Finally, another post!

So, farm life continues... Pretty much the same, every day. Cleaning horse shit, cleaning more horse shit, gathering apples and plums (making apple cider, too, one afternoon), cleaning around the house, taking the horses out, napping whenever possible...

Weekends are a little more interesting, though.

On July 30^th Manuel and I took a boat out onto Chiemsee, to see the islands. No, not our own boat, for once. There are two main islands Herreninsel and Fraueninsel. The first has a castle on it, built by the famous (well, he’s famous here) König Ludwig II, who’s responsible for basically all of the great architecture and art in Bavaria. It was supposed to be a replica of Versailles, but didn’t quite hit the mark. The other island, is a small town, where people actually live. Not quite sure how that works, but it’s pretty cool.

Me in front of the castle. We didn’t go inside, because we didn’t have a lot of time, but it was still pretty cool. Actually, what took most of my attention was a fountain with some pretty impressive, if odd, allegories.

Hi! :)

On Friday the 5^th there was a Bergfest, that us three WWOOFers were invited to as well. That’s Victor, from Spain, on the left, and Gregoire, from France, on the right. I think I’ve mentioned this, but it’s ironic that the last two were also from Spain and France. Hum. So yeah, the Bergfest was pretty cool, except when it started to rain... But then it cleared up. It was really nice to just sit around the fire, drink a beer (yes, I really drank a beer! Bavarian Weißbier is the way to go...), chat with some people. More parties need to be like that.

Weekend of the 13^th, Manuel’s friend Elisa came to visit, and the three of us went camping for the evening. We went swimming, hung out by the lake, and got to see this. Holy crap. It was actually nearly impossible to tell what was up and what was down...

Wow.

Out and about in Höslwang, about 2 km from the farm. Manuel and I spent an afternoon walking around the area, and stopped here for lunch. I ate a Käsebrot. Not to be confused with Brot mit Käse, ‘cause this was cheese with bread. And me.... Being a little scared. But, in the end, I won.

The church in Höslwang, with the funny dome on top of the bell tower, which you actually see on every church and chapel here. It’s just so unexpected. Maybe because it’s so close to Austria...? I’ll spare you photos of the interior, because it’s pretty spectacularly ugly. Really. So much silver and so many statues it’s terrifying.

Pretty countryside.

A little chapel, with the same funny little dome....

And finally... OMG kittens!! :) They’re getting so big, and so much more fun!

Okay, I’m just in a writing mood today!
So, there was a short break in the rain, so finally I have farm pictures!




















The geese, who are actively honking and hissing at me. Have I mentioned that I really hate geese? Actually, there’s 4 geese, and 4 ducks. The ducks are not nearly as noisy, and cute to boot.




















Chickens!




















Damn, that’s a nice cock. (Sorry, I just couldn’t resist! He really is very pretty, though).



















Der neue Stall. Just finished this spring, I believe.



















Horses! Rufina, Jolly, Scotty, Sammy, Lavendel, Freddy, Lady, Jaspar, Chamilla, Ahira.


















Jolly, characteristically eating to save her life.















Scotty, the Norwegian. He’s so fluffy and cute!
















Jasper, characteristically trying to play with me/eat my face.
















Just outside the stable. I don’t know if that clearing is natural or intentional, but it’s a perfect window for the Alps. It’s really the perfect view.





















Die Lady, looking a little tired. Really cool sky, though (5 minutes before it rained on me)
















Meet my farmy alter-ego. Quick-dry pants, rubber boots, a fleece, Albert Einstein hair, an impressive tan (for me) and a kitty. Gotta say, not the most attractive photo I’ve ever seen of myself.














No farm is complete without a Shetland pony and a foal (actually, there are 3 foals).














Die Junge (the boys).

































The family of deer that live around here. We see them every few days.

Chamilla and Yolanda, the kitty.

So, Bavaria! I arrived at Staudarerhof on Sunday evening, the 24th. Welcome to the farm!
















This is the farmhouse, which is pretty typical, although maybe fewer flowers than normal (seriously, the Bavarians love their flowers). Huge, square, with walls so thick that it’s probably the same temperature all year round, and I can’t use the telephone or wifi in my room because the signals can’t make it through the floor.




















Also typical is the fact that the cow barn is connected to the house. There’s no door between them, but there is a window, which is kind of entertaining. The upper level of the barn is just hay and grain, and piles of old tractor-bits, and the bottom is where their 40 cows live for most of the year. They’re not here in the summer, though, but all out in the mountains, grazing to their heart’s content (they only raise cows from birth to 3 years old, so they never do milking).














The main hall downstairs. It looks a lot bigger in reality. Kitchen, pantry and living room are to the left, Helmut’s father’s room, bathroom, mudroom and stairs are to the right. Maybe you can see, but there are horsey things all over the place—bridles and horseshoes etc.














The front pasture, looking over the road. I need to take more farm pictures, but I’ve been waiting for a sunny day, and there haven’t been a lot of those lately... (Seriously, though, where is my summer?! It was cold and damp when I was in VT and it was cold and damp in Heidelberg, and now it’s cold and damp in Bavaria! Damn you, global cooling!!)














On a nice evening, we had dinner outside, complete with grilling and everything. A little bit blurry, but Jenny and Helmut (the farm owners) are next to each other on the left, and on the right is Guillermo (wwoofer from Spain, who left), Damien (from France, who also left), and then Manuel. It was really nice :)















View outside my bedroom window... Although, below this pretty sight are about 40 chickens. I really hate chickens. There are more, too, and they are a pain in the butt.















Luzy, aka Luzifer. Very nice dog, though, despite the name, although she looks much too much like a wolf.












There are also 3 cats on the farm, one of which just had babies! This is them when they were only a few days old. They’re about a week and a half old, now, and ridiculously cute.

So, farm life... The general routine seems to be this: Wake up at 6:00, be in the stables by 6:15. We feed the horses, and clean the 10 stalls, 7 of which have little outdoor paddocks, which we clean as well. We’re usually done by about 7:30, and we go into the house for breakfast (fruit, yogurt, musli, coffe). After breakfast, there’s about 2 hours of chores. I usually spend a while doing dishes, and then sometimes cleaning inside (it’s a big, old house, and thus is always dirty no matter what you do), and sometimes cleaning the fields (it’s a silly task, but necessary—when there’s too much horse poo in the fields, they can get worms), sometimes rescuing baby trees from the grass that’s growing over them, and today, gathering a pile of apples from the trees... Etc. Yesterday we spent 2 hours cleaning the windows in the barn. I’m all for things being clean, but... Really? I don’t think the cows care...

Lunch is at 1:00 (Jenny cooks really well), and then we usually have time off until 3:30. Then, we bring the horses into the pastures, and we muck out stalls. There are the 10 in the main stable, but there are two other smaller stables, one for the mares, three of which have foals, and one for the four boys. It usually takes about 2 and a half hours, with the 3 of us working. Around 6:30, we take the horses in, and feed them (it’s incredible how much a horse can eat in a day... Also, just how much they poop), then we feed/water the chickens and geese, and spent 20 minutes chasing the chickens, and getting them back inside their house. Sometimes it’s entertaining, but mostly it makes me want to kill them because they all act so surprised that we’re chasing them, like it’s never happened before. “Wait, what’s going on? You want me to go somewhere? You’re going to eat me! AHHHHH!” And if you get too close, they start to freak out. Stupid animals. I like to watch them run, though, and pretend that they’re mini Velociraptors. Dinner is around 8, which is good, although consists of bread, cheese and pig-products a little too often. I think that’s just very German. Their bread is basically a meal in itself, and it’s filling, just not terribly interesting. Also, we eat off of wooden boards, which feels very Bavarian. Geese have to go into their house after dinner. Geese are awful, awful creatures. They are loud, obnoxious, and they like to hiss. They only way I can deal with them is by imagining them roasted and on the table for Christmas dinner. Om nom nom.

Anyways, so far so good. It gets a little repetitive, and 6 am comes awfully early, sometimes, but it’s alright. I wanted different, and that’s what I got! Manuel is in Prien, which is a few towns over, and we have a nice routine—he’s been coming over to stay on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and then leaves first thing in the morning, and then I can get a day off on the weekend, and we go do something. It’s almost like dating... Crazy.

It is nice, though to have the afternoons pretty much free, and I’ve been reading like a crazy person. Finished Dracule and the Pillars of the Earth. Gotta say, the latter was interesting, and is great historical fiction, and I have to appreciate the architectural detail, but... There wasn’t really a plot, the writing was repetitive, there was nothing surprising, and the good characters were entirely good, and the bad, entirely bad. I’m not usually one to criticize a book that combines art history, historical fiction, political intrigue and some bodice-ripping, but I was not super impressed, although, granted, maybe that’s because I had been hearing rave reviews for the past few years. Hm. Wow, and I just wrote a novel. Hope it’s not too boring. I’ll try to write again soon, with more farm pictures! Tah!

On Saturday July 23^rd, we took another touristy day, because we were leaving for Bavaria the next day. We went to the town of Neckarsteinach, in which one cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a castle. Seriously, I think there are four in this little valley, and apparently they were always fighting. Ah, the middle ages...















Entrance to the town, and that's the original town wall (I believe).

Manu looking a little skeptical...

Really pretty little church...















... How many walls can a little town possibly have? Apparently a whole lot.

Castle #1, which we went into. There’s not a ton left, but it was pretty cool. When we think of castles, we usually have something more palace-ey in mind, but this was a Castle. Basically all thick walls and towers. Seriously, that thing could probably have taken a nuclear bomb. Perhaps not the comfiest place to live, though.

Town from the top of the castle, and the Neckar.

Manu on top of the wall. Told you it was intense.

We hiked down from the town and came to the Neckar (hence the town’s name, Neckarsteinach). There was a dam that we crossed over, and we watched a huge coal boat going through the loch which was pretty cool. I’d never seen that before.

Pretty!

I wish I had more to say about the excursion, but I’m not sure if I do. The pictures speak for themselves. It was a nice trip, and especially good because we managed to be touristy without being excessively so. We went out to a very German dinner, where I discovered Reislingschorle—Reisling mixed with seltzer, basically. It was actually quite good, and really didn’t taste watered down, just a bit... Lighter.

The next day, we packed up for Bavaria! Manuel had decided that he wanted to take ride-sharers, to help pay for gas, and we ended up with two girls in the back seat, one headed to Munich and the other to Rosenheim. There was going to be another boy as well, but turns out there was a misunderstanding—Manu thought it was one more person, but turns out it was two, and there’s no way we could fit 6 people in that car... Hell, four was cozy. So, they gave us gas money and company, and we gave them a ride. Does anything like this exist at home? It’s really cool. So, the whole trip worked out well, aided of course by the huge bag of food that we had brought along. There was something like 5 sandwices, juice, bananas, chocolates, gummybears... Yeah. We were well-prepared. Om nom nom.

Time for yet another boating adventure! On Saturday the 16th, Manuel, Juri and I loaded up the camping car, drove a little ways up the Rhine, and then packed up... The Catamaran. Made by Waldorf kiddies, I believe. We fit a ridiculous amount of stuff in there, and then Juri and I paddled upstream, while Manu surfed. Paddling was all kinds of uncomfortable because we had to sit on the platform and then paddle out in front of us... Anyways, we eventually got to an island. We had planned to go where we went last week, but it was under water! Guess there’s been a lot of rain.
















So much stuff! The boat was literally 2 inches out of the water with Juri and I in it.
















Because we thought it was going to rain (and dear god, did it rain...) we put up a tarp which ended up being the size of a small house! Crazy. We had a good evening, grilling, eating, and playing Dutch Blitz for about 2 hours. I think I’m going to need a new set of cards, because mine are all kinds of beat up!

That evening, after getting back and getting a little less wet, we watched the final of the Women’s World Cup, USA v. Japan. It was a really good game, and SO close! Sort of disappointed that we lost, because we really played the better game, but it was pointed out that if anyone else should win, Japan deserved it.

On Tuesday, the first properly sunny and warm day since I’ve been here, I decided to have a ridiculously touristy day around Heidelberg.















The city from the castle.















Castle! You can't really see it here, but it's this funny pink color, because that's just the color of the local stone. Makes it look just a bit less intimidating, though.















Yay! I took a picture of myself and it doesn’t look awful! By the way, I’m on the castle, and that’s the Neckar.















Outer side of the castle, and I think the green part used to be the moat. Apparently, during WWII, the Americans refused to bomb Heidelberg, because so many of them had traveled or studeied there, and they thought it was too beautiful to destroy. The French, however, did not have the same reservations, and that’s why the castle is looking a little worse for wear. (I’ll admit, I don’t actually know if the second part is true, but I know the first is).















This is apparently the German concept of a royal garden.















Just kidding, it used to look like this!















Ich bin dein Gummibär....















So, apparently, Heidelberg has the largest number of Americans outside of America. Or, something like that, because there are a TON of army bases! This one is right around the corner from his mom’s house. Craziness.

Hehehehe. There's something so satisfying about taking pictures of things that say not to...

This is really random, but I’m really excited, because whenever I go somewhere, I always think “man, I wish I had the habit or buying a patch or pin in every country I went to, because then I’d have this awesome collection of memoribilia.” But then I always think “Well, I’ve already been to so many places, that it’s stupid to start now.” But then I always go to more places... So, I finally made up my mind. In Heidelberg, I bought two little lapel pins, one with the German colors and an eagle, the other saying Heidelberg. Finally, I have my tradition! And here’s the clever part—I found a website (zazzle.com or something) that sells many things, including pins. So, I went and bought a pin for everywhere I’ve been (flag and/or national symbol pins). I’m going to have such an awesome collection :) I don’t know why, but it’s really exciting, although I won’t get them until I’m home. Too bad

Other things during the week involved: painting Manu’s mother’s kitchen (he then replaced all the cabinets), going to see a really impressive youth circus from... Costa Rica, I think, which was organized by a few of his friends, and finally seeing Harry Potter! Very exciting. I might have changed a few things, but overall it was fun. Hell, even Manu liked it.