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BACK IN 2010, French photographer Antoine Bruy began hitchhiking around Europe without any fixed route.
Along his travels, he met people who had entirely abandoned civilisation and gone off-grid, in favor of an isolated country existence, living off the land.
These stunning images, from his “Scrublands” project, show what he found:
Over the last 30 years, numerous Europeans have begun to move out of the cities and head for sparsely populated areas like the Sierra de Cazorla mountains in Spain (shown above), the French Pyrenees mountains, and parts of Switzerland.
Bruy began meeting such people after volunteering at farms through WWOOF, an organization that places traveling volunteers at organic farms throughout the world.
This property in the French Pyrenees is owned by a German man, who moved with his family here 25 years ago. He has since renovated the shack to be a completely self-sufficient house.
Although his family has left, the German continues to live here with four other people and a revolving door of 20 or so travelers.
This boy lives with his father on an adjacent property in the Pyrenees. They similarly live off the land without electricity.
This is a secondary living structure at the property in the Pyrenees. Though it looks small in the photo, the teepee is actually almost 30 feet tall.
This is where traveling volunteers stay during the summer months.
This man has been living at the house for the last two years.
This man raises goats and sheep with his wife in the province of Ardèche in southern-central, France.
This man is a nomadic shepherd from Germany, who travels from farm to farm in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland helping shepherd cows and sheep.
The English woman who owns this property got hit by a car while she was bicycling 20 years ago.
With the money from her settlement, she bought property in Spain and began building DIY living structures like this composting toilet.
Three families live in the Spanish dome and work together, maintaining a community garden of fruits and vegetables.
The land is owned by a web developer who spends half his day making websites and the other half maintaining the property.
This woman from Germany moved with her husband to Switzerland 20 years ago to escape a city lifestyle.
They are now completely self-sufficient, farming their own food. She was a literature and philosophy professor prior to moving to Switzerland.
Her husband was an engineer before leaving the city lifestyle.
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Ah, the Saudis….a great bunch o lads.
Really?! I am shocked…NOT!
@Optimus Prime: I am shocked that it took them 1yr to crack the phone encryption. I thought they bragged about a company which sold decryption software for iPhone.
Maybe US is just choosing right time to out the news.
@Optimus Prime: Time to call in the decepticons Optimus!
How do you know someone has an iPhone? They tell you.
@Oretani Wildlife: How do you know someone has no value to contribute to a discussion but craves attention like a little child, irrelevant jokes.
@Oretani Wildlife: what a contribution!
@Oretani Wildlife: that joke is about 9 years old. Well done.
@Oretani Wildlife: Some would argue that the only people who talk about iPhones are the ones that don’t own one!
Touchy touchy, boys. You should call round and brighten up my day.
Okay so it was Saudi nationals that carried out the 911 attack and this one but they are big big customers of the arms exporters and bomb industry, and allies in the fight against whoever is the current bogey man.
When you train Saudi Army pilots in the USA and U.K. what can go wrong ?
Saudi kingdom is an abomination in the 21century, one family controlling trillions of dollars of the country’s wealth for their personal benefit. I’m a small capitalist but for such a regime to exist, and bizarrely supported by the USA, while US pretend to preach democracy, US foreign policy has always displayed a total hypocrisy to its espoused values, if there was any benefit to themselves. America first, yes that sums it up, f.u,,. the rest of the world. this cosy relationship with Saudi, us forces based there, is why Osama bin laden was motivated to start his war with the USA.
Get Carrie and Saul on the case!
@John Quill: Carrie’s watching Russian opera these days…(spoiler alert).
@Declan McArdle: saw it
It’s amazing that the terrorist have a 5 year old iPhone with all that info on it.
So the group behind it claimed it was them but the US gov is arguing that all iPhone users should have their privacy undermined, definitely by US government more than likely by others and also possibly non state actors because they weren’t 100% sure when the terrorist organisation said “that’s our guy!”, about a guy from a nation that produced 9/11 and many other attackers, that they were telling the truth?
I mean, if this stopped an incoming attack or something I could see the logic in having a debate but there’s no way this is worth even considering undermining everyone’s privacy, it’s law enforcement being either pedantic or too lazy (to trace his contact to the group through traditional means) or more than likely not trusting their Saudi counterparts which is a crack in the wall that should not be wall papered over yet again, especially at such a great cost to privacy.
Time to invade Iraq again so.
have your say