Its been a while since I last contributed to this beautiful blog and for all of our fans out there (aka mom and dad), I am sorry. Its been quite a whirlwind since we left Ireland 3 weeks ago. It was sad to leave that rainy but wonderful island, but this Irish WOOFing adventure has gone rogue and now we are in continental Europe! Surprise! Yes, so we left Moyleabbey organic farm on the 30th of July and headed to Belfast, then to Glasgow, then Edinburgh, Amsterdam, a farm in northern Holland for 10 days, Frankfurt, and now Berlin! Tomorrow we head to Brussels, then back across the channel for creamfields! (anticipatory fist pump), then to Barcelona and Majorca, then home on the 22nd of september. Real life looms ahead. Now, what to say about the past 3 weeks...
Belfast was interesting, we showed up just in time for the Pride parade so the city was a little crazy with all that. We did a tour of west belfast to learn about the troubles, and its crazy to see that they are still constructing "peace walls" between the catholic and protestant communities because theres still a lot of violence despite the fact that they somehow came to some agreement a few years ago.
Glasgow was just a quick stop, basically one and a half days, but we went to more museums there than we have been to anywhere because they were free and it was raining so not so nice to walk around outside.
Edinburgh is the best place ever. Its like a really great sized city and so beautiful and so much fun! When we got there the fringe festival was just beginning, so we got to see a great comedy show for cheap because it was still in previews. I really loved scotland and wish we had more time to spend in the land of "Och" and "Aye". Especially because we didnt have time to go to the highlands so i must go back and do that.
Amsterdam was really cool too but i was perpetually getting lost even though i was reading a map and it looks like it should be simple enough. The Van Gogh museum was really awesome but jam packed with people. Actually the whole city was jam packed with people, and as our luck would have it, it was Pride weekend in Amsterdam, so rainbows and drag queens surrounded us once again.
Traveling has been great but we are realizing why we never planned a whirlwind euro trip in the first place, were not really cut out for the city hopping, 2 days in each place sort of thing: Its super fun but not incredibly meaningful because you go around and take some pics and do whatever tourists are supposed to do in that place and then leave. But since everything seems so close its really tempting to try to go as many places as possible. On our last day in Amsterdam we had a pretty frazzled day trying to get all our plans in order and 20 minutes before we had to catch a train we were booking flights and such and ended up booking a flight from brussels to berlin instead of the other way around! So that was pretty crappy but luckily it wasnt to expensive to sort out. Its really nice to balance the traveling with staying in one place and having a chilled out routine, basically just gardening and sleeping.
Which brings me to our short stay in Holland. I was not that psyched about it when we first got there, but it did get better. On saturday evening, Lambert, picks us up from the train station and hes telling us about how the town, Veenhuizen, is like the prison center of Holland. There are 4 jails in ths sleepy little town, plus the very popular tourist attraction, the prison museum. Also the town was originally founded in like the 1800s as this sort of social experiment where homeless people and orphans and other such miscreants were sent to work and learn to be proper citizens, so many of the houses have sayings written on them such as "work is virtuous" and stuff like that: Then we get to the place we were sleeping which wa not Lamberts house but an abandoned farm house near the garden. Its completely empty, when the former resident died i guess his son took absolutely everything of any value, including the carpets and the light fixtures, and its really really dirty. Then we look in the cupboard and all the food is in these matching packages that look creepily like the Dharma Initiative from Lost... Anyway i was close to running away immediately because everything just had such a creepy vibe but Sarah convinced me that in the light of day everything would be better, and she was right. The gardens that we worked in were absolutely beautiful, and all the different volunteers we worked with were really great. It was more of a botanical garden than a farm, though they do produce some crops for sale, but the main garden is open for visitors to walk through so its all very artistically laid out in labyrinths and fancy shapes. Basically the only gardening task we did was weeding, because they are so meticulous that there cant be a single weed anywhere. But i understand that its the easiest thing for us to do especially since we were there such a short time. Also, ironically, it rained every single day (the irish weather followed us) so the ground was too wet for using machinery or tools so we had to trudge through the mud and pick weeds by hand. All in all it was pretty good though, Holland is cool. I love bikes and cheese and dutch people are all about their bikes and cheese. Apparently playing darts is really popular too, Sarah and I went with Lambert and his friend to the local pub, thinking they would play like two or three rounds, but they were really intense about it so we were there until 3 am. Darts is a really crap game to play when you are drinking because it actually requires a lot of mental math and strategizing, not to mention accuracy. And i always thought it was just get your darts closest to the center and you win. One exciting thing we did was cook up a bunch of recipes for squash because they are growing a lot of squash and dont really know how to eat it, so we made yummy squash risotto and zucchini cake and a few other things. One not so exciting thing we did was catch impetigo from Lambert's 1-year old daughter. They thought she had bug bites. Normally adults dont really get it but i guess our immune systems are weak from traveling, especially since we have not been very well nourished since we were at Moyleabbey.
I dont think im going to write about Germany right now because i have already written a lot and i have some other internet tasks to accomplish, namely, applying for jobs. its really hard to think about work and i cant even remember the title of my honours thesis at this point, so this is not going to be fun. I want to upload some pics but the connection is really slow so i will do it in a few days hopefully.
