I cannot commend the website workaway enough, it has made our travels possible!
Since discovering it back in Septemberb or so we have been trying to get a workaway in Sicily.
It hasn’t been easy, but we finally sorted one and booked our tickets and here we are! I’m sure you want to know how we have been getting along…
Its been a nice week, with all the family around bringing the house alive with laughter and preparations for the opening of the new exhibition.
The opening coincides with some kind of art festival here in Oostende, which sends people around all the local galleries. Entertainment is chosen by the organisers and we ended up with a poet, who apparently is quite well known, and a band. That was all we knew. Mie expected it to be a busy night.
So excitement was in the air as we deep cleaned and stretched the gallery into the living room and dinning room as more and more art arrived. We arranged shelves to avoid people wandering into the kitchen during the exhibition. David still found one though, a lady who asked him something in dutch and then said ‘Its a nice house’ and wandered off.
Christophe Deroo’s paintings slipping into the dining room
A variety of sculpture in the gallery
Mie Ghesquiere and Mieke Recour’s mobile which we helped put up by balancing on tables. I like this piece, its like the felt balls are breaking through the ceramics.
My favourite piece is this one by the street artist Sander Anseeuw. Its such a nice composition between the boards and the spray painting itself. I would love to have a go at spray painting, it must be so difficult to get this kind of detail though…
Here is another of Mie’s works. She is very influenced by the sea and creates all these beautiful delicate bowls and tea light holders but they are in another two exhibitions as well…
There really were plenty of people! We were in charge of drinks, red, white or sparkling wine, orange juice, still or sparkling water – much more than anything I’ve seen at any other opening, even Tate Modern weren’t so genrous!
A couple of days before, I made green tea eclairs, which were delicious but not as strong in flavour as I expected. I had leftover egg whites so wanting to experiment more with the flavour I made a huge batch of meringues. Chocolate, vanilla, coconut and of course green tea. Which were amazing! I’m not usually much of a fan of meringue as its just so sweet but the green tea compliments the sweetness perfectly!
What was left of them after we ‘tried’ them were scattered around in bowls alongside nuts and those funny brown, salty sticks.
It was a long night, but we had fun chatting, drinking wine and as people started to mingle away, we sat down to a HUGE Chinese takeaway.
As for the entertainment, I didn’t see the poetry, but judging from the amount of signed books afterwards, it must have been good. I found the band a little disappointing though, they looked so interesting. The four of them all with different sized saxophones ranging from a tiny weeny one to the really big one. I thought ‘my mum is much better’, even just by her self. But as they only played two songs before rushing to the next gallery there wasn’t much time to judge.
In Belgium dutch and french are spoken, so there tends to be a mixture of both scattered around. We are in the dutch half but french still filters in, so Oostende is also spelt with one ‘o’ but its such a novelty starting a word with two I much prefer it!
On our very first day we had a good walk around the seaside city but I never got around to writing about it. Too busy reading in my spare time. I finished The Great Gatsby and devoured Cross by James Patterson shortly after, which I found here, now I have discovered youtube is full of audiobooks which makes painting much more fun but has also seeped into spare time. Leaving very little for actual writing.
So, Oostende hey? Well, David is very pleased to be back in civilisation. He can pop out the door for biscuits again! I do miss the contact with nature but its lovely being by the sea again, even if its cold, windy and one can’t stay out for long!
The city was badly damaged by the war and as a result there aren’t many old buildings left but we picked up a map for a trail of the nicest ones. It made a nice walk taking us around quite a bit of the centre and its surrounding area, giving us a sense of our where abouts.
Its a funny place, full of hotels and other big buildings and blocks of flats, with beautiful traditional buildings squeezed in between. Sometimes you just catch one unexpectadly…
The bright red thing is part of a huge installation by a Belgian artist.
But there are other streets that are almost intact which are like wandering into a new town.
I find them so elegant, so tall and thin with their elaborate roofs and balconies. I’ve done a couple of line drawings of them and hope to get some more done. Maybe I’ll even post them on here ;)
Sometimes its hard to tell when one ends and another begins. Can a house really be that thin?!
They also seem to get away with any colour!
Its refreshing being by the sea again, the other day we caught some good weather and made the most of it by sunbathing.
In our coats.
Another high light of our walks through Oostende has to be pressing our faces agains every patisserie we come across. And there are many. The Belgians like their sweets!
In fact they have sweet stuff for breakfast. And I’m not talking about gacky cerials. More along the lines of freshly baked bread and a wide selection of spreads. At home we have white chocolate spread, nutella, dark chocolate and orange “fondant” spread, chocolate sprinkles for toast and a variety of jams. As if thats not special already, on Sunday we have a selection of pastries too :)
Back to the cakes though…
So far we have only tried one, a sort of extra custardy rice pudding-y tart, or flan? It was good, but the pastry is a bit different, lighter and less buttery, a little sickly – it didn’t have the crisp crumbliness of british pastry. But the filling was yummy!
The selection of bread is crazy too, I never know which to choose!
Speaking of shopping, yesterday I volunteered to go shopping for lunch and dinner seeing as I was cooking. David and I had been into the supermarkets a couple of times and it seemed pretty straight forward, after the Czech Republic everything seems much easier!
And it was. I didn’t buy liquid yoghurt instead of milk for example.
But it must have taken me about 40mins and I only had a basket! Sure I got distracted here and there. Like in the waffle isle!! Can there even be that much difference between them?! According to Jorick they are all gross so we haven’t attempted them when there are fresh ones being made everywhere outside.
Or in the spread section where we discovered they have made a spread out of lotus speculoo biscuits, imagine if there was a digestive biscuit spread? Apparently this came about because so many people would dip the biscuit in coffee and then spread it on their bread or make sandwiches out of them! The guy who came up with the idea claimed he was tired of the biscuits falling out of the sandwhich.
Now there are chocolate versions (of course) and crunchy and extra crunchy (maybe some people miss the biscuits falling out?) among others.
As for the lotus speculoo, it doesn’t stop there, you can get big ones and mini ones, you can get ice cream and cake! Did I mention they are my favourite biscuits?! I can’t wait to try the icecream!!
I was also baffled by the amount of different creams which I had no idea how to distinguish, except from the cooking ones (there was a pot on the carton) and the normal ones (strawberries). What were all the others?! And they were so expensive too! I went for a strawberry carton, even through it was for curry, and it seemed just fine :)
That night, last night, influenced by the wonderful parcel I got from mum and my brother which included curry spices, I made a feast of dahl, butter chicken, pea and cauliflower curry, naan and rice. Mmm-mm! I had been craving curry for so long!
And the family? Well, we are very much settled in now. The dad has come back from Thailand and we have met the eldest sister too, they are both the most down to earth and seem to pull the family together in easy conversations over dinner and lots of laughs!
She is studying geography and is in her last year of her degree. She has this enthusiasm and love for life which you can’t help joining in with. I can converse quite easily with her and we cooked together for her friends who were very friendly too. The rest of the family went out except Eurick and we all had a nice time eating and chatting away. Oh and she likes the Cat Empire!
Overall I feel much more part of day to day life and at ease with the family which is what is most important to me. Its kind of the point of Workaway.
We have a big gallery open event this weekend so for the next few days there will be lots of cleaning and art moving I should think…
First impressions are funny. You never really know what they will be, if they will last, or how much value to give one. I suppose first impressions become the frame of the picture. Even if they are wrong, they will still linger and become the foundations of your opinion of a thing or person.
Naturally there are exceptions to every rule. And this isn’t even a rule. Its just a thought. First impressions are important, everyone tells you. Especially for interviews. So surely people can work on making first impressions the impression that they think the other person wants or needs. But that would be unreal and then would it still count? Are good first impressions stronger than bad ones? Maybe that depends on whether your an optimist or a pessimist.
My first impression of this family is that they are from a whole different world from me. A world where Dad works away and is only at home one week per month. Jetting back to Thailand before you know it. A world where fifteen year olds can casually say ‘Oh yeah, India, I didn’t like the food’. A world of giant sofas and multiple dinning tables.
They are a family of five, but the two eldest girls are at university so essentially its just the son and mother in this big four story house. Its a beautiful house. One of the oldest in the street and of the few that survived the war in Oostende. Inside its almost like the gallery that Mie, the mum, runs on the bottom floor. Its full of interesting objects from all over the world. High ceilings with a beautiful steep wooden staircase sweeping from floor to floor.
There doesn’t seem to be the same connection or openness with this family as there has been with the last two families we have stayed with. With Elke and René we felt completely relaxed the moment we sat down at their table and began chatting. Here we are still fishing for common subjects. Maybe it also has to do with cultural differences between Austria and Belgium, Austrians being much more open and straight forward and Belgians more conservative like the British. I suppose we are close.
I have refrained from posting this entry for some days now.
During this time we have gotten more used to the family and their manner of being. Everything takes time after all. I think we are slowly starting to relax around each other. Mie has asked me to make dinner tonight as she is so busy, where as a couple of days ago she would have prepared something in advance or put some pizzas in the oven before she left like last night. Not that we have anything against that – who doesn’t like pizza?
I’m rapidly getting sucked into Game of Thrones which Jorick, the son, watches! I reckon by the end of our stay I’ll be able to remember who all the characters are and which family they are from. It helps that a quarter of them were killed in the last episode! Less to keep track of.
We have been painting door frames and walls and seeing progression has made me feel better about being here. I constantly worry whether we are helping enough to warrant our stay, she seems so laid back and doesn’t seem to expect more than a couple of hours a day, always asking us what our plans are for the day and whether we are going out anywhere… I think its mostly my guilty conscience, but we did lots today to calm it ;)
I also believe she is on Workaway more for helping others and meeting us than getting help. She also has sofa surfers for instance. Their flat on the top floor (bedroom photo is from there) is rented out for weekend get aways and things. I cleaned it today and got it ready for the next guests, after them we will move upstairs as there aren’t anymore for a little while.
At the moment we have one of the daughters bedrooms, which is fine, but we cant really unpack anything so it will be nice moving. Although it means even more stairs everyday! But thats good too, I started a working out today so it will just add to it ;)
Well, thats an excellent question. It appears I have neglected to tell you what kinds of jobs this Workaway has given us… So, here goes!
We have been doing a mixture of things, generally renovating their 400 hundred year old farm house.
Due to David’s studies and interest he has been doing lots of work with electricity.
He’s put lights in the workshop.
He wired the second building. Which has led to lots of other “small” jobs such as a whole day chiseling, smashing bits of wood of old walls, feeding wires up crazy crooked pipes, with lots of drawings and plans in between.
Yesterday he and René spent the better part of the day pruning the apple trees.
Meanwhile I have had two main jobs on the go which I finally finished today!
The first and by far the biggest I have been doing since day one: painting the earth cellar with chalk. This involves making the chalk mixture and leaving it for a few days before tackling the old walls with it. This is the best way to approach them:
The chalk is ideal as it kills the mould and other living organisms so that vegetables and fruit will be persevered better. The calcium is also highly open to diffusion so it kind of breaths, making the room climate much nicer and helps with humidity. They use chalk based paint for all of their walls which works perfectly with their clay walls. They end up working like dehumidifiers!
It’s very thick, you have to really rub it into the walls to get in all the gaps. The second coat isn’t so bad.
The ceiling is a laugh, you have to get it on as quick as possible or it falls on you! Hence my cloths…
The other job has been transforming what René calls farmer’s furniture. In this case turning a large wooden dresser into a wardrobe for the guest room. Its a shame I didn’t take a photo of it before… It had an ornamental top which we broke off, the shelves where more centred and it wasn’t painted.
Besides this we have been mucking the horses out, sanding pallets, … cooking vast quantities of food which is what my next post will be about :)
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.
Being the cheapskates that we are, we have been working out what we can cook using only the produce from the farm. We have an abundance of eggs and potatoes so we have been thinking of things that involve these ingredients. David came up with the bright idea of spanish tortilla. We could even make a couple and have some for the next day! Whats better than a fridge full of tortilla?! He got the recipe from his mum and enthusiastic about our plans we told Tom later that day. He thought it was a great idea and suggested we make it for dinner. So tortilla for three became tortilla for five. David agreed, warning that he had never made it before. Tom’s mum and sister would be visiting and one of them had lived in Spain so they would just love it! Five soon became seven. By now he was calculating how many tortillas we would need. The idea of leftovers floating away… And what to have with them?! He came up with making a bit of a spanish tapas party with stuffed eggs and beef croquettes. Esther and I suggested a big salad and we all started to worry less. Tom said David could do the cooking as part of his work hours that day which was nice of him. Esther and I couldn’t help much because we had set tasks of our own:
Roasting the giant pumpkin and bagging it up in portions to be frozen. This pumpkin was huge. It took a wheel barrow to move it from the barn to the kitchen door where we cut it up into more manageable pieces before attempting to lift it! Between roasting and scooping we where also washing and packaging the chickens from that morning.
It was a busy night to say the least.
We did manage to give David a hand between it all. Peeling the odd egg, holding the odd collander, a mix here and there.
At some point somebody mentioned friends. Tortilla for seven became tortilla for nine!
He did fantastically.
24 eggs and 3 hours later we had two huge tortillas, 10 stuffed eggs, a pile of croquettes and a huge salad.
Everyone was hugely impressed. We all loved it! It was the first time he had cooked for so many people. And there was even two slices of tortilla leftover.
Petr and Tom asked him if he would do it all again for a group of people that will be staying in the hotel next week.
Tortilla for nine will now be for thirty!
The kittens are super cute! There are three in total, all from the same litter but two are quite big and fluffy and one is teeny weeny, shes called Luna and makes up for her size in affection! I still haven’t got a photo of them as I don’t take my camera with me when I’m working and thats when I’m around them the most. Because. As I have been trimming lavender I have been low down and the kittens make the most of it by coming up for some attention. I am now pretty good at working with a kitten cuddled in my lap, or balanced on my shoulder, or on my head! Luna’s favourite place is curled around my neck between my collar or sitting in my hood :)
I ended up trimming the whole herb garden and managed to finish it on the third day I think… Here’s how it looked before and after, ok well I can’t find the before one :/ this was taken the morning of the night it snowed so its a bit misty…
And while I’m at it, here are some of the peacocks! Again, a bit misty…
Another job we have been doing is clearing leaves, we needed to get it done before it snows so everyone has been chipping in every now and again. Here are the bags we filled with leaves:
Friday, Bloody Friday
I’m very glad we didn’t take any photos for this post.
The night before Tom told us we would be helping with killing the chickens the next day. He said that they do it a very humane way and that he believes that everyone who eats meat should be able to kill it. Which I agree with it. But didn’t like the idea of. We had been talking about how he used to be a vegetarian and how a vegetarian workawayer had started eating meat at the farm so we weren’t too worried.
That morning we went to the chicken barn where we met another tiny czech lady who also didn’t speak english and equally as friendly and happy! We all stood around vaguely gesturing for a while wandering what was happening. Eventually she started getting chickens and putting them head first in what looked like upside down traffic cones without tops, so there heads poked out the bottom and they couldn’t escape. Five get lined up at a time and then their necks are cut. A big pot of water was over a fire which we dunked the bodies into and then began plucking them. I imagine the hot water must loosen the feathers, the smell of boiled chicken and death was sickening. But I remained calm and got on with the task. Thankfully I didn’t kill any of them, but David did. I thought there would be more to it than just cut off their head, at least a precise place, but it appears not. There where 20 chickens and 2 geese. One of the geese took a while to die, the knife wasn’t sharp enough so the head didn’t come straight off… It was quite horrific.
So, err, now I’m vegetarian
Although 3 days have passed now I’m still getting used to the term. The idea settled in pretty quick while I was plucking away. I guess I feel that if this was humane killing then I really don’t want want to support the industry. I don’t think I could enjoy chicken the same again. And its not like I was a great meat lover anyway.
I have since spoken to Tom and he explained that chickens really are the most stupid animals believable and have no idea what is about to happen to them while they are sitting in the funnel awaiting their turn. And in fact there was another free chicken wandering around the whole time, even having the odd peck at pieces the cats missed. Yeah, I know. He explained that its about the life they had before, which is pretty good here. So I do feel a bit better about the whole thing but it didn’t make me change my mind.
So far the only time I have missed it was not eating roasties because they where cooked in goose fat, but I actually prefer them in olive oil as it is. We had really good pumpkin soup instead :)
The farm is huge and very smart! Big gates and cobbled courtyards. Peacocks and kittens strutting around. In fact there are so many cats that its hard not to step on them at night!
On the first evening we where shown to our apartment by one of the owners, Mia, who is part Malaysian and very friendly. The apartment is so nice and HUGE! We have a room, there is another volunteer called Esther who has another and on sunday two more girls are arriving who will be staying here too.
I love how high the ceiling is and the beams :)
The bathroom also has one of those huge corner baths but i couldn’t get it all in the picture…
Thats Esther :) shes really friendly and from Israel.
Anyway, once we picked our jaws off the floor we went to the restaurant to meet Petr (czech) and Tom (british) who are well, the managers I suppose. They made us potato pancakes for dinner and gave us all the low down on how things work. So, in a nut shell: we work for 5 hours a day and in return we have our apartment and all the food that is sourced from the farm. The only things we need to buy are milk and bread (and biscuits ;P). It is so satisfying taking a little crate to the greenhouse and choosing dinner! They have all sorts of meat and everything os organic! We can manipulate the hours we work by doing more one day and less another and so on.
Tom has had a horrible accident with a giant door falling on him so he’s hobbling around in crutches bit with the biggest smile in the room! He didn’t break anything but his skin cells are dying so he has a huge hole right to the bone! He is usually the one who shows volunteers around and how to do things so things aren’t as organised as they should be seeing as he should be in bed resting.
The next morning Petr gave us the job of feeding the animals with a tiny czech lady who’s name I can never remember and who also doesn’t speak a word of english except “water”. The result was a morning of miming and confusion (we later found out that yes in czech is “no”!!) but it was fun if frustrating at times. She’s very sweet though, she never stopped speaking. I have no idea whether it was to us or the animals though!
We fed chickens, we fed goats, we fed sheep, we fed geese, we fed pigs. I have never seen pigs so big! There was one which was GIANT! The photo doesn’t do him justice. He weighed 475kg. Thats nearly half a ton!
Unfortunately, he got killed two days later. Sorry to put a damper on things. But thats farm life. He was 7 which is old for a pig apparently and too lazy to have sex so he became useless to them.
Moving on swiftley: after feeding the animals I trimmed lavender and David got given the manly job of digging and sifting compost!
That night Petr asked if we could make dinner because Tom was feeling really bad and so we agreed a d suggested we make a roast because thats what Tom had mentioned he was going to make. He got a chicken out of the freezer and then we didnt see him again! The kitchen is industrial and we had to find the fridge, forage in the garden for the veg, work out how to use the amazing oven. Luckily Esther actually got a tour so had some idea of where things where. Petr came down at 5.45 and ask if we’d be done by 6 because thats when they like to eat. As we had spent so long looking for things, defrosting the chicken and actually cooking it would still be 40 mins which led to him making their daughter something else and putting her to bed as dinner was ready. Not the best way to end our first day. But everything was nice if not a little cold… And we got some leftovers for lunch the next day :)
So we arrived in Prague on sunday night, it was already too late to get to the farm where we will be staying for the next month leading us to look for a hostel. We already had a few in mind so it was just a matter of finding one, easy. Ha. We decided on heading towards the international bus station Florenc as we figured it’d be easy to find and there are a couple of hostels close to it
We got a connection bus from the airport to the train station which looked close to the bus station. David, who luckily is in charge of buying things, immediately picked up on the bus driver trying to rip us off and made sure we got the right change :) thats 50 koruna I would have lost! Once we got to our stop, it was a matter of finding Florenc. David knew the general direction from looking at google maps in the airport. About 30 mins later, a few stops for directions in broken english, we found the bus station across a huge busy road. So that was a fun crossing. It was then a case of finding the street where the hostel was. The station was so huge and spread out that we completely lost our sense of direction and luckily found a tourist information shop just closed. The guy kindly opened the door and even walked us to the end of the station to point us in the right direction. We got there eventually and found a hostel called Davids Apartments, it was a bit more expensive than we had been aiming for at 630 korunas, about £20 for us both, but we where so tored by then that we couldn’t care less. We got the keys to our “shared” room which turned out to be a double bed in our own room! It was nicer than our hotel in Bristol that claimed to be 4*!! Its a shame we didn’t get a photo of it… Bit heres the courtyard:
That night we found a nice pub to eat in. We chose off the traditional czech menu, thankfully in english! I had a sweetish creamy sauce with pork and bread dumplings, which, from what I can gather is bread steamed or poached instead of baked. It was so filling! I couldn’t finish, especially as it seemed to get sweeter and sweeter. It was nice though. David had Goulash, he chose to have it in a bowl made of bread which was pretty exciting. Although we are still at loss as to how you eat it all… It was nice too, stew like and very, very rich in flavour.
The next day we went exploring. We had decided to get a 2.20 train to Votice, the town near the farm. However Tom, one of the managers, had texted saying he would be in Prague for a hospital appointment and may pick us up. David ignored my suggestions of seeing of we could leave our bags at reception or in lockers in the train station so we headed to Old Town with our stupidly heavy 40L backpacks! Idiots.
We had a great time looking around though, besides the sore backs, the architecture is beautiful in Prague. We went to the square and considered one of the many free tours in various languages that are on offer but decided to leave it for a bag free day. After resting and people watching for a while we wandered across Charles Bridge. We imagine Prague must invest quite a bit in tourism as not only are there free tour guides everywhere but also this couple of dressed up girls (or maybe they are just out for fun?), a huge amount of street vendors and living statues which the police take no notice of.
So to cut a long story short, after 3 unanswered texts, 2 missed trains and an hour in a cafe (nursing the most delicious honey cake and empty espresso cup) we got a call from Tom asking where we where. He was at the train station and we weren’t? It turned out he hadn’t got any of my messages and had just assumed we where continuing with our original plan. Yes I know I should have just called earlier or we should have just got that 1st train but hey, maybe I’m just a bit of an idiot, overly worried and yet not active if that makes any sense… But it was ok, he was very apologetic and promised he hadn’t got our texts and said they could get us from the station later. We got the next train once we found the station (the longest possible way, going back PAST the hostel so we could have left our bags there!) and where collected from a tiny abandoned looking station.
Traveling Bugs and other Animals 