So, NORWAY!

On the evening of Friday the 9^th, I left Schöneggehof, which was very sad. Ah well, as Manuel says, it’s better to leave when things are still at their best. Commence: 48 hours of travel. I was driven to the train station, where I took the express train to Munich. I nearly got in trouble, though, because I forgot to stamp my ticket before I got on the train. Luckily, the “I’m so sorry, I’m a poor lost foreigner” excuse worked pretty well. I felt stupid, though, because I’ve done it before, but just not recently. Ah well. So, train took half an hour, got to Munich (I seem to have been through Munich quite a bit lately), took a subway to Rotkreuzplatz, asked directions twice in German, and finally made it to the apartment belonging to a friend of one of the girls living on the farm who had offered to host me for the night. So, that was great. I chatted with Lisa for a while, had something to eat, and then she went out partying and left me with the place to myself. I was surprised, and impressed. I was glad to have a conversation with her, though, because it was a proper length, interesting, full conversation in German. I couldn’t do that two months ago.

The next morning, I woke up at 4:00, took the subway back to the train station, and took a bus to the Memmingen airport, which took about an hour. Funny thing about Ryanair—one of the reasons they can be so cheap, is because the airports they use are in the middle of nowhere! So, it seems that you end up spending the same amount on transport to and from the airport (not to mention paying for checked luggage....), as you did on the flight itself. So, got to the airport, and nearly had a heart attack when the woman told me that my checked bag was 2.5 kilos overweight, and that the charge for each kilo was 20 euro! Ack! So, I did some rearranging, threw away my shampoo etc, put on a sweater, and shaved off a kilo and a half, and she let that slide, thank god. Whew. Then, flew to Oslo which took about 2 and a half hours. Hello, Norway! Took the bus to the bus station in Oslo... And got tackled by my favorite Sealia :D

So, we spent about 2 hours in Oslo, wandering and then having lunch. Then, we hopped on a train (because I hadn’t done enough traveling that day....) to Stavanger, which is the 3^rd largest city in Norway. In other words, it’s pretty small. The train ride took a total of 8 hours. Really. But, it was fine, because we had a LOT to catch up on, and we talked the whole way. Our voices hurt by the end! When we finally got there, we took a taxi to our hotel, and passed the hell out.

On Sunday, we spent a ridiculously long time eating breakfast (well, we paid a lot for the hotel, so why not?), and then went to the port, and hopped on a.... Boat? Yep. We’ve decided that this has been the trip of many forms of transportation. The interesting thing about this boat? It wasn’t going where we thought it was going. And we didn’t realize this until it had already left. Problem. Luckily, it wasn’t going on a cruise to Denmark, but just to a close-by island, so we were back about 2 hours later. They didn’t even make us buy tickets which was really nice. Anyways, so we missed the boat we were supposed to take to the city of Bergen, but we ended up with a whole afternoon to walk around Stavanger. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday, so there wasn’t a lot going on, but it was still pretty, and we had lunch, followed by a leisurely tea break.

One of the streets in Stavanger. Everything is so bright and colorful! Probably because it's so dark most of the year.

Also, we have decided that Norway is the land of happy children. Really, there were so many kids, and so many playgrounds! Really cool playgrounds, too—this one was made out of old pieces from ships and the oil rigs. Way to go for recycling!

Me, enjoying the playground, and sitting on a recycled buoy-become-bouncy-thing.

Eventually, we made it onto the right boat, and went on up to Bergen which took about 4 hours. Maybe 5? Can’t remember. It was pretty cool, though, and we were going around all the fjords, and stopping at all these places. Seriously though, boats are efficient in this country! They’re basically busses. On water. So, we made it to Bergen around 9 pm, were a little lost at first, but finally met up with our Couchsurfing host, Tiril. For those of you who don’t know what Couchsurfing is... Well, it’s really cool. It’s an organization that hooks up travelers with people who live in the desired city who are willing to host you for a night or two. You search on the website, find someone who sounds interesting and trustworthy, and you stay on the couch for the night, and spend some time getting to know each other. This was the first time Sealia and I had ever done it, so we were a little nervous... But, it worked out great. Tiril and her girlfriend, Perolina, who are both students, shared an apartment, and Seals and I had our own little room with a fold out couch which was actually pretty nice. They’re super cool, and we had a lot of fun getting to know them :)

The next morning we had breakfast with the girls, and then they went to classes, and Sealia and I took the mountain tram thing (I know there’s a real name for it...) up above the city and spend a few hours doing some easy hiking. It was really beautiful, although chilly and wet! We were the only people who weren’t wearing rubber boots and, I kid you not, waterproof pants. I think we missed the memo... It’s troll country up there, too. But wow, it was beautiful.

The view of Bergen from the mountain.

Yes, we're a little small, but we were really there! Hi! :)

Troll country! Luckily this one was nice :)

We came down, had lunch at a great café called Pygmalion, and then spent the rest of the day walking around the city, going to the university quarter... Yeah, all really pretty. Lots of cool shops, lots of lovely wooden houses. Just a cool city.

More great brightly-colored wooden houses.

We bought groceries that evening, and then cooked a Mauritian dinner for our hosts, which they really liked. Later, we went out with the girls to the university to watch the results of the local elections. The cool thing was that they were broadcasting from the university student center, so their a capella group and some of the students were on national television. Cool! There were a ton of people, and it was fun to just hang out, drink wine and watch politics in action.

Tuesday was more walking around the city, and visiting the two museums connected to the university, the Natural History, and the Folk History. We went through them relatively quickly, but they were cool. We cooked dinner again, and spent the rest of the evening playing fiddle, and then watching Flight of the Conchords. We needed a calm night.

Mountain view from the city.

So, there was this huge carved fish that Sealia had a thing for...

Dinner with Tiril and Perolina :)

Norway, continued...

Wednesday, we woke up really early, said goodbye to our wonderful hosts, and then headed to the train station. We got on the train at 8:00, direction Oslo, went for an hour, and then ended up spending 3 hours on a bus, because they were working on the tracks. We found out later that the reason they were working on the tracks was because there had been so much rain this year (more than normal, which is terrifying, because it rains a ton in Norway) that the tracks were washed out. So, we spent 3 hours on a bus which ended up being awesome—we saw some really cool countryside that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. At one point though, we were really high up, and the outside temperature was 3 C. And this was on September 14^th! Yikes.
















This is the landscape from the bus, between Bergen and Oslo. It was BEAUTIFUL.
















Land of the waterfalls.

We got back on the train later, and made it to Oslo around 3 pm. We found our hotel (we had wanted to stay with more Couchsurfers, but couldn’t find any, so we finally broke down and paid for a hotel), which ended up being half the price that we had expected which was a god send. Whew. Thanks, world! We walked around for a while, saw the new Opera house which looks like an iceberg, and did some restaurant hunting.

Me, on an iceberg!

We had wanted to find some traditional Norwegian food, but utterly failed to find it. Really. There was one sort of Norwegian restaurant that we were going to go to, then didn’t like the look of it, and went to another restaurant, Akataka. Great food, great wine, and seriously expensive. As is, I’m afraid to convert the price from Kroner to Euro. But hey, screw it, we had been really frugal up until then, and we wanted a nice dinner, gosh darnit.

Thursday was our last day in Norway, and we had a full docket. We took a ferry across the harbor and went to the Folk Museum which was really cool. Lots of folk art, as well as models with furniture, clothing, and household objects etc. over time. Really neat. Then, we went into the replica village, of Norwegian homes through time. The old ones were SO cool. They’re built a good 4 feet off the ground, with these big, heavy logs, usually only one big room inside, and with grass growing on all of the roofs. Must be good insulation. The doors were all really small, which I didn’t understand, but they were entertaining to walk through. They had more modern houses too, but they weren’t quite as interesting. We were bummed that we came some late in the season, because normally there are people dressed up and the whole 9 yards, and I had been excited for that. Ah well. Still very cool.

Many of the houses were built a good 4 or 5 feet off the ground. It was amazing how they could balance and stay up on such small supports, though. We couldn't decide if it was to keep the houses out of the snow or the water... maybe both.

The best part was the grass on all of the roofs, which we had actually seen on normal houses as well. Probably good for insulation. Cool idea, at any rate.

The Stavekirken. Basically the coolest church/building in Norway. Made all out of wood, and looks like a Chinese import. Built in 1212 (and then dismantled and rebuilt where it currently is).

Next up was the Viking Ship museum, which, as you may have guessed contains Viking Ships from the 9^th century. Wow. They have 2 that are almost entirely intact, as they were buried with people, and covered with mud which is a great may to preserve things. They were huge!! And really cool. Wow. There were a lot of artifacts buried with the people, and they had the skeletons as well, and were able to do all sorts of research on them. Cool stuff. I wish the museum had been bigger, and with more information about the Viking age, but alas it was not. Still, neat.

Huge boat with Emily for reference.

The coolest thing is that they haven't been restored at all--this is quite literally how they were found, after about 700 years underground. Wow.

Next, we went into Vigeland Park which has some of the strangest sculptures I’ve seen—all people, doing interesting/strange poses, with lots of babies. Hum.

Sealia is so cute I can hardly stand it.

Statues and a human column. Weird, but really pretty.

Last, we had gotten in touch with a Mount Holyoke alum who lives in Oslo, who had invited us to dinner. She’s class of ’55 and her name is Ruth. So, we spent a really lovely evening with her and her husband, talking about everything and anything, with good food and wine. It was really cool to hear about MHC in the 50’s. It’s changed a lot since then. No house mothers, for one. So, that was a lot of fun, and a really good way to end our trip.

We headed home (so cold out!), packed, slept for 3 hours, and then woke up again and walked down to the bus station (even colder out!). We left for the airport at 4:00, got there an hour later, and flew back to Montpellier! Goodbye, Norway, hello southern France :) And, oh my goodness, there’s.... SUN!

Farm #2!

Massively Massive blog update…

So, where were we last... Prague? Okay. Got it. So, I went back to Prien from Prague, and the next day, Manuel and I packed everything up, and went to Munich for the day. We were to a museum called the Alte Pinakothek (yes, I managed to get him into a proper art museum!), which had a pretty amazing collection. Something like 2 Leonardos, 3 Raphaels, a lot of Rubens... Lots of cool stuff, and we only saw a tiny bit of it! Wish we had had the stamina for another few hours, but 2 hours was about our limit. We did some walking around, and then tried to find a hostel for the night. Goodness. The cheapest double room we could get was around 80 euro for the night, and dorm rooms were obscenely expensive, as well, not to mention, fully booked. What!? Seriously, it’s a disgrace to have hostels so expensive. We ended up asking at a few proper hotels just for a comparison... And ended up with a hotel room for 60 euro with breakfast included. Dear Munich hostels: epic fail. So, it was a fun evening, actually, once we finally found our hotel…

The next morning, we drove about half an hour North to the tiny little town of Meilendorf, near Attenkirchen, where my next WWOOF farm was, called Natur-Garten Schönegge. Manuel dropped me off, and then drove back to Prien where he had a serious date with a large mountain. So... Bauernhof nummer 2! Schönegge was about as different from Stauderer as humanly possible... Which was utterly perfect.

The cool thing about it, is that the farm is this sort of group effort. It’s owned by two brothers, Horst and Erhard, and they live there in two houses with their families and children, who are all upwards of 20. Then, there are a few workers who are there mostly year-round, Urbahn, Bastian, Manuel, Kai, and some more seasonal workers as well. They were working a lot of the farm’s new project—building a school on the farm for disabled children, which will open next week. I don’t know quite how it’ll work, but there’s a lot of practical learning and farm work mixed in with the normal curriculum. So, pretty cool. Then, there are always a few interns, and then finally the WWOOFers. When I came there were 4 others, but then 3 of them left a few days after. So, it ended up being me, an intern (a 15-year old boy who looked about 12), the workers, and a boy named Tom. He was a WWOOFer last summer, but then came back periodically and helped to built the school. He’s from New Zealand, and is generally pretty awesome and a total hippie. His girlfriend Maria, from Bulgaria, came that weekend, and the 3 of us spent a fair amount of time together. Fantastic people.

There was finally another real WWOOFer, as well, Christophe, from France. We tried speaking a bit of French, and all I can say, is that my French has been cannibalized by my German. Good god. The worst is the little words that just slip in, like “aber” or “ja,” plus I wonder where the third definite article is. I actually said this, too (when I was talking about last summer’s internship) “J’ai pas trop arbeité.” (For those of you who don’t know French and German—I should have said travaillé, which means “to work,” but instead, I took the German verb arbeiten, and managed to put it in the French past perfect tense. Good job, Emily).

Anyways, so... Life on the farm was really good. Got up early, had breakfast with the other WWOOfers, and started work at 7:00ish the first week, and 8:00ish the second week. We would work for around 5 hours, doing all kinds of things—picking carrots, green onions, tomatoes, repotting plants, picking plums, picking grapes... and then we ate lunch around 1:00. We take turns cooking and cleaning, and I ended up doing a fair amount of cooking the second week, which was a little scary at first, to cook for a group of people, but it was good. Also, you can’t really cook anything bad when you’re cooking for hungry farm workers. We ate basically entirely veggies, most of which had been in the ground a few hours prior. I also made a lot of soup and bread, which was fun. Bread is my new favorite thing to make, I think. Kilo of flour, 2 packs of yeast, salt, warm water, warm oven, and BANG! Bread! We didn’t work in the afternoon, so I usually read or took a nap for a few hours (or tried to plan a certain trip to Oslo...), and the we would reconvene around 6 and have tea, make some dinner, play with sculpey, we even jammed once... Sometimes, when it was a nice night, we would make a big fire, and us and some of the family would hangout, sometimes grilling. Oh, we’d make Stockbrot! It’s basically just you basic bread recipe, and then you put a piece on a stick, and bake it over the fire! So cool! We also watched movies twice with the family, both times outside with a projector and a screen, which was cool. How many times does one get to watch a film while sitting in front of a campfire?

Emily, this is all very good and well, but... Where on earth are the pictures?? Ah, couldn’t have said it better myself!

So much mud on my boots and pants...




The lovely half-outdoor kitchen where I seemed to have spent most of my time.




Yay bio! (Organic)




Veggies! Lettuce, and broccoli, and cauliflower, and carrots, and green onions, and fennel, and radishes, and pumpkins, and squash and......





My own personal vendange... (aren't you proud, dad?)





Bread experiment. Didn’t really know what was doing... I felt very clever, though, because the kitchen was freezing (because it only has 2 walls), so I put the dough in the oven with a bowl of hot water below it, and it rose so well!




Piles of tomatoes for soup!

Fresh, made-from-total-scratch tomato soup! With something like 25 tomatoes. Delicious!




My beautiful bread! With Rosemary, too. The really impressive thing is that it’s a gas oven, and there’s no temperatures on it, so you just have to set it at a good-sized-looking flame and hope for the best...




Lunchtime!




Tomato greenhouse. Picking tomatoes is really nice for about 15 minutes, because they smell nice, and you’re not sitting in the dirt, but then they start to attack you, and you end up with your arms all yellow from the pollen, and with your hands literally black. Why they’re black, I really don’t know... Maybe just the dirt sticking to the pollen? It’s pretty satisfying work though, when you have 15 kilos of really pretty tomatoes.





My lovely Wohnwagen.




Best night—it was chilly, so we made a big fire, and cooked, and make art, and I had my fiddle... it was awesome :)





"But it's too early in the morning for pictures....."




Tom and Maria being adorable :)