Sunday, December 30, 2007

deutschland


So, I'm in Germany. It's been a ton of fun, spending Christmas with a wonderful family, skiing in the Alps, ice skating on ponds. You know, the regular winter stuff. It's been quite a change from the beautiful Mediterranean clime of Southern Spain, but I'm glad to be reminded of what real winter weather is like again.

The countryside has been a winter wonderland for the most part. I took a train from the Northern-Central part of Germany (Kassel) to Ulm in the Southwest. The landscape was covered in a thick frost that almost looked like snow. Although we haven't had any flakes fall since I've been here, the temperature has been below freezing and the existing white stuff hasn't gone yet.


The Alps were covered and the skiing conditions were perfect. We spent a good portion of the day working our way across a resort nestled in the lower mountains that lay at the beginning of the range in Germany. We even crossed over a mountain to ski into an Austrian valley at one point.

That night, we stayed in a cottage with friends of German #2's family. These people cared for her and her brother while their parents worked as they were growing up, and taught them to ski. The cottage was situated at the bottom of a snow-covered valley and we had to ski in from the road because there was no driveway. The whole house was heated by wood stoves and furnaces and was as hot as an oven compared to the frozen world outside. We cooked a small dinner on an old-fashioned wood-burning stove and ate in the light of a propane lamp (the cottage has no electricity). I turned in early, after nearly falling asleep in the toasty kitchen. My bed was cozy in the cool bedroom. I had heavy, down-filled blankets to keep me warm after the day of outdoor fun.

Before heading home, we decided to ski-climb the hill behind the cottage and ski back down in the deep snow. As I'd never done either of those things, I provided a bit of comic relief to the event. But it was so much fun, and I should have a video pending to post. Remember dune-diving? Yeah, it went a little like that.

Now I've been dropped off at the home of German #1. I realized he has not yet made it into this blog. He's a friends I met at the Farm in MA and he left a year ago already. By the time I started this blog, he'd been gone. So far, we've made good time ticking off to-do's from our list, seeing some ancient Roman ruins nearby, ice skating and eating warm apple strudel with vanilla sauce, and hanging out with his friends. I met a very fun young woman who is American because of her parents, but has lived in Germany nearly her whole life. Strangely enough, she identifies more strongly with her American citizenship.

More details will come of my time in the small village outside of Stuttgart in the coming days. Right now, there has just been too much to catch up on and we're planning on seeing Heidelberg today. Ciao for now!

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

and... we're back!

Merry Christmas to you all! I've made it to Germany and have been celebrating with German #2 and her family. It's been a very lovely holiday for me and it makes me miss all my friends and family back home even more. I'm looking forward to seeing you all when I get back home.

Ok, there were just too many to try to post them in an order I wanted, so I just put all the things I wrote for the past few weeks in one post. I hope you enjoy reading about my time at the funny farm; it sure was a trip.

Happy Holidays!

here goes...

abandoned

My host has gone to Belgium for four days, leaving Onur, Claudia (two other volunteers) and me alone with no car. He’s given us a list of chores to complete in his absence, but it seems we’re having a hard time finding the motivation to do them. Onur and Claudia seem only to be interested in smoking our host’s weed and wasting my computer’s battery. I’ve managed to get a total of 45 minutes for myself the whole four days. Now, my laptop’s battery is dead and the solar panel has failed, too. We have no electricity and no internet. Thankfully, the water is heated by gas and we have propane ranges and wood stoves for cooking and warmth. I can handle a little blackout, I think.

spanish cowboys

Our host hadn’t been gone six hours and we received visitors. Two strangers on horseback appeared, looking for the man. They told us they were traveling around by horseback for the weekend and were hoping to stop here for the night for respite and a visit with their friend. Well, we called the man in Belgium and decided, why not? What could be too difficult about two Spanish cowboys?


Two Spanish cowboys may have been easy but suddenly at sundown we were nine people on this host-less farm. What to do? Do they speak English? No: so poor Claudia, the only woman and native Spanish-speaker must play host alone. Are they going to eat with us? Maybe: so Onur and I better prepare enough food. Will they be staying? Hopefully not: the four others will leave, but the two cowboys need beds.


All was quickly put in order. We settled into our host’s bedroom with a big fire, plenty of beer and wine, and marijuana for the masses. Onur and I whipped up some veggies, dip, and a quick pasta stir-fry. Claudia got the conversation ball rolling and directed us through several courses of tea, coffee, and joints. Every time we thought the hour had come for the end, we wound up just boiling more water and rolling more fatties. It was 2:30 before everybody staggered back to town and the three of us were able to clean up and get our guests settled for the night. What is this place?

wild horses

Two new WWOOFers arrived from the town last night. Our host is still gone and had instructed them to walk. Apparently, he gave them terrible directions and they arrived in the dark after asking several people for help.

Sasha and Phoebey are from the States—the San Francisco Bay area—and have just come from what sounds like a WWOOFing paradise. The place is a short walk from town (there is no road access), uses solar power, and seems pretty self-sustaining. The work is scheduled and varied, plentiful. The host has clear expectations and demands. I wonder what they’ll think of this place.

Today, four healthy-looking horses showed up. These creatures wander free here, having no stables or feed schedules to confine them. They’re in much better shape than the two emaciated mares and the one with a large open wound who’ve been here the past two days. Nifty coincidence: one of the new WWOOFers knows how to ride. Onur and Claudia think this is serendipity, a gift from the universe. I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen.

We took some time to corral, feed, and get acquainted with the horses. They were saddled and mounted. And they stood in one place. Well, at least we didn’t have to treat anybody for a fall with no way to the hospital.

the serrania de ronda


This place is unlike any other I’ve ever seen. I’m living on a mountain range tucked away in the South of Spain, a park in the Sierra de Grazalema. On all sides are tall mountains, the tops of which have been shrouded in clouds for the second week of my stay. Even the valleys are dotted with hills and small towns perch on the hillsides. The cortijo itself is pretty isolated, situated along, winding dirt road that passes few houses (most abandoned) on its way to town.


Distances here are misleading. To reach a ridge a stone’s throw away by foot can take a half-hour or more along meandering goat paths, sometimes having to hop a fence or descend into a ravine before climbing back up.

I wish I had better pictures to share, but this place is just too big to fit inot a camera. And mine seems to be dying anyway, having lost its shutter button during the olive harvest in Villamartín, and now displaying a multi-colored blob where the display should be.

Trees cover most of the hills, but even bare places are peppered with oaks and shrubs. Streams cut across sections of the wilderness, often crossing the road leaving shallow arroyos, as there hasn’t been much rain this season.

In addition to the horses, there are a few flocks of sheep that wander their favorite corners of the countryside. I often hear the bells around their necks clanking across the valley from a nearby ridge.

This is the cortijo where I’d been living for most of December. For all its oddities and annoyances, I must say you can’t beat its location. It’s plopped right in one of the most beautiful places I’ve seen.

the funky bunch

Our host returned with four new volunteers, all from the States. They’d been studying in Belgium and were now doing some traveling before going home for the holidays.

The other two Americans, Onur, and Claudia have all gone, leaving me with the youngsters. In a spat of cosmic humor, Sasha told me to “look after the kids.” She is the same age. So there I was, indeed looking after them. I felt like I was spending the weekend with ‘fresh air kids,’ urban youth come into the country to escape the hardness of the city. I’d taught them to build a fire, cook, and bake from scratch. They too, would go soon, leaving me alone with Theo. It was too bad they didn’t teach me how to humor him—they learned to like it here almost overnight.

and then there were two…

For the past three days, it’s been Theo and I, with occasional Marco (Theo’s brother) sightings. I’ve done more sanding than I thought possible. In addition, I’ve run to town a few times with the man, meeting friends, having drinks and tapas, taking out the trash. The truck ricochets down the hill like a dull silver pinball, threatening to roll down the hillside.

Tonight, we roasted a leg of goat. Ok, I roasted the goat’s leg. Theo had a goat slaughtered to share with all of his volunteers and then everybody bailed. Oops. Well, between the two of us, we ate the whole damn leg anyway. It didn’t take as much effort as I thought, first to roast it then to eat it. I merely poked it in several places, shoved in some whole garlic cloves and threw the bastard in the oven. Two hours and a smoky kitchen later (oops, again), we had a tender piece of meat done just right. I hastily boiled some potatoes and sautéed some chard from the garden (Theo thinks I’m a good cook because I taught the four kids), and dinner was served. It was a short night for my host—an early dinner and some brief conversation sent him to his bed and me up the hill to my cold house.

Strange, but I never thought I’d enjoy a wood stove as much as I have the past few nights. Of course, it keeps me warm, but before I would have chosen a different heat source. Growing up, it was more often drudgery than entertainment for my brother and me to spend a weekend gathering wood with my father. And we always touched each log at least twice: first to bring it in from the forest and second when we brought it to the house from the barn (often through snow that we first had to shovel). Then there was the dust—fine layers of ash covered everything all winter. If my mother didn’t do weekly battle with the particulate matter, we would’ve been overcome, Pompeii-style.

Here, however, bringing in firewood presented a challenge—first I had to find it and then bring it in before the sun sank. Do I have enough? Are there enough different sizes to build up the fire? Then came the nightly game of actually getting the thing started, followed by regular feedings through the night. All this to raise the temperature in my little cottage a few degrees. And I’ve loved it!

And that’s where I find myself now, having fulfilled the ritual and taking time to remember these two bizarre weeks and look ahead to the events coming.



horse sense

Living at the Hacienda taught me a little bit about horses, but mostly I learned that they are not the dignified, stately creatures we often believe them to be.

As I walked out to the olive grove on my third day at the Hacienda, I was still naively viewing these creatures with a slightly mystified respect. A white mare was steadily gazing at me as I approached. I wondered what she was thinking of me, so deeply she seemed to be peering into my being. I walked a little farther and noticed that she was merely scratching her behind, quite obviously, on the tree next to her.

While ridding the corrals of manure (a job that can be done with dignity but is never stately), I tried to count the number of times the horses passed gas. I couldn’t do it, that’s how often it happened in the fifteen minutes each corral took.

The occurrence that cinched it all for me, however, was something I couldn’t have expected. And this wasn’t even one of those times that just looked comical because I caught it out of the corner of my eye. This event was actual and I swear the equine perpetrator laughed. Several horses are stabled in stalls that stand next to each other and are separated by fences between the runs on the outside. As a stallion unsuspectingly stood outside watching us walk past, the one next door craned his neck over the fence and totally goosed his neighbor! I truly believe the gooser was neighing with impish glee afterward.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Cortijo Hell-hole

I made it out. Oy, that was a rough one. As usual, it´s feast or famine with the iternet, so hopefully I´ll have a ton of posts from my last place. Thanks for keeping me in your thoughts (and prayers. Seriously, that place was creepy). Right now I´m in an internet center in Ronda and will be heading to Germany tomorrow to spend the holidays. I´m so excited! More soon!

Friday, December 7, 2007

um...

So I'm currently in the middle of Spanish nowhere and I'm a little worried. My host leaves soon for four days, leaving us on this farm with no car and little access to the outside world. Thankfully he has wifi here (go figure) and one of my fellow volunteers has a cell phone that she can let me use, otherwise nobody would know if I had had been murdered by my crazy, pot-smoking host. Say some prayers; this might be a rough one. TSOldtimer, over and out.

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

black gold

I'm not talking Texas Tea, either.


The olive harvest is over. After four weeks of abusive pruning, the trees have been stripped of their fruit. It seems these trees just can’t catch a break. For starters, they must grow in this hot, arid climate and chalky clay soil. Our inexpert pruning techniques of thwacking the suckers from the trees must also be painful. And finally, the harvest itself is a truly violent occurrence. After carefully spreading a long, wide net of fine mesh around the trunk and beneath the boughs, we set about the tree with long wooden poles,
beating the olives from the branches. We harvest as many twigs and leaves as we do fruits, and have to pick them out by hand before we can collect the small round olives into the wagon. For all this work, I have yet to learn how much oil comes from pressing. A fellow WWOOFer told me that the olives are about fifteen percent oil by weight. I will never look at the little bottle of oil in the supermarket the same way again.

I’ve gleaned a little about the process by which these small black fruits become oil. We’ve taken our olives to the only mill in the area that still processes them in the “old way,” according to our host, and uses no chemicals to extract the oil, nor do they mix all the olives they receive, thus reducing the quality of the resulting oil (apparently the olives that grow here are famous in the region). Here, the olives are washed and then ground up, pit and all. The resulting pulp is mixed with some water and may be allowed to settle overnight, or immediately be sent for pressing. If allowed to set, a small bit of oil (about 7% of the 15% of the fruit that is oil) will rise to the top of the slurry. This liquid treasure is much sought after, and apparently isn’t ever for sale because there is so little of it. It is the purest olive oil, having not experienced any denaturing heat from even the cold press. My host hopes to collect some before everything is pressed. When the paste is ready to be pressed, it is spread over round woven mats and these are stacked in several layers. The weight of the olive pancakes already begins to express some liquid, and it is collected in the pan that the mats are stacked in. After enough are stacked, the pile is pressed by a hydraulic pump at a pressure of up to 400 kilograms per square centimeter (about 5,689 pounds per square inch)! This is, apparently, low-pressure to avoid producing heat that damages the oil. All the liquid expelled is collected in a vat and again allowed to settle. Here, it separates by weight into olive pulp, water, and oil. From this point, the oil is either skimmed off the top or the vat is drained from the bottom until only the oil remains. The World Book Encyclopedia tells me that modern industrial processes involve further extraction using a chemical solvent that is applied to the pulp that remains from squeezing. This mix is separated by a centrifuge and the solvent is evaporated from the oil that is left, but this oil is generally flavorless and has lost much of the color and nutrients of the cold pressed oil. I think this is the cheapest variety that can be bought in grocery stores.

We were three Americans, four Poles, and one Irishman doing the harvesting. I guess we could classify ourselves as migrant workers, foreigners following the harvest, providing cheap labor for an expensive product that the local people take for granted. According to Susan Griffith in Work Your Way Around the World, 5,000 to 6,000 workers from Morocco and Latin America pass through Southern Spain every year to work in the fruit and vegetable harvests. The large number of Moroccans that enter the country have prompted the government to highly regulate the hiring of foreign workers. Prospective workers often have to provide several layers of documentation and employers must go through a lengthy and costly process in order to obtain visas and work permits. In many cases, (like mine) these fiery hoops are ignored altogether and workers are hired undocumented, being able to obtain neither a residence card nor a national insurance card, which aid in receiving social services.

This reminds me of the situation in the United States, where we are arguing over legislation that would either make entry easier for foreign workers in order to ensure availability of services, or further restrict legal entry, allowing exploitation and dangerous working conditions. Or perhaps the idea is to allow for cheap labor at a lower risk. I can’t remember.

Even from the position I’m in now, a foreigner here with no documentation and little knowledge of the language or the culture, I can’t identify with what these people must experience. I have travel insurance and can leave whenever I want, having money saved just for this experience. I’ve joined an international organization and made a deal with my host in which I have set and fair hours to work in exchange for food and lodging—security. The Polish folk working alongside us had a slightly different perspective, however. They, too, belonged to an organization that had placed them here and provided a bit of a security net. However they had even less knowledge of Spanish than me, and were traveling in order to escape the dearth of jobs in Poland. According to them, unemployment is very high in Poland right now, and it’s common for young people to leave the country to look for opportunities elsewhere.

So: olives, oil production, migrant workers, and social issues. I guess I am learning something in Spain.
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