The End of Our European Adventure: Part One

Once again, this absence is far to long, and completely unwarranted.  Sure, I’ve been busy since I got home.  But not too busy.  I partially blame myself, for not feeling motivated to finish my blog.  I partially toss the blame to Jon, saying that I’m not ready to finish it until I get my pictures from him, to which he replies “I have four months of pictures to go through, you’ll get them when I get to them.”  Does he really expect me to wait?  I guess so.

I think the real problem is that, finishing the blog means that my trip is officially over.  And as excited as I was to come home and see my friends and family, I’m not ready for it to be over.  I’m ready to go back.  We’ll come back to that in a few more posts.

So, my job right this moment is to tell you about my last few days in Ireland, and our trip home.

Dublin was wonderful, as always.  Jenna was very welcoming, and we had yet another fantastic weekend with her.  We did a lot of walking, a lot of sight seeing, and surprisingly a lot of learning.  The Sunday afternoon we were there, we spent in Dublin’s Archaeology Museum with her mentor for her internship, who happens to be an archaeologist!  Neat!  It was a surprisingly busy afternoon at the museum, but we managed to huddle close as she explained the significance of some of the artifacts in the museum.  Our group grew in numbers as we went along too; I guess they thought we were a free tour?  Also, I learned that not all archaeologists like ancient Egypt.  Apparently it scares her.  Who knew!

We ate some wonderful food (battered fried sausage and chips is a close rival to my favorite fish and chips!), we enjoyed a few drinks, and soaked in the sights.  For the most part the weather was beautiful, except Sunday afternoon.  Before we knew it, Monday night was upon us and it was time to start packing and thinking seriously about a good night’s sleep.  Funny how when sleep is important, you don’t go to bed until well past midnight.

Tuesday morning ran pretty smoothly.  I got up early, showered, and had all our bags fully packed before Jon got up.  Since he’s a serious pain in the morning, I figured that would be a better way to start.  I unfortunately had to leave my walking stick in Dublin so Jon could try and get his through security.  He was far more attached to his, since he made it, and I decided that the chances of two people using them as a crutch would look a little suspicious.

We left after an abundance of hugs before Jenna even left for work, and headed to the bus stop.  The very friendly bus driver made sure we got off at the right stop for our terminal, and we were on our way.

Of course, the first thing I notice as I’m dreading the 4 flights ahead of us, is that there’s a flight directly from Dublin to Orlando.  Seriously?  I don’t know if we even thought to check Orlando flights.  Regardless, I had a gut feeling those tickets probably cost a fortune, and didn’t mind that we weren’t going on that flight as soon as I noticed it was United.

As we go through the daily airport grind, Jon still with his walking stick in hand, it still hadn’t hit me that I was leaving this beautiful country.  It takes until I’m physically sitting in my seat (an exit row seat thanks to Jon’s wonderful timing!) that I start to feel sad for all those “I can’t wait to be home” wishes.  And by then, it was of course too late.

The flights really weren’t that bad.  I had never flown US Airways before, but I can tell you that if they’re an option in the future, I wouldn’t mind doing so again.  Obviously with exit row seats on our longest flight, it was considerably more comfortable than our flights into Europe, but even our domestic flights from Philadelphia to Chicago, Chicago to Charlotte, and Charlotte to Tampa had ample leg room for me, and even enough for Jon.  That’s quite a feat!  We only got food on our international flight (which was pretty good, I might add), but the usual beverage service on the rest.  We had some delays (which made our short layovers in each city a little stressful at times), but all and all, the experience wasn’t awful.  The only plane I slept on was the last one, but by then I had been up for nearly 24 hours anyway, so I guess that’s okay.  The in-flight entertainment on the long flight wasn’t bad; that surfer movie about Bethany Hamilton, and Marley and Me.  A great movie, though I wonder if I was the only one with tears in my eyes.  Jon had to stop watching it.  He won’t shy from saying that movies with dogs are the only type that “move” him.

Once we landed in Tampa, well past our planned midnight arrival, I went from complete exhaustion to that exhausted slap-happy phase.  Knowing that Cristina and Jon’s mom were waiting for us, every step of the de-boarding process seemed to take forever.  When we finally turned the corner in the terminal and saw them, I was so excited to be home.  It didn’t hurt that Cristina had made us signs to welcome us, saying “Welcome Home” in every language of every country we went too, plus Dutch!

After going through baggage claim, we were on our way to the beloved Taco Bus.  We took the time to enjoy our meal there, and went home.  We didn’t hesitate to put on our suits and jump in the pool.  We lasted a while too, considering the pool closes at 11, but we were eventually kicked out.  We proceeded to do a little unpacking, to share little souvenirs, and some much needed laundry.  Some very much needed laundry.  Jon went to sleep at around 3, to catch a little nap before having to take his mom back to the airport.  She made an unfortunate scheduling mistake when planning a business trip, but at least we got to see her briefly.  I fought to stay awake until the two of them left, and then left Cristina to enjoy the quiet living room and get some sleep.  I practically melted into my bed.  I had forgotten how comfortable it was.  I don’t even think I noticed when Jon joined me again after his trip to the airport.

And for now, I’ll leave you with this picture Jon’s mom managed to catch before leaving the airport. 

Ní fheicfidh mé dearmad …

In the wake of Lucky’s unwarranted death, I wasn’t feeling terribly inspired.  The following days I did my best to keep working, trying my damnedest not to think about him.  It’s amazing how easily you attach yourself to something after you name it.  I was looking forward to getting pictures of Lucky as he grew up!

Anyway, because of that, not a lot has happened here that’s completely out of the ordinary.  Just loads of gardening, land reclaiming, pond building and hoovering between the two of us.

As each day ticks by, I get more and more excited.  I post a countdown on Jenna’s Facebook wall, currently 4 days until I’m back in Dublin with her, and a countdown on my former and best roommate Cristina’s Facebook wall, currently a week.  I get anxious and nervous, trying to figure out how I’m going to spend literally every moment of my time with either of them.  Jenna and I have our entire weekend planned, and I’m really looking forward to it.  I hope the weather decides to be on our side.  Cristina is picking us up from the airport with Jon’s mom, and like good citizens of Tampa our first stop will be Taco Bus.  Goodness I can’t wait for some fish tacos.

In addition to excitement, with every day that passes I feel exponentially more grateful for this experience.  Jenna’s roommates in Dublin have only been out of the states for 4 weeks now, and they’re already dying to get home.  I don’t get it.  It took me five and a half months to start feeling seriously homesick, and I think after that length of time I’m entitled to it.  Though I haven’t seen everything that each city we trekked through had to offer, we did see a lot.  We got to meet and get to know some really wonderful people, people I actually miss and hope to stay in contact with.  I experienced a boat load of new things, a new way of life.  I’ve learned a lot about gardening, organic culture, animal husbandry.  I’ve learned to take a closer look at where my food is coming from, and really appreciate the hard work and dedication behind locally grown foods.

For someone who knows she’s going to own a restaurant one day (a bit of an odd choice for someone majoring in Sociology, but I just know it’ll happen), these were good lessons to learn.  I got a little dirty sometimes, I got a little frustrated sometimes, too.  But I’ll never forget what it’s like to just pick a raspberry off the bush, not have to wash it, and enjoy it right there in the sun.  I’ll never forget what it’s like to watch sweet corn practically grow right before your eyes.  I’ll never forget what a strawberry looks like when its between a flower and a berry.  I’ll never forget what it’s like to watch a chick hatch out of an egg, or what it’s like to help one hatch.  There are a lot of things from this trip that I will never forget.

I’ll also never forget the importance of a comfortable bed, and good pillows. :)

Is é seo a rachaidh mé le haghaidh ainmniú dó.

The beautiful weather we had at the end of last week and over the weekend has left us.  Though sometimes we are blessed with the beautiful Irish sunlight, we’ve had quite a bit of rain lately.  Which of course makes it difficult for some people to work, like Jon, since most of his jobs are outside.  Technically, I should be inside working right now, I have loads of cleaning to do, but my iPod died and that told me it was time for a break.  Hopefully it charges quickly, otherwise I’ll make the mistake of picking up The Time Traveler’s Wife, and then it’ll be 9 PM and the sun will just be starting to fall.  (Yes, the sun stays up really late here, and is up super early too!)

I do have some bad news, and some good news, to relay though.  First with the good (albeit slightly frustrating): I found my camera charger!! I was looking for my contacts, since one of the boxes had disappeared, and despite the fact that Jon and I each searched that backpack thoroughly and separately, I found it tucked in a little pocket in a bigger pocket I had searched dozens of times before.  I guess its better than finding it after I get home, or worse, after I’ve searched eBay for a replacement and hit “Confirm Order”.  Alas, I’ll just have my own pictures from Ireland, and only have to steal Germany and a little bit of the Czech Republic from Jon!

Now for the bad news.  Lucky died.  I don’t know how, and for all I can tell, the drake we thought was the root of the problem wasn’t anywhere near him, because he was happily on the outside of the vegetable patch, and Lucky and his two moms were on the inside.  Yesterday our host stopped by to bring us some essentials (you know, butter, bread, meat, etc.) and it slipped her mind that we needed milk.  No problem, The Meetings, a pub down the road, started selling milk in their Off-License (it’s what the Irish refer to as their liquor store).  Jon and I had planned on having dinner there at some point during our stay, so we thought we’d kill two birds with one stone and spend part of our evening there, returning with milk.  Before we left, I checked to see where Lucky and his moms were, and they were happily in the house, keeping warm from the fierce wind outside.  Hindsight being what it is, I wish I had just decided to close them in there for the evening, but I felt it was too early, and that they could enjoy a swim in the stream before we put them to bed.  Bad move.

When we got back, exhausted and legs burning (the whole walk there is steep and downhill, so naturally the walk back takes a lot longer), we decided that before we got comfortable we would try to put the ducks away, since they’re the most difficult to handle at night.  We went up to the house as four ducks were walking in (the two moms, one very cross duck because she’s lost her eggs, and another) and noticed that Lucky was no where to be found.  Since the drake we thought was the problem was outside the garden, I thought “Well maybe he’s just stuck somewhere” even though deep down I knew his moms wouldn’t have just left him behind.  We turned around to try and find him, and didn’t go very far before we found him just like the others, dead with no signs of struggle, right outside of the poly tunnel.

I had to fight back tears as I handed him to Jon so he could dispose of him, while I walked up to the house to call out host with the news.  She felt terrible.  We talked on the phone for a little bit, wondering if the duck that’s been cross for days now about her eggs could be jealous or something, and she was actually the one doing it.  I guess we’ll never know, since we weren’t here.  Either way, I didn’t spend my evening waiting for friends to hop on Facebook and chat the evening away.  I had a short conversation to Jenna recalling what happened, and spent the rest of the evening reading.  I didn’t sleep well.  I don’t know exactly if it was Lucky that had me up, but it has definitely made productivity for today very difficult.

I guess that’s what I get for naming him.

Just a 11 níos lá garraíodóireachta

I don’t really know if there is such a thing as “gardener’s block”… but if there is, I certainly have it.  We’re now in the house sitting phase of our stay in Ireland, and despite the loads of work that I can do to help this family out, I just have no desire to do it.  I know what you’re thinking… “That’s because they’re not there and you don’t have to work constantly to make sure you meet their needs,” but that’s not it at all.  I really like this family, I have no problem doing the work.  But we’re in the home stretch.  We only have 11 more days here at this host, and then its back to Dublin for a Harry Potter filled weekend with Jenna, and then home.

Home sweet home.  I haven’t yearned for home this badly the entire trip.  It’s just so close.  It’s not even really like I’m going “home” per-say either.  I’m not going back to Brevard for the month between getting home and moving into my new apartment; I have too much to sort out on campus, with French credits and finding a new work-study job, to bother with that.  That doesn’t mean I won’t visit, but I’m not going back for any extended time.  Not to mention, until my car makes its way back to Tampa anyway, I have no way of getting there anyway.

I guess I just miss my own space.  My own schedule.  My own, very comfortable, bed.  I miss my friends, even though only one of them will be in Tampa when I get there.  I miss my sister, I miss my parents.  I just miss home.  I’m so excited about going home I just can’t manage to get anything done.

Thankfully, I have this severe aversion to disappointing people, so I know it’ll get done.  But that doesn’t really make it easier.

11 more days of gardening.  14 more days in Ireland.  15 more days until I can sleep in my own bed.

An ciorcal de shaol na

The Barnyard has certainly been full of truly unique experiences since we arrived.

First, we’ll start with the chicks.  When we arrived, they had two new chicks all wet and freshly hatched in the incubator in their living room.  The next day, 11 more chicks were found all warm and fluffy, eagerly waiting to get out of their little plastic tunnel.  Fortunately for four of them, they got a mom, with a batch of chicks that had just hatched under a hen just that same day.  The others were put in a tall hen house with a heat light, and a large caged area for them to run around in the grass in.  It’s been interesting watching them grow up; their wings start to come in at about a week old, and they really get uglier and uglier with time.  I still think they’re absolutely adorable, but not the cute and fluffy puff balls they were when they were only a day old.

They also have about 6 geese.  I believe they’re only about 12 weeks old, but they’re HUGE!  They’re so sweet too, they’ll eat right out of your hand.  I know what you’re thinking… “but aren’t geese mean!?”… well, these geese are young, and haven’t started hissing at everything that moves yet.  Jon’s been working on fixing their little pond; its been a lot of work, but you can already tell that they love it.

Now for the ducks.  When we arrived, they had two white ducks that they had for their meet, and they have about 7-9 ducks (two of them males) that they have for eggs.  Two of the ducks were sitting on eggs in the duck house when we arrived.  One of them decided to lay on eggs in the garden, but frequently left the nest for periods too long for the eggs to survive, so she’s been a hassle.  We only just today finally put her in her own separate house with 8 new fresh eggs; here’s hoping she takes to them and sits there until they hatch.  We won’t be here to see that happen, but I have a good feeling about them.

The two ducks that they had for meat are no longer with us.  I never thought I would come to a point in my life where I would even eat duck (for those of you who don’t know, ducks are my absolute favorite animal, followed very closely by giraffes and penguins), but considering how often it was served to us in France, I’ve come to like it quite a bit.  I still feel a bit upset everytime I eat it though.  However, with these ducks, I got to see the wonderful life they were allowed to live.  Though I didn’t watch the actual killing of the ducks, and only shed a tear or two rather than balling my eyes out, I was able to help with the plucking of the ducks.  Its an interesting and frustrating process, depending on how grown in their pin feathers are.  I didn’t help butcher the ducks either, but I did watch.  I made a delicious sauce to cook them in, and we put them on the grill.  It was by far the best duck I have ever had in my entire life.  I feel like the extra love and care these little guys had while they were alive really made the difference; whether it was all in my head or not.

Now for the two ducks laying on eggs when we arrived.  Well, they hatched.  They were absolutely adorable.  I did manage to save one little duckling that had been kicked out of the nest.  He was in his egg, half hatched, and I thought for certain he just didn’t make it.  As I was talking with our host trying to figure out what may have happened, we saw his mouth open and realized that he was still with us!  We tried to give it back to the two moms, but either they didn’t want me anywhere near them or they didn’t want the duckling, because both tried to bite me.  So we put him in the chick house with the heat lamp and separated him off to keep him safe.  Then all we could do is cross our fingers; we weren’t sure if he was going to make it for the first day.  After that though, he perked up just fine, and we’ve named him Lucky, a name all the more fitting after you read the next bit.

If you didn’t notice the past tense in the previous paragraph, let me elaborate for you.  Two nights ago, we put the ducks to bed and their were 8 happy, healthy little ducklings.  The next morning when we let them out, there were only two ducklings.  6 of them somehow died the night before.  We scratched our heads and tried to figure out what might have happened.  In an effort to empty the house of both unhatched eggs and newly lost ducklings, we finally let the two moms and remaining ducklings out, after being told that it was time to do so.  We let them out on to the pond, attended to the remains in the house, and went out to watch them swim around with their moms.  We left for maybe five minutes, came back to take pictures, and the two happy healthy ducklings we saw swimming just minutes earlier were floating in the pond.  They were now dead too.  After some thinking and watching the other ducks, we decided that the main male duck (the second is pair off with another duck, and is very tame) probably killed the ducklings, because it was very apparent that he wanted to mate with the “now available” moms, and they wouldn’t so long as they had ducklings around.  Its a sad state of affairs… our first full day on our own (with one other helper, but still), and all the ducklings managed to die.  We felt like awesome house sitters, that’s for certain.

After talking with our host, we decided that after finding a way to keep the two moms separated from the others at night, we would try to reintroduce Lucky to the moms and see if they take to him.  They definitely did, and now I’ve been keeping an eye on them like a hawk ever since.  I made the mistake of getting attached to my little Lucky, and now I just have to hope he makes it okay.  So far, everything seems to be fine.  I’d definitely cry if something happened to him though.  That’s certain.

I know I said no pictures until I get home, but I can’t post about such adorable things without sharing.

Holding Lucky for one of the last times! I didn’t want to put him with the mommy ducks because then I’d never be able to again!

But look how happy he looks with his two moms!  He’s so cute on the water!

And of course, I can’t help but post this picture, too.  While Jon was cleaning out the duck house today to build something to keep them separated, he found loads of baby mice!  They’re so cute!  We took them out of the house though, and released them into the field.  This one was my favorite because he was so tiny!

I mean, look how disproportionate his head and feet are to his body!  His eyes and ears are still closed too!  Too cute.

Oh right, Happy Birthday America! 235 years old! Enjoy the celebrations everybody, they definitely don’t do any here!

Beirlín, Baile Átha Cliath agus Jenna! Gach in aon lá amháin!

First, I know what you’re thinking if you’ve been paying attention to the language of my subjects; yes, they obviously speak English in Ireland, but I thought it would be more fitting if I kept with this theme until we got back to the states, and chose Gaelic instead.  It’s really different, but cool.  Anyway, on to the post!

So after getting on the train, figuring out how to buy our ticket, and sitting down for our hour-long train back to Berlin, I found myself looking out the window with this longing to come back to this beautiful country; on different terms.  It really is beautiful, so organized, and just generally adorable.  It was then that I decided that this awful HelpX experience wasn’t going to ruin my impression of the entire country, because that just isn’t fair.

When we arrived in Berlin, we searched for lockers to put our luggage in, ate some more breakfast, and set off to enjoy our few hours in Berlin before our flight that afternoon.  The area of Berlin we were in was really nice, even though we had no idea was we were looking at.  We just did a lot of walking, enjoying the clean streets, sausages, pretzels, free apples and the beautiful sun above our heads.

As we started to head back to the train station to catch our train to the airport, I started getting really anxious.  Every passing hour I’d look at my watch and exclaim “ONLY __ MORE HOURS UNTIL WE GET TO SEE JENNA!”  I’m sure Jon thought I was a complete dork, but I couldn’t help it.  5 months without seeing anyone I knew from home, of course I was excited.

Getting to the airport was interesting.  We forgot to validate our ticket before we got on the train, so we were freaking out trying to figure out what to do, since we had already sat down.  So Jon hopped off the train at one of the stops, bolted to a validation box, and managed to get them validated and back on the train before it set off again.  Naturally I was worried the whole time, but it worked out.

The Berlin-Schönefeld Airport is way out from the city center, and extremely small.  When we got off the train at the station, I thought we had mistakenly gone somewhere else.  It was a long walk to the airport, made even longer by the weight of my backpack, but the very clever and adorable Easy Jet ads along the way made it somewhat entertaining.  Once we got into the airport, we were surprised to find that we had to go to through security before we could even get to the check-in desk.  They had some handy system of tagging bags that had to be checked verses ones that didn’t.  Then we sat on the floor for about an hour until the RyanAir desk finally opened, since this airport is too small to have seating for such a thing.  We decided to pay the 40 euros to check our two walking sticks we acquired in the Czech Republic, checked ourselves in, and walked around the gift shop looking for some delicious German chocolate to bring to Jenna.

Almost an hour of more waiting and we were heading to our gate, only to find that there was a passport check as you leave the airport.  Uh oh… we heard bad things about Germans and their enforcing of Schengen rules, and thought we were in the clear one we got past the mandatory RyanAir passport check.  So as we walk up to the passport desk, two months over our visas, the gentleman behind the counter starts flipping through the pages in Jon’s passport.  We both got the heart-beat-in-your-throat sort of feeling, and could only hope for the best.  He waved Jon through, free of the “don’t return” stamp, and it was my turn.  He didn’t spend as much time with my passport, probably because it was obvious that we were together.  Whew.

The flight itself wasn’t awful.  2 hours long, not enough leg room, flight attendants constantly trying to sell you stuff, but we managed to squeeze in a nap.  Once we landed, got our Ireland stamp in our passport, we were just fine; out of Schengen and totally legal again.  It felt nice.

Since it was pretty cheap, we opted to just take a taxi to Jenna’s apartments.  The driver was a gentleman, really helpful, and nice to talk to.  When he dropped us off, it was only about a minute before I saw Jenna walking down the street, and then I felt great.  I couldn’t feel how heavy my backpack was, how bad my feet hurt, or how cold my arms were.  We went to her apartment for a while, talked, relaxed, and then set out to find a nice place for dinner.  We found a cozy bar/restaurant in the Temple Bar district, enjoyed some bangers and mash, fish and chips and a few pints.

Since quarters were cramped, we had to sleep on the floor in her apartment, but we stole the couch cushions from the living room and slept on those.  The next couple days were filled with rather touristy things: a duck bus tour of the city, completely with Viking hats and screaming and people on the streets, more fish and chips, eating lunch in the lawn of Christ Church Cathedral, seeing St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Guinness Brewery, Carrol’s Irish Store, the Dublin bus system, lots of walking, and rain.  Good thing we read all the guide books and know that going out in Ireland without an umbrella is like asking to get pushed into a swimming pool fully clothed.

It was a very nice weekend with Jenna that I absolutely needed.  I needed to sit and talk with someone in person from home, enjoy all the excitement of the city with someone other than Jon (not that he’s not wonderful, but since she had been there a few days, she sort of knew her way around), and talk about everything that’s going on at home.

Getting to our host in Ireland was fairly easy.  Two buses, and we were met by a very enthusiastic mother of three to bring us back to her home.  The place here is absolutely wonderful, by far my favorite place so far.  They have so much to do here, so many birds (ducks, geese, and hens; baby chicks and ducklings too!), and such a successful vegetable garden.  They live in an old stone house that they’ve fixed up themselves, at the bottom of a hillish mountain thing, with the Motty Stone at the top.  I’m not sure what it is exactly, other than a really big stone that you can climb up on for views of the surrounding mountains and the Irish Sea.  We’re staying in a rather well kept trailer just at the bottom of the hill, which is nice when you’re staying with a family of five; you have your own quiet space where you can be out of the way.  I love it here.

I’ll fill you in on all the unique experiences I’ve had since arriving to “The Barnyard” (a nickname they’ve given their home) at a later time, I feel this post is long enough.  Until next time… Bíodh lá iontach!

Auf Wiedersehen Sklavenarbeit!

Before I get started, I would like to once again relay how very difficult it is to blog while traveling the way we’re traveling.  Nights when you know you have the time to blog, you usually just want to sleep, or spend time with the family you’re helping, since after all, that’s what this is all about.  But, you can breathe at last.  We are at our final destination already, after some changes in our plans, which I will elaborate below.  They do have Internet, and we will be here for the next 20 days or so, so I should be able to fill you in on all of our adventures here in Ireland nearly as soon as they happen.  But first, let me start by filling you in on our time spent in Germany…

I’m going to keep this bit relatively short, because I don’t have many good things to say about Germany.  Well, let me rephrase that: I don’t have many good things to say about our farm in Germany.  Germany itself is a beautiful country; very green, plenty of lakes where we were, clean, and just all around wonderful.  I plan on giving it a second chance at some point in my future.  The farm however was a bit more like slave labor than any of the other ones we’ve been to.

The day started at 6:30 in the morning, with our rather tiny breakfast (usually muesli or oatmeal), considering it’d be six hours of usually pretty hard work between that and lunch.  They were the first commercial farm we worked on, so we expected more work and were prepared for that.  We also expected that a farm that sells meats, milk and various other dairy things would keep their workers well-fed and full of energy.  Oh the contrary.  Lunch (and usually dinner) consisted of bread (tiny slices of it) with various things to spread on top: peanut butter, honey, butter, jam, sometimes cheese if we were lucky, and sometimes eggs if we were REALLY lucky.  Not much at all.  A few days go by and I can really feel that my body wasn’t getting what it needed, despite going to bed early to account for the early mornings.  We were greatly looking forward to the weekends, since there were lakes around for swimming and canoeing, until we found out that despite what their profile said about working 5 days a week (the reason we decided to go there despite their early mornings), we would in fact be working 7.  7 days a week, basically 10 hours a day, on hardly any food, not nearly enough sleep, and never a “thank you” or a “well done” for the hard work we had finished  I know that last bit makes us sound terribly needy or something, but it’s just proper etiquette, regardless of how small or large the task is.  Nevermind the fact that it wasn’t terribly enjoying being with them, whenever we were awake enough to do so.  They were nice enough people, if you could get them to actually talk.  We weren’t connecting with them in the way that we had hoped, so absolutely nothing was making up for the roar in my stomach.

Well, we had pretty much had enough, and on the Wednesday before we were supposed to leave (we were originally going to leave the following Monday), we booked a flight (with RyanAir even, we were that desperate) for the following Friday, just two days later, and planned to tell them that things arose at home and that we were leaving early.  No emergencies, I don’t like faking those, but it was really none of their business what we were “going home” for anyway.  Well, before we had a chance to tell them, they practically ambushed us after we finished hauling some rather heavy doors to a dumpster, and we had the following conversation:

“You two don’t seem very happy here.”

“It’s not that we’re not happy, we’re just really tired.  We’re not used to such early mornings and long days.”

(I’m going to skip the part about them asking us our expectations, and my unwillingness to mention that its hard to work on the very little food they provided us.)

“Well, our customers pay very high quality prices for our very high quality produce, and having you two around looking tired or unhappy isn’t good for business, so I would suggest either working with more energy, or finding another farm”

After that bit we informed them that we would be leaving Friday morning anyway for family business, and that the next day would be our last work day.  Now, had the whole thing been “you guys don’t seem happy here, what can we do to help” I would have felt a little bad about leaving early, but considering the direction it did go, I didn’t care in the slightest that we were leaving early.  On our last day we built them (from start to finish) a raised paved patio, so they could eat outside without the table wobbling, and even after working 12 hours on the thing, they hardly uttered a thank you.

On Friday morning I woke up with more energy than ever; I was soooo excited to get out of there.  I was even more excited because instead of going to Holland like we had originally planned to do so (though we would have loved to have seen it, the host we had originally planned with gave us some really odd gut feelings after some rather condescending and demanding emails, so we opted to skip it), we were flying to Dublin, where we would be spending a few days with our friend Jenna, since she has an internship there!  Getting out of Germany and seeing a close friend all in one day?  I couldn’t have been happier.  But I’ll fill you in on our travel day and our time with Jenna in my next post.  Until then; Auf Wiedersehen!

Krásně různých Praha

Alright, wonderful, beautiful, incredibly different Prague; let’s go! (two weeks late)

Our time at the farm in the Czech Republic passed fairly quickly, and on the day we left we were off to Prague to spend the day there sightseeing, an evening in the same hotel Jon stayed in during his first visit last year, a wonderful breakfast, and free wireless Internet!  YAY!  The day was very enjoyable, despite the torrential downpour and hail storm shortly after we finished eating lunch.  I always have the best luck with weather.  We did manage to stay mostly dry, and got to see all of the major hotspots; the Astronomical Clock, St. Charles Bridge, St. Vitus Cathedral, various things surrounding Prague Castle.  We did however miss out on Prague Castle.  By the time we got there, realized you needed to buy a ticket, bought a ticket, and went through a few of the other things it included, the exhibits were closing for the day and we didn’t have time to see the castle.  We were planning on going the following morning before taking our train out to Berlin, but we were pretty tuckered out from the night before and didn’t do much else except enjoy our breakfast.

Alright, so the reason we missed out on the castle our second morning is because we attempted a pub tour the evening before.  What I mean by “attempted” is that we paid the admission, spent the first two hours of it in a rather small, uninspired backpackers bar in the bottom of what used to be a church drinking rather terrible (but unlimited) alcohol only to find that it was raining cats and dogs when we went to leave for the second pub.  Probably three-quarters of the way to pub two we decided we were much too cold, much too wet, and much too sore-footed to continue, so we walked back to the hotel, crawled into bed, and passed out.  Even if we had continued on with the rest of the tour, I have a feeling it was geared more towards backpackers looking to get drunk, rather than backpackers looking for a little dose of really neat history.  Oh well.  We did enjoy some nice conversation though, since the tour was also geared towards English speakers.

Given how difficult it is to get pictures up with limited Internet and time, I’m going to go ahead and let you readers know that I’ll be doing a huge picture post (or maybe several posts) at the end of this trip when I get home.  Since I now have a paper weight instead of a camera (don’t know how I managed to lose my charger), a lot of these pictures will be from Jon’s camera, either taken by myself or Jon.  So until I’m back stateside, you’ll just have reading to do.  Apologies in advance, but it’ll be worth the wait.

Neexistuje nic, jako je vaření klobásy na táborák.

Alright, it’s getting a little annoying starting every post with “sorry for the long absence”, but I’ve been learning on this trip that expecting every farm to have a large enough Internet data plan to host all of the blogging, Facebook and emailing we do is asking a lot.  But most of all I would like to apologize for promising you a second post the evening I was in Prague and not delivering.  The night was very interesting, to say the least, but I’ll fill you in on that when I get to it.

So I left off with us arriving in the Czech Republic.  We were picked up at the train station and brought back to the farm to find the people there very warm and welcoming.  The family who lived there was one Englishman, his Czech wife, and there two girls, 8 and 3.  There was another HelpX couple there was well from France, so we got to practice a little bit of all that French we learned!  We ended up being the resident translators for some things, which was a bit fun.

The day we arrived also happened to be Jon’s 23^rd birthday, and though he didn’t get to enjoy a draft in a pub in Prague like he had hoped, they did have a few beers that night, as well as a cake!  Coincidentally, they had been shooting for a magazine feature for their English Chocolate Cake recipe, so she had to bake two of them that day.  What luck!  We sang “Happy Birthday” and devoured the cake, or at least a good bit of it.  Delicious.

We spent two week on their farm, and since I would drowned you in all the little details, I’ll sum up what they had on their property, the bulk of our work, as well as the highlights of our experiences with the family.

The home they lived in was over 400 years old, and for about 2/3rds of it, unlivable.  They had just received an industrial sized band saw and planer thickness-er to us to make the entire upstairs of the home (currently all rafters) a livable space.  They have a lot of work ahead of them, but they plan to have it livable (not finished though) by Christmas.  Unfortunately, they spent the whole two weeks we were there waiting for the dust extraction system to make the job possible, so we weren’t able to help him put any of the large timbers through the saws to help him out.  Hopefully another HelpX-er or WOOFer will be joining them soon so he can finally get started!

This was definitely our first animal farm.  When we got there they had 5 goats (one of them a baby that spent its time in the back garden with us; I was quite fond of him), 4 mini-pigs, 4 mini-piglets, 4 rabbits, 3 chickens, 5(?) geese, 2 goslings, a very lovably Rottweiler named Sally and a cat whose name I never caught.  When we left, they had sold two of the goats, one of the piglets had died, someone they sold a rabbit to brought one back, and they acquired ten young chickens.  They required quite a bit of work, buy the twice daily goat milking blessed us with homemade goat cheese.  Yum!

For the majority of our stay we were adding on to an existing fence in the back garden.  They had just received 10 new chickens, and had to build up the fence high enough so that the chickens couldn’t get out, and the fox couldn’t get in.  It was a bit more difficult that it should have been because the existing fence wasn’t made very well.  The posts were random distances apart, which made finding wood long enough and cutting things to size a little time consuming.  We did however finish it on our second to last work day.

Almost every day (that it didn’t rain) we helped to water there rather beautiful and successful veggie garden.  I had my first radish (yum), and one evening we even had enough things harvested from the garden to make a salad from it (aside from the dressing).  Watering took a while, but fortunately for them they have a little spring that feeds a creek right by the garden, so you can fill up water in buckets right there.  The water also happened to have little tiny flecks of what looked like gold and silver.  We’re almost certain that’s what they were, but the amounts were so small that it would cost considerably more to get it out than you would make back with it.  On one of our work days we put in post for an electric fence on the property boundary, again for the foxes, wild boar and deer.  That job was particularly frustrating because the ground had a lot of clay in it, and there were a lot of very vicious biting flies.

As for our time off and the time spent with the family, it was very enjoyable.  The food was wonderful (though they eat a lot of fried food in this area of Europe, so I can’t say it was all as healthy as our salads), the conversation was great, and the atmosphere was very friendly.  I did however have to adjust to using an outdoor toilet for the first time, which was different to say the least.  Jon and I (Jon more than me) came to understand how awful stingy nettle is, and how it grows pretty much exactly where you don’t want it to.  We went on walks into the forests around their home and enjoyed being surrounded by real trees.  We learned a new word for rain boots, wellies, a new French card game that we plan on trying to find or create, and then turn it into a drinking game (it would be so much fun), we cooked sausages over the fire and had traditional Czech foods like langoše and enjoyed homemade breads and cake daily.  It was truly wonderful.

I’ll save our time spent in Prague for my next post, just to keep things from getting too long!

Buona liberazione, Italia

Sorry (again) for the long absence.  Italy didn’t really change all that much after my last post, and to be honest, I was quite frustrated by a lot of what we experienced that I didn’t feel it was all that necessary to tell you about it.  Let me just sum things up by saying that all we were really told to do was prune the olive grove.  It seemed like everyone else had at least some say in what they were doing, or given the opportunity to relay their strong points, skills and experience.  Not us.  Compound this with the fact that our host made several attempts at avoiding to talk to us directly (IE: sending someone else to tell us something just minutes after she was in the same room with us), we frequently overheard her refer to us as “the Americans” in an unpleasant tone (despite the fact that she very well knew our names), and a few other things; we didn’t feel very welcome, and we were very much looking forward to leaving.

Too bad leaving required the Italian train system, which failed to work smoothly, again.

Getting from Rapolano to Siena and then to Florence was cake.  It went smoothly, we got on our first train for free, and they were roughly on time.  We felt we were off to a good start.  That is, until we got to Florence and the 8:30 train we were hoping to catch from Florence to Venice was sold out.  All classes.  Thankfully the automated ticket thing was wrong when it said that all trains were sold out, and we were able to buy tickets for the 11:30 high-speed to Venice.  Now, all of you are going to cringe when you find out what we did during our time in Florence, but we spent it in the most comfortable chairs we could find, trading off naps.  It just happened to be in a McDonalds.  The Florence train station didn’t have any lockers, so even if we happened to have had the energy to walk around and explore, we would have had to do so with all our bags with us.  Thankfully the McCafe had some delicious fresh squeezed blood orange juice, and the time passed relatively quickly.

The train from Florence to Venice was relatively comfortable, but packed.  Since I was the one who napped the least, I had a very hard time staying awake on the train, but Jon managed to pass out.  Fortunately for us, I managed to only doze; otherwise we would have missed our stop.  We got off the train, were assaulted by the Venetian heat, and set off for the ticket booth to buy our ticket to Vienna, Austria.

Well, let me preface this by saying that we weren’t in the lovely, ancient, sightseeing-worthy area of Venice.  We were at Venice Mestre, which is on the mainland, probably 15-20 kilometers away from any sort of canal.  Well, after asking for the next train to Vienna, we received two tickets for the 9:18 train that evening… over 8 hours away.

8 hours, in not-so-lovely “new” Venice.  Seriously?  After finding this out, we set out to see exactly what we had to work with, and found that the most Italian thing there was several Chinese restaurants and (as always) a halal place serving really lousy pizza.  Thankfully for us though, there was a lovely restaurant in the hotel across the street from the train station that offered free WIFI use with the purchase of a beverage.  We sat there for the majority of our 8 hour layover, and then moved to the hotel lobby when the place was closing to get ready for dinner.  I was grateful they didn’t kick us out.  While sitting there I managed to overhear the front desk clerk tell someone that the trains will be going on strike that evening at 9PM.  They seriously couldn’t wait until after our train left?  So, when we returned to the train station to wait out the last hour before our train, we were a little worried, but hopeful, that maybe we overheard him incorrectly, and were wondering exactly what an “Italian train strike” might be.

Well, after a ten minute wait at our platform, we saw another train for another destination pull in.  We saw this as a good sign, since a strike would surely mean all trains, not just the ones going to Vienna.  After about half an hour, our train finally arrived, we found our cabin, got comfortable, watched a movie, and passed out.  We couldn’t afford to pay for a sleeper cabin, but we were fortunate to not have anyone else in our cabin the entire duration of the journey… all 11 hours of it.  So far, Austrian trains are my favorite.  They’re comfortable, have places to plug in things that need charging, and their bathrooms are pretty clean.  All and all, not a bad train experience.  I woke up at about 7:30AM to the beautiful sights of the Austrian countryside.  I never had a mental picture of what Austria might look like before, so I was pleased to see how beautiful it was.

We arrived at the train station perfectly fine, got off the train and set off for the ticket counter.  The man at the desk spoke pretty broken English, but we managed to get two tickets from Vienna to Prague no problem.  We then stopped at a place in the station (just as comfortable, clean and convenient as their trains) to have some Wiener schnitzel and apple strudel and sat down to eat it and relax.  About half way through our schnitzel, as Jon was reading the train schedule, he realized that the train to Prague isn’t leaving from this station, and there isn’t a train to get from the station we were in to the station we needed to be in.  All this realization with only 30 minutes until our train leaves.  Well, some more reading led us to find that they have a metro system, and once we figured out where we needed to go, we got there with about 10 minutes to spare.  Same sort of train that we took to get to Vienna, only this time we didn’t have a cabin seat assignment.  We didn’t see any other sort of seats, so we just picked one and sat down.  Lucky for us, the 5 hour trip into Prague was made much shorter and more enjoyable by two brothers from New Zealand sitting in the cabin with us.  They told us that unless the train people kick us out of our seats to find new ones, we were welcome to stay with them.  We talked the whole way about a number of things, and only at the very end, as we were loading up our bags to get off the train, did we finally actually exchange names.  Funny how those sorts of things happen.

Getting from Prague to our host was fairly easy.  Czech is nothing like anything we’ve read before, so there was no guessing as to what the signs said.  Also, when the last train we took would make its stops, it would do so well before we could read the sign of our destination.  This was a little nerve wracking, since we didn’t really feel like getting off at the wrong stop or missing ours, but we managed okay.  After finding a payphone and calling our host, one of them was there within about 15 minutes or so to pick us up.  Finally.  Only about… 12 hours later than we had originally planned, but I guess it all worked out okay in the end.

Currently, I am sitting in a very comfortable bed in a hotel in Prague.  We’ve stopped here for the evening just after our two week farm stay, and head off to Germany tomorrow.  After all our sightseeing today/tonight, I’ll post again with an update on the time we spent in the Czech Republic.  Let me give you a little preface: great food, great company and real forests.