Cobana Coliving creative week
Marzo 25-31 2022

Rural Coliving connections in Europe

At the end of March 2022 I was invited to a ‘creative week’ by David, the founder of the new rural coliving Co-bana based in Transylvania, Romania. The week was organized thanks to Living Coliving group, with Andreea Rusu present with us.

I could meet amazing people: founder of other rural Colivings in Europe (Augustin from Anceu Coliving in Spain, Katia from Chateau Coliving in France, Morgane actively working for Swiss Escape and Greek Escape, and other coliving enthusiast one more nice than the other).

 

Main results of the week

The results of the week were many.

  • feedback and help to David in designing and ‘test’ the structure of the new born Co-bana Coliving
  • meet in person and experience amazing time together with new friends met just online
  • share experiences about our daily operations in the coliving and learn a lot from more experienced colivings like Anceu
  • think about acting as a network of people sharing the dream of rural coliving spaces based on community experience in different rural areas of Europe.

Discussions, visits, connections

The region of Transylvania is wonderful and Cobana Coliving is in the middle of that region, in a small town called Zarnesti. Apart from the attractions of the area (like the famous castle of Bran, the mountains and trekking, Brasov) we could spend a very comfortable week and I was happily struck from the easiness in mobility. Infact we could walk directly to the town in 5 min and reach the shopping places and a very nice self service restaurant for everyday Romanian workers that was fitting perfectly our needs (spare time in cooking, taste local food, have a break from work).

David is enthusiast and with a lot of good energy to give life to his dream of Cobana. The rhythm of days and evenings was intense and made of group talks, one to one chats, planned sessions on shared subjects, trips and fun moments.

The feeling was to be among real good friends with a lot of things to share and it was the first time I was meeting all of them, coming from different parts of Europe, with different experiences of life and ages, but all aiming to share a ‘light’ community life style exactly as we experience in Tertulia every day. And it was even better than home for me, as I was experiencing the ‘coliver’ life from the ‘other side’ for once, and now I understand better why Rural Colivings are so attractive and even so important to nourish the idea of how important is in our lives a community dimension.

Other connections

We could also connect with a very nice ‘urban’ coliving in Bucharest, called Vine21, with whom we could find a lot of points in common.

At the end I can say that we were building a network of connections between people and spaces with the same visions, in a pleasant and informal way, with the simplicity of spending good time together and knowing that, somewhere, someone is putting energy and work to impact society with concepts and values shared between the all of us. And this make things more fun!

Francesco Boldrini