a lot, but on TV, it seems, they saw everything in general — and everything is completely in vain. And to wind on the core of interest any useful information from the field of mythology, history, geography — whatever! — that’s the job of the teacher.
So here’s your homework number one clear: re-read these books. Try, without hurting the plot, to write something from the school curriculum between the lines. We are not saying that it is easy — well, after all, a considerable reward awaits the stubborn: a trip with the whole class to visit Harry, Frodo and Santiago.
By the way, Selma Lagerlöf wrote her “Niels” in this way — after all, it was just a local history textbook for rural schools. But this “only” is worth a lot, since for several generations of Swedes the basics of patriotism have been taught precisely by this little book. Incredibly boring, by the way, for an adult reader, especially a zau.e.zhny, as experts say, who tried to translate this entire multi-page text from Swedish. So do not growl that, they say, Rowling writes rather clumsily, and Tolkien has flaws in style, and Coelho, Coelho … Whatever it is, it is. Write better, but at the same time so that millions will watch and read you. THEM — clings.
Task number two. It’s faster. Make an itinerary for one Big or several Small educational tours, saturating them to the maximum with points related to the texts of the selected books. The locations where Harry Potter was filmed, Tolkien’s hometown, the real geographic reference of the imaginary route of The Alchemist (much is clear from the text of these books).
Task number three. Suggest OTHER BOOKS, which can also become guides for our Botik. Radishchev. Afanasy Nikitin. Roerich. Turgenev. Tolstoy. Gogol. Darwin. Most of the people who wrote were very curious and restless — by the way, maybe that’s why they started writing because they considered it dishonest NOT to share their road impressions with as many people as possible. As with those who lived next to them, so with us, the descendants.
Task number four. The list of subjects on which lessons are given in Damangur, albeit unusual, but also, in general, lessons, occupies seven sheets of small type. Because with decryption. Not just “blacksmithing”, but “forging on copper”, “forging on silver” … — and so on in all corners of the periodic table, which can be processed with a hammer. Steiner’s coal-free houses, solar heating batteries … Airship building. Treatment without chemicals. Advantages of ECT training over Gestalt in group psychotherapy. Well, in general, everything that is required for a person of the future, living on earth today. Or underground. Or in the sky. Or at sea.
And what kind of branded trouble can you and your students offer to the people of Damangur for their School of the Future? How do they imagine the world of tomorrow that you are trying to prepare them for? What should be taught in the very first place, and what can, in general, be dispensed with?
Task number five. Continuation of task four. Damangur people love handy and big-headed people. So they always have the green light and the most favored nation treatment. In the vicinity of your school, probably, there are still craftsmen, healers, musicians? Who would you — if it were your will — would certainly ride around Europe as a «visiting card of Russia»?
Task number six. Remember, one very correct person in a case said that a thought cannot be deep — only a hole has the right to be deep. He did not know about our thoughtful hole in the Alps! In Japanese, “pit” is a mountain, and at Dahl and Pushkin it is also a stop-station where coachmen refueled and spent the night in order to again equip this Russian troika on their endless journey in the morning. And what other interesting «holes», besides Damangur, do you know in Europe?
Task number seven. We take an example from Finnish schoolchildren. Recall that they themselves earn money for their trips, while showing miracles of ingenuity. We accept your pets’ «business ideas» for the competition. Better, of course, already implemented, but we will also have an incentive nomination for the most stunning fantasies on the topic: «How I earned my first euros for a trip to Harry Potter, to Damangur.»
PS Valery Khiltunen, the author of the BOT idea, promised to share his rich experience of survival in Europe. Not everyone is given, like some professional vagabonds, to travel abroad for months without a bag in their pocket, while managing to visit the smartest houses and communicate only with those with whom it was interesting. He himself says that he can fully teach the Art of living on the road, the Science of doing without money, and that it was precisely this that was once taught in the Scarlet Sail of the old Komsomolskaya Pravda, where he once served as the captain’s first mate. But even if this fun skill is not inherited, then you can do without it.
There are now more than five hundred ecovillages in Europe, not necessarily as colorful as Damangur and Torri Superiori, but just as indifferent to profit. Those travelers who immediately manage to please the eco-settlers will be given shelter and food for free, while the rest will find a table and a house here, which will cost three to four times cheaper than ordinary campsites, motels, and hotels. Hey, travel agencies, please do not worry — we know you … Poor Laplanders have already fallen the first victim of Russian lovers of freebies. Hunting lodges are still being built in Lapland, where everyone can hide at night and where matches, firewood, and often canned food left by previous travelers are waiting for him. Well, so — recently, some especially nimble travel agencies in Russia began to SELL vouchers to these houses that belong to no one. The Laplanders even had to remember the long-forgotten Right of the Last — the one who came to the already occupied gatehouse has the right to drive away the one who stayed too long … We do not need this. After all, we are going to REHABILITATE the image of Russia, thoroughly damaged in recent years by hordes of shuttles, smugglers and rascals. Maybe this will be the main lesson of real patriotism — without further ado, by your own example, with skillful hands, a smart head, a ringing song — SMILE TO YOUR NEIGHBORS on the planet.
And let the Tales and the Miracle be reliable guides on our long road — after all, they are common to everyone and even cannons shoot at them slightly …