Christmas in Austria

Much like the Czech Republic, Austria doesn’t celebrate Christmas with Father Christmas, instead they have a flying baby jesus called Christkind.

Elke was explaining that the traditional festivities are also very different. The celebrations happen on the 24th of December: after lunch one of the parents takes the children out while the other puts up the christmas tree and presents, the children come back and some small bell is rung. The children dash into the room to try to get a glimpse of the Christkind creating chaos. The presents are unwrapped and then its time for dinner and bed. Madness! And to think our Christmases are always mayhem… We actually had quite an entertaining discussion on the ideal festivities. As Raphael is still so young, they have time to decide what works best :)

On Christmas Eve we had a meal just the four of us and Rafael, a very untraditional one! René made a Jewish main course which evolved and ended up with cream in it so not Kosher at all. We also had rosemary roasted potatoes and delicious herby vegitables. Oh and delicious Austrian wine of course :)

After dinner Elke lit the candles on the tree. Actual real candles! So the traditional mums also have to worry about the crazy hyped up kids burning the house down in their angst to see Christkind! The looked beautiful, but I think I’m way too paranoid to handle fire in trees in houses! not to mention the sparkers that where lit in it too! They looked super cool!

The following day René’s family came for lunch, we had Schnitzel! It was so much more laid back than Christmas at home! Why do we spend all day cooking? Well, it does taste good ;) in the evening, once all the family where gone we had chestnuts with red wine and watched a film.

Welcome to the Farm

First of all I would like to apologise for being so absent these last few days (or even weeks). Its taken us a little while to adjust and also I have a book which I would like to spend all my free time reading instead of writing :/ there is quite a lot to catch up on now so I’m making this a bit of a general post. To get the ball rolling again. And give you all an idea of what we are up to.

This is our second Workaway now, we are staying on a 400 year old farm in Lower Austria with the Postler family: René, Elke and little Raphael. They have recently-ish bought the farm so we are mainly helping them with renovations and building things as well as the day to day chores.

It’s really nice and cosy here. We are very much part of family life and feel very welcome. Every morning we all sit down to giant amazing breakfasts of homemade bread, cheeses, meats, conserves,… We even had waffles one morning! And a delicious tomato and mozzarella salad (on a separate occasion that is)! Its much a great way to start the day :) we talk about the projects for the day among other things and eventually roll outside and begin!

This is the courtyard:

What we do varies from helping René making furniture out of palettes to installing electric systems to painting. The last few days David has been doing lots with electricity, where as I have been fluttering around helping Elke in the house, painting and sanding pallets.
Its kind of more like being part of a fair family where everyone does there bit than specifically working for food and a bed, which is technically what we are doing. Then again, technically thats what family members do to… Or maybe not, what with unconditional love…. Ah, I’m in over my head now!

Moving on.

They have chickens.
Crazy Austrian chickens which I believe my uncle would love. They are a very old breed who’s name I cannot remember and they have some other breeds too :) These are huge and look at their feather flares!
This is the old couple. They don’t like to go outside, however the others all roam around all over the place. Really. We spot them everywhere its quite funny. Except for when one doesn’t come home. But that doesn’t happen very often, normally they are all in as it gets dark, I think.

This is Nelly, the sweet and shy Dalmatian. Shes opening my heart to dogs as I am much more of a cat person. I still draw the line of kissing though ;)

Nathan is the boss though, after René that is. He’s a bundle of energy and loves playing football, the goal seems to be the straw pile. He picks the ball up in his mouth and runs up it! He could literally go all day, he shore runs David out of breath!

We are surrounded by beautiful views, or though its been quite misty at times. We all take the dogs for a walk somedays, others just one person will go, its really nice going through the forests and then coming out and seeing where you are.
Elke explained to me that the fields are mostly thin rectangles due to split inheritances. It makes a real change from the squares all over England! Or at leas wide rectangles. I just realised I don’t have a photo that represents them very well, in some hills you can really see the stripes of land though, I’ll have to get one next time we are out and about.

Arriving in Austria

We arrived in Austria on the 19th of December by bus. And what a bus! We where dreading our five hour 15€ journey, that is, until we where welcomed onboard our bright yellow Student Agency coach.

We had seats right up at the front, big comfy seats. There where touch screens for every person with films, games, documentaries and music. Headphones where available too. Bright yellow ones of course!

And the best part: free wifi and free tea, coffee and hot chocolate!
Needless to say, five hours flew by! I’ve never travelled so well!
Not to mention the amusement of being able to watch our crazy Austrian driver dance his way across the boarder to his personal electronic music which clashed with the quiet radio for the rest of the coach. Ha! He had a good collection of chocolate which was fed to him by the pretty bus hostess (would you call her that?! I have never come across one before). It cant be a bad job really, especially with fancy buses nowadays which aren’t half as hard to drive as they used to be.

Anyhow, moving on from our exciting journey to our arrival in Vienna. We where dropped off in the centre of town so we needed to get the underground to the train station.
This is probably a good time to tell you where we where going. After some stressful weeks of not finding a second Workaway we found René and Elke in Austria who have a small farm close to Vienna but I’ll tell you all about that later. Essentially after some e-mails we agreed on dates and times and here we are!
So, René had kindly given us great directions on how to get to Westbahnhof (the train station) so it was pretty straight forward. We where pretty proud of ourselves actually, we got to the station 15mins earlier than our agreed time. Bought our tickets which where crazy expensive compared to the Czech Republic. Almost as much as our bus there!

I have realised we have a real issue with first impressions. Maybe I shouldn’t be writing this on here because I send the blog link with our applications on Workaway. So to you future hosts: we are working on it ok? I really want to sort this!

Right, on with the story: We had agreed to meet on the platform 15min before the train left. As the time got closer and closer there was still no sign of René. David said we should get on the train, that he probably had too. By that point most people where on already and we where worried we would miss it. We thought our tickets where only for that train (we later found out they are all like open tickets :/). The platform and train are massive by the way. So we got on to discover that there was free wifi, so I began writing him an email only to receive one saying he was still waiting for us and had we got lost. The train was already moving though.
He would get the next train and meet us in St Pölten. Once we got off the train we no longer had wifi so we ran around guessing which platform he would be on and he ended up finding us. What a massive relief! By that point I had a huge ball of worry and guilt in my stomach.

To finish off an eventful day, the car wouldn’t start so we had to push it down a hill to try to bump start it which didn’t work. As we where preparing for a second try it miraculously started. Apparently it has never done that and is yet to do it again. Strange.

We have settled in now and soon all will be forgiven and forgotten. Fat chance. It will probably haunt us until the last day like the lost text messages to Tom!

The Last Few Days in the Czech Republic: Cookies, Bread, Prague castle and Goodbyes

We are in Austria now, but before I start writing about it here I want to wrap up our Czech month.

It was a hectic and emotional last few days.

“Christmas Dinner”

We where so sad we didn’t stay for Christmas, so we had our own surrogate Christmas dinner!
Tom came up with the idea and a great plan that everyone make something traditional from their country giving us a multicultural dinner. I’m not sure where but that plan got lost along the way… Because we ended up with a very british christmas dinner. We had roast goose and all the trimmings. And I mean ALL! Even homemade bread sauce. I made a big nut roast for us vegis. I admit, we did get a little carried away but hey, isn’t that what its all about?
The australians did a big spread of nibbles and dips to begin, which frankly, would have been enough itself! And hour later we felt ready to attempt the main course. Tom and I tried to give small portions, but there was just so much variety that we all ended up with mountains!
Konstantin made us german pancakes for dessert, they where amazing! Similar to normal ones but super thick, I’m talking 2-3cm, kind of like huge waffles… We really didn’t need them, by then we where rolling around already!
So there was still a bit of a multicultural theme I guess…

Christmas Cookies and Bread Baking Extravaganza

In the afternoons (after feeding the animals) I would go to the kitchen and help with the Christmas cookie baking (eating) and decorating. They are really popular here and all families have their own recipes. Petr brought over his mums cookie moulds, some of which must have been passed down at least a generation.

The bee hive shaped ones are the best and you don’t even cook them! They have a chocolate rum outside and a creamy centre with a crunchy bottom.

There was so much gingerbread mixture that I made a spontaneous house! Far from the elaborate one of last year, but it was still fun!

And heres last years one, but that did take a few days…

On our very last volunteering day I was put in charge of making some batches of mini breads for future guests – and us :)
I was to make little burger buns, little naans and little bagels.
Little did I know what I was getting myself into… Don’t get me wring, it was great fun. But I literally didn’t stop for like 6 hours! I miss calculated shaping times (of course it takes a lot longer to shape 36 mini buns than 8!) so I ended up with the naan and the bagel mixture ready to shape as the burger buns where on their second raise. Not ideal. Everything turned out fine though. I will never take a bagel for granted again. Especially a mini one. They took for ever to shape. And then poach. And then bake. And I stupidly over baked them slightly so they got a little crust anyway. They still tasted good though!

I wish I had counted them. I have no idea how many there where of each…

Last Night In Prague

In a nut shell, we have had the most wonderful time at the farm. It has been a truly great experience, we are so grateful to Petr and Tom for giving us the opportunity. We have become very close to them both, so I suggested that Tom come along with is to Prague (ok, he was already giving us a lift as he had a doctors appointment) and we had such a fantastic last day and night!
We had some deliveries to do in the morning, then we all went to the hospital to admire the puke green walls and receive the fantastic news that Tom’s leg is getting better :)
Tom had never stayed in a hostel before, luckily we went back to the same one which we knew was nice and funnily enough we got the same room!

We still wanted to see the castle, so we left Tom to meet some friends and hopped on a tram under his instructions :) it was packed but still a nice experience.
We nearly missed our stop if it wasn’t for a nice mum who needed help with getting the baby buggy off the tram. We followed her directions to the castle and came face to face with a massive closed gate :( it was close to 5 and dark by then.

We decided to walk back to the pub instead of get the tram and on the way we found another way into the castle! The actual entrance haha. Lucky we didn’t just double back and get the tram…

By now it was so dark that our camera was pretty much pointless. But here are the best of the bad!

It was really amazing, the photos don’t do it justice at all. I’d really recommend checking it out on google images to get a sense of it. Its like being in a village of massive amazing houses and the stunning cathedral in the middle! We will have to go back to visit it properly, I don’t think we saw half of it. The view of Prague at night from up there was just amazing too…

On our way back we walked through the centre to see all the lights and the christmas markets.

We met Tom in the pub and had a drink with him and his friends who where both very friendly. Then went looking for a place to eat. We found. Chinese restaurant which was really reasonable and had HUGE portions. Nobody finished. It was impossible. I dont know who could eat that much, noodles where escaping off our plates!!
But I still had dessert haha!
How could I resist “Ice cream in Fire”?! And it was amazing!

Then we headed back towards the centre and found a cool bar called kuala where we spent the rest of the night chatting and crying in my case and lots of laughing too. It was a really lovely end to our time there, it couldn’t have possibly been better. We will definitely go back, especially to see Tom and Petr again.

This was Davids unfiltred beer:

Tom and I, quite an unflattering photo. We blame David.

And the bar. Doesn’t it have great wall paper?

Feeding the Farm Animals

For the last four days of our time on the farm I fed the animals in the morning. The fist two times with Poni Skalova (I hope thats spelt right) who is the little lady I mentioned in one of my first posts who’s name I have since learned!
The first day was a little frustrating, she didn’t realise that I was going to be filling in for her so she could have two days off, I needed to learn everything and make notes not to forget. She would give me a job and go off to do something else. I think I slowed her down more than anything. I spent most of the time moving hay.

Later I spoke to Petr and he explained to Skalova.
The next day was much better, I felt I had been of some real help and she made sure we did everything together at least once. There was still a couple of things that confused me. Its amazing how much we take communication for granted. The simplest thing suddenly become so difficult. Like “get a wheelborrow”, what? Pick up a bucket? Nope. Collect straw? Nope. Ohh move the wheelborrow? Nope. Ah shes got the wheelborrow. Riiiight. Duh. Not to mention that the word yes in Czech sounds like “no” which I knew by then, but its so easy to forget. I probably said “Dobri?” (Good?) a million times that day. But we got there in the end! Bless her, shes so sweet. She loves all the animals to pieces, they all have names, she pointed out the pregnant sheep and scratched all the pigs :) there are little piglets too. That day they where having their tags done. David and Richard where helping but we kept having problems with the staple like device which is used so it was a little traumatic for everyone, piglets included. The boys worked out a system though and all the males got done, there was lots of stroking included. They are so cute! Some of them are really scared but others will trot up to you lean in and snuffle your hand (and try to bite the odd finger!). The big ones love a good scratch, they come up and ask for it! especially a really friendly huge mum to be. On our last day she had her piglets :)

For the next two days David and I fed the animals by ourselves.

We would begin by letting all the egg laying hens out of their houses, checking their water and food. Then we fed all the chickens, geese and turkeys and gave them water. The geese drink loads!
Then we give piles of hay to the sheep and goats and water too.
Pigs are next, they all get fed with a flour like grain and any vegetable leftovers we have. After feeding we clean them out and give them fresh straw.
Then over to the pheasants, guinea pigs and lone rabbit (that the previous farm manager left!) with fresh grass. This makes the guinea pigs day :)
And back to the sheep and goats with more hay.
Its quite a big job, it takes about two to three hours, but its fun. Although you do stink to high heaven!

Česky Krumlov: The Adventure. Part III

We headed to the bus stop 20mins early so we had enough time to find the bus. We where not going to miss another bus! We read all the signs and made sure we where definitely at the right stop. We even asked the people at the stop next door and some guy cleaning a coach. They all pointed us to the same place.

And so we waited.

And waited.

And we asked again. And everyone said we where in the right place.

Maybe the bus was 10 mins late?
As 5.45 approached, someone pointed out that maybe the 5.20 bus was in the morning. Duh! Theres no such thing as am and pm bus times. Anywhere.
But it was ok, because there was a bus at 18.00.

And so we waited.

And waited.

And triple checked. And ran at every bus that appeared at any stop.

At 6.30pm I realised there was a teeny weeny number next to the time. After some searching I worked out that that kittle number meant the bus only ran in the summer time.

Great.

By now there was nobody else at the station.

We contemplated getting a bus to Tábor and trying to work out a train or something. At least we would be slightly closer to home… But there where no more buses at all.

We called Tom, who was very understanding. Again. We would have to stay in a hostel and get a bus back in the morning.

By now our camera had run out of battery so we don’t have any photos :( not that our camera can take a half decent photo at night anyway. Richard has some, once I get them I’ll put them on here :)

We headed back to the bar with the grumpy bar man because it was the only one we knew had wifi for sure. David got a nice pint of flat beer (unheard of in the Czech Republic) so he must have had some real issues with us… He complained and got a slightly better one. We all had mulled wine :) although it wasn’t the best.

While Tania and I looked for hostels online the boys took turns in going for cigarets and haggling posh hotels. The lowest they got was 1000kč per room. Thats about £33.
Eventually we found a hostel that was reasonably priced, close to the station with reception past 6pm. It was edging on 8pm by now.

And what a lovely hostel it was (once we found it). Its called Hostel 99. The receptionist was really friendly and spoke perfect english (or was american) and we got a shared room for 250kč each. It was called snow white and the seven dwarfs because it had 8 beds! The one next to us was the three muskateers! How cute is that?

David asked the receptionist what was special about Česky Krumlov. He told us a story about how centuries ago there was a woman quite high in nobility who had an illness which meant she couldn’t spend much time in the sunlight. Afraid of her life she spent all her time indoors, naturally she became extremely pale. When she died, having rarely seen her, the locals didn’t believe it. Shortly after her death they dug her up to prove that she no longer walked the earth. As it hadn’t been long since her death she was yet to have begun decompossing, her skin had stretched, nails and hair had continued growing and there was a trickle of blood from her lips (due to the nature of her death). This apparently was the beginning of vampire legends, among other similar situations in other countries.
The building we where in was over 600 years old, and our room had once been a chapel and later a hospital! In the morning Tania said she thought she had seen a ghost, creeped out by the stories, but it was just a shadow or something…

We had dinner next door, in a pub thats part of the hostel I think. Which was delicious, huge portions! The barman was really friendly which seems to be unusual here. Good customer service isn’t a big thing from what I’ve heard. Anyway we all had a few drinks and enjoyed ourselves. David and Richard had shots of bakherofka (I have no idea how to spell that, but its kind of how it sounds), its a spirt made from a load of herbs which began as medicine. It took a little while for the barman to understand what he wanted, when he brought them over, he gave us the bottle too. We presumed it was so we could remember the name, but he never came back for it. There was a good three shots in it which they enjoyed for no charge. Luckily the hostel was next door!

The next morning we got up early and had homemade waffles in the 99 deli cafe which where amazing and arrived nice and early ( and already semi panicking something would go wrong) at the bus stop. Everything went smoothly though and we arrived in Votice at about 11am where Mia picked us up. We where only 12 hours late!

Česky Krumlov: The Adventure. Part II

We arrived in Česky Krumlov around mid day and where pointed in the direction of the town centre.
Tania and I where desperate to go to the bathroom, having spent the morning on buses, so we left the boys taking photos (they where to slow) and found a lovely little italian restaurant on the way. But we decided to do a little exploring before eating.
This is the tower on the castle.

We found the town square, where there was a little Christmas Market, which reminded me of the ones in Berlin on a much smaller scale… Not the best photo, but still…

Its a lovely little town. The centre is all UNESCO protected so theres no fast food establishments and everything looks all pitresque. Little cobbled roads and intricately painted buildings. The shops are full of memorabilia or natural cosmetics – a little bit random, but good I suppose…

We had lunch in the little italian place which, like everywhere here, had stuffed animal heads on the walls. But these where the fluffier types :)

Lots of places offer their own home-made ginger tea which varies from place to place. This was the nicest one I’ve had so far. And the honey pot was just the cutest! And thats Tania in the background :)

Unfortunately the restaurant didn’t have good wifi so we still hadn’t managed to contact Tom and Petr to let them know we would be getting a later bus. Or checked the bus times for that matter.
So we ended up in a little pub to use the wifi. By now Tania and I where a little stressed about how to get home…

But we managed to find the transport website and choose a direct bus at 5.20 giving us a few hours to see the town and the castle with the added bonus of no connections to worry about!

We contacted Tom who was fine with us getting back a bit later. So we all relaxed a bit and warmed by my peach vodka we headed back outside.

The castle here is the second biggest one in the Czech Republic. It looks more like a giant house with a fancy tower than your typical stone walls, drawbridge over moat and tiny slit windows castles.

People still live within the castle grounds, its like a normal street almost!

There are so many buildings covered with intricate paintings which obviously need to be maintained or they would simply disappear over time. In this part of one of the courtyards you can see where they have left the portraits to decay, while presumably maintaing the rest. I wonder if they couldn’t find an adequate artist, or if they where too far gone by the time they wanted to renovate them…

Unfortunately we where too late to go up the tower, it had literally just closed :(
But it turned out we got pretty amazing vies from the top bridge.

There was a giant decorated tree, can you spot me under it? There was even a star on top but its too tall to see…

Shortly after this Tania and I started to hassle everyone to the bus station (via the Christmas Market for hot wine and chimney cake)…

Richard has a much better camera than us and I was waiting on his photos to complete this post but I figured I can always update it later as I didn’t want to leave it too much longer. So much has happened in the meantime!

Česky Krumlov: The Adventure. Part I

As we approached our designated day off Petr and Tom suggested we visit Česky Krumlov, a UNESCO protected town two hours south of us. We had a look on-line at top places to visit in South Bohemia (the region we are in) and not only did it come up as number one, the next few things where all IN the village!

After some hesitation, its quite a while to travel for a day out, we decided to go for it. Tom said we should leave the day before, after work and stay in a hostel so we had more time. But we didn’t want to spend too much, so we opted for an 9 am bus that would get us there for about 11. Giving us a good five hours before getting a 4pm bus back. We would have to make two changes, one in the next town and another in Tábor, I think. Nothing to worry about though, as the stations are small and there wasn’t long waits between them.

We invited the other volunteers to come along, Constantine had already planned to go to Prague but the Australian couple, Tania and Richard, where up for joining us. And so our plan was set. And seemed invinsible.

I was hoping to be able to annotate the map, but I cant work out how with my current apps. Oh, where art thou Microsoft Paint?

We are in Votice heading to Česky Krumlov.
We all piled on our bus and asked for tickets only for the driver to say that it didn’t go there. Luckily Tom had given us a piece of paper with the bus times and stops written on, which I showed to the driver and he nodded and gave us tickets to the first stop.

Our first stop however was, wierdly, in the wrong direction. Olbramovice is just north of Votice and too small to warrant putting it on the map. Literally three min journey.

As we drew up the bus driver signalled that we needed to cross the road to the stop on the otherside. So we all piled out again and got across the hideously busy high road to see a bus pulling away from the stop. It couldn’t possibly be ours though. I mean, it would have been impossible to get across faster and besides my phone said 9.07 not 9.08.

30 minutes later we decided it must have been our bus.

This is where we where stuck.

For an hour and a half.

At first we thought its fine, we will just get on the next one.
We looked at the time table.
We couldn’t even find the bus we missed let alone work out when the next one was.

Eventually one came along but it was going to Votice.

So back to the time table we went.
I mean, there wasn’t much else to do. We where stuck in a shelter with a giant bone on a highway.

I suggested that we go back home, do our five hours and try again the next day. Everyone agreed that was a good idea. Right. How do we get back though? We had just said no to the bus to Votice 10 minutes ago. Nobody had a 3G phone. Esther where where you?!
We contemplated walking along the road, it would probably take about an hour but it was pretty busy road.
We contemplated walking over the field pictured above, surely there must be some old roads liking this mini village to Votice?
However there was a restaurant on the other side of the the road, so we sent the boys over to investigate wifi, while we stood guard and contemplated hitchhiking without them (they had already stated that there was no chance anyone would pick up all of us). The plan was to contact Tom on Whatsup and ask them to collect us.

By they returned unable to add him, although they got internet. By this point the time tables started to make some kind of sense, I worked out that there was no chance of us getting a direct bus to Česky Krumlov. However there was a place called České Budějovice, which surely must be close or at least in the area. If we got there perhaps we could find a connection… And sure enough when I checked our planned return journey one of the connections was there.

So we abandoned plan Get Home and managed to get a bus at about 10.30, which promptly drove straight back to Votice before heading to Tábor in about 40 mins (we spent about an hour and a half on the train there!). We got into České Budějovice and just as Tania found the first english speaking person of the day we spotted a bus to Česky Krumlov and ran for it! We where finally on track again! if not a couple of hours later than planned!

St Nicholas Day, Decorations and New Volunteers

On the 5th of December the Czech Republic celebrates St Nicholas day.
It coincided with a group staying at the hotel. The management of Prague’s Carinthia Hotels, part of a chain of 4 or 5 star hotels all over the place. They where really nice people, staying at the farm for team building exercises, the winner of which won €1000!!!
Anyway, like the last time, we helped in the kitchen. This time we made a big roast, yorkies and all. I made a big apple and redcurrant crumble, Tom made the custard to go with it. We make a good team ;)

We decorated the restaurant for their arrival :)

David decorated the tree, first time since he can remember! We found some lovely delicate wooden christmas decorations for it.

And this is how we used the foraged decorations…. I wanted to make a wreath for the door but we didn’t cut many branches off the tree and theres no ivy to be seen :( I’m still hopeful though!

Part of the groups activities was celebrating St Nicholas Day, after dinner three members sneaked off and dressed up as St Nicholas, a devil and an angel.

From what I gathered, this is the day that the people are judged whether they have been good or bad. The devil and the angel discuss and argue over it and once the decision is made you can take a present from the angel (usually a sweet) or from the devil (coal or potatoes). This is a very strong tradition here I think, like our Father Christmas.

They went around the room, one by one, and each person had to sing, dance or tell a poem before they where judged. There was quite a bit of harassing! And at some points the angel and devil argued and faught. They put on quite a show!
Petr and I hid in the kitchen to avoid having to sing ;)
The group where really friendly, we had quite a lot of fun chatting with them. They have over a quarter of a million guests a year! Just in that one hotel!

That night another volunteer joined us, Constantine, he is german and very friendly although a little shy. And a vegetarian so I am no longer alone!
The next day another couple arrived, by taxi from the airport! Crazy people!
That day, on my way to the restaurant I saw a van at the gates, there was a guy outside but when I paused he turned around so I figured it must be under control. I probably wouldn’t be able to help anyway. I came out 10 mins later and they where still there, so approached them and the man asked where the reception was. I explained that we are a farm hotel and that I would get the manager, figuring that they must want a room, however unusual (people normally book in advance and are expected). As I headed to their apartment it suddenly hit me that they might be the volunteers! And they where! They are Australian but live in Hong Kong!

Meet the farm animals!

I figured its about time that I introduce you to the farm animals.
Theres quite a variety.

Lets begin with the birdies :)
We have turkeys.
They actually go gobble gobble gobble. And if you gobble at them they gobble back! All at the same time, pointing the same direction! The first day they where all puffed up with their tails out, but I haven’t seen them like that since…

We have geese.
My aunt has three geese that never shut up, they spend all their time marching and honking. These ones however stood still and silent all day. Until… I honked at them! Then they didn’t shut up either :)

We have chickens.
Loads and loads and loads of chickens. These are some of the egg layers.

We have peacocks!
They are so beautiful, strutting around all over the place. Sometimes we spot them flying, other times perching somewhere unexpected.
They are just for display although some places people do eat peacocks. They loose their feathers after mating (well what is the point of looking pretty once you’ve got the girl?!) and these ones are just growing back so he’s been out and about flaunting them much to our joy.

We have millions of cats.
These are the three kittens I’ve been talking so much about. Believe it or not, they are siblings, from the same litter! Luna is the smallest one, she makes up for size in love :)

I call this one fluffy restaurant cat, she super sweet. She talks constantly with little purrs and chirps. Shes so cuddly too.

We have sheep.
Possibly three breeds. I’m not completly sure though… They are smaller than ordinary sheep too! But it doesn’t really come across in the photos.

We have goats.
They are also smaller than an average one and less jumpy than the sheep. I was taking photos of the adults when I spotted the baby one :) in spring they plan to get little dexter cows :)

The tree musketeers haha

We have piggies!
There are piglets too but I didn’t want to go in and take a photo by myself as the mums can get stressed out with unfamiliar people, let alone a flash! He has quite hard to photograph because he was moving all over the place and close to the bars :( its too cold for them outside at this time of year…

We have parrots!
They are Tom and Petr’s pets really. They are pretty cute. I am yet to hear them speak, but they can. The other day Tom had the cage open while we hung up washing and they where all climbing out and all over the cage. Its pretty cool how they manoeuvre around, i caught one hanging upsidedown! They also have a pet snake.

And last but not least, two very shy guinea pigs.

There are dogs too! Two very happy golden retrievers, two little dogs and two big farm dogs.