Saturday 8 Oct: Casa del Tibet in Barcelona
Ven. Thubten Wangchen, the director of Fundación Casa del Tibet in Barcelona, had advised me to come to Tibet House on Saturday from 15:30. Some people from the Barcelona Tibetan community would then be in Casa del Tibet be present. At 4pm, a lecture for women began in which I was allowed to participate. Thubten himself would not attend, he currently has commitments in Dharamsala and Buthan. He sits in the Tibetan Parliament in exile.
Only 80 Tibetans live in Barcelona, including children. A very small community for such a metropolis.
A little after 3.30pm, I unsuspectingly arrived with my bike at Casa del Tibet. I expected to meet some Tibetans there who were getting everything ready for the women's event. It turned out differently. A real welcoming committee of about 15 people was waiting for me with Tibetan flags and bells. They welcomed me very warmly and I was given a ceremonial Katha, a scarf symbolising purity and compassion, draped around the neck. So heartwarming.
In an upstairs meeting room, I spoke to the reception committee for half an hour about the conduct of the #cyclingforTibet campaign and the motivations that led me to start campaigning for the Tibetan cause. The audience was very grateful and said that it is very important to them that non-Tibetans also want to support their cause, to get more hearing in the West. More specifically in Europe, we note that the media is very silent on the grave human rights violations in Tibet, and therefore the general public is hardly aware of the Chinese misdeeds. The economy first, stupid...
A nice detail: the water I was offered came from Viladrau, the village where I did a retreat last week in the Tushita meditation centre.
After the short speech, I also asked some questions of the audience, and so I learned, thanks to translation by Migmar Tsering, the escape story of 86-year-old Kalsang Dolma in 1959. I am going to share that in brief in a separate Facebook post.
Thank Ven. Thubten Wangchen, Migmar Tsering, Casa del Tibet and local Tibetan community for this wonderful welcome. 
16 September: Opening the door at Diamondway Buddhist Centre in Tallinn The centre's meditation sessions are open
