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!

Vous allez faire quoi pendant vos vacances?

Alright, enough about my Italian adventures.  I hope you enjoyed something a little out of our normal routine!

Since we got back from Torino, we got straight to seriously working on booking all of our farms for the second half of our trip.  We had been trying for weeks to just focus on Spain, but that was proving to be extremely difficult to plan.  While planning our first destination is obviously important, I felt it was equally as important to start looking in the other countries before they all book up too.  So I took over the emailing and started with the smallest countries with the fewest farms.  We had to change our plans slightly; originally we planned to see Switzerland, but after emailing all 3 possible farms, we decided to start looking at other countries too.  For the Switzerland slot I also emailed farms in Belgium (all 4 of them) and then several in Germany.  I also emailed all the possible farms in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands (3 and 5 respectively), and simply crossed my fingers that one of them would respond positively.  I had the support of my two friends at home, Jenna and Cristina, along the way, each of them insisting I keep my chin up, thoughts positive, and emails will come.  Believing them, I asked for good vibes, and went to bed feeling optimistic, several emails later.

The next morning we woke up to no replies, but given that we leave for class a little before nine o’clock, I decided this shouldn’t worry me.  When we got home from class though at one, we had 3 emails in our inbox.  One positive, two negative.  I was excited, we had officially booked our dates for the Netherlands!  Thankfully, this farm is only an hour away from Amsterdam, and the family has lived in the city for the majority of their lives.  Nothing like insider information on what to do and see!  That night, along side my homework, I continued to send emails to farms in Germany, and then started looking into Italy and Ireland.  After a long chat with my mom about my planning for the summer, planning for the fall semester, and getting updated on things at home, I went to bed feeling the same as I did the night before; optimistic.

The following morning went exactly the same as the previous.  Nothing when our alarm went off, but we had a positive reply from Germany (a farm between Berlin and Hamburg) waiting in our inbox when we got out of class!  Two farms officially confirmed, we were a third there.  Given that we hadn’t heard anything from the Czech Republic, and how badly Jon wanted to return, I insisted he call the farm there that looked the most promising, one just a little over an hour outside of Prague.  After buying the minimum amount of Skype credits allowed, and waiting 15 minutes for them to apply to his account, he nervously called the farm, fingers crossed that they spoke English well.  It was a quick conversation, but all positive.  She would send us an email confirming the dates, and we were booked.  All in a span of less than three full days, we had half of our farms booked.  Now thats what I call progress.

The next day we were able to confirm a farm just outside of Madrid in Spain, and today we finally confirmed a farm in the heart of Tuscany, Italy.  I am ecstatic that this has finally come together.  At this point, all the gaps are filled.  We still have Ireland to plan, but thats our last destination, and therefore doesn’t worry me as much.  Since we don’t have a ticket home to Florida yet, should Ireland prove to be impossible to book, we just go home early; not preferred of course, but definitely better than having a two week gap to try and fill on a limited budget.

Needless to say, I’m relieved.  At least I can stop stressing for now; you know, until I have to magically come up with all the money for this, despite the fact that the exchange rate from the USD to EUR has NOT been moving in our favor?

Okay, I’ll take the good as it comes, and worry about the rest when I need to.

Until next time, passer un bon week-end!

Je suis toujours la toux

So thankfully, my fever finally broke, the body aches have slowly gone away, and so has the headache.  The cough has not though.  I think I’ve given up on cough syrup though.  We’ll see.

Jon and I were able to return to class the next day like I’d hoped.  The professor was sympathetic, and concerned that I was sick.  A change from what you get from your teachers at home.  Jon and I only walked far enough to get something to eat, and then again with Jerome to see if we could resolve our no Internet problem.  Turned out to be a bad router.  He replaced it, Jon installed it today, and voila!  Interwebs.  Thank goodness.

So, since I don’t have much to share from the past couple days, I’d just like to share some things I forgot to share in previous posts.

1. They are very blind-friendly in France.

When was the last time you picked up your box of cough drops, or tea, and braille was on the package?  I could probably say that I have only seen braille on a box of bandaids before, and only once.  I see it on a lot here.  Its really kind of neat.

2. Doctors make house calls.

So, unfortunately, I think Nicolas caught what I had.  Hopefully its just a coincidence, he’s definitely still running around with as much energy as ever, but regardless.  After dinner last night, the doctor came over, usually only a luxury for those willing to pay the large fine in the US.  Though I don’t believe the doctor came over for free, I do believe it was for a very small fine.  One of the benefits of free health care?  He came over, looked over Nicolas, gave his parents a list of things to get from the pharmacy, all well past 8PM.  House calls are whats expected from doctors in France, and probably most of Europe, maybe similar to the western medical ethics we’re familiar with?  Who knows.

3. Watch where you step.

No, I haven’t stepped in dog doo yet, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t had the chance.  Yuck.  The Swedish girl (Zandra) in our class has a dog, and our professor was at first teasing her, upset that there are too many dogs in France!  Sandra assured the professor that unlike everyone in Nice, she picks up after her dog.  Basically, they think they’re too good to pick up dog doo.  I guess a few stereotypes remain true.

4. The bums are not at all different here than they are in the US.

Yes. They beg, plead, hold out cups for you to throw your spare change in, they’re loud, often drunk, and whenever they have a dog or another pet with them, they sure as ever make them look sad and hungry to get more pity out of you.  Now, I don’t remember all of the bums in Sevilla, Spain, but I remember some, and they’re similar to the ones Jon encountered in Prague last Spring.  In Prague, they do not beg, or anything.  They don’t even look you in the eye.  I remember this specifically from Spain.  They kneel down on the ground, put there head on the knees, and hold their hands out, cupped in front of them.  They do this because they’re ashamed.  Now, I don’t know about you, but I would be considerably more likely to help this sort of bum than the one who yells at me.

Jon looked over and told me I was writing a book.  We’re hoping to make it to the harbour today, so I could probably be on my way.