Hello everyone! We’re in Cordoba, Spain having a bit of down time. The siesta sleep schedule allows tourists to become well acquainted with their hotel rooms. For those that don’t know, everything closes in Spain from about 2 in the afternoon until about 6 or 7 in the evening; there really is nothing to do between those times except wander around aimlessly and we did plenty of that yesterday. Given this, it’s been over a month since we’ve updated the blog last, and so much has happened! We’ve traveled hundreds of miles from Munich to the Iberian Peninsula. We’ll save Spain for another post, here is what we did in Southern Germany and France.
We left our WWOOF farm in hopes of reaching the small town of Burghausen in South East Germany, right on the border of Austria, to catch The Sun Ra Arkestra: one of jazz’s most notoriously weird ensembles. Burghausen is somewhat out of the way, and even though it is probably a 3-4 hour drive from Dresden, it took over eight hours to get there via train. Luckily, the Deutsche Bahn (German national train lines) offers a weekend pass that lets you go anywhere in the country for thirty or so euros. We arrived in Burghausen about an hour and a half before the concert was supposed to start. It took us about forty-five minutes to find our hotel due to unclear directions and then another forty-five minutes to find the venue. We were in a bit of hurry and forgot the camera at the hotel, so we don’t have any pictures from the evening. We arrived just in time to grab a drink and a seat. The band was on as expected! They played three fantastic sets, alternating between slower and faster songs, all of which accented by their fabulous costumes and charisma. The band itself has undergone significant changes since their inception. The original band leader, Sun Ra, died in 1993 leaving quite a legacy. He had his beginnings as a jazz musician in the 1930s. According to legend, he visited outer space in the 1940s, forever transforming his life. He claimed to have been sent to earth by extra-terrestrial life forms to bring black music to black people as a way to liberate them from white oppression. Musically, he was one of jazz’s most prolific artists, releasing multiple albums every year from the 1940s until his death in 1993. After his death, he passed the torch on to another band leader, whose name escapes me at the moment, who died in the early 2000s. The band we saw was the third generation of the Sun Ra Arkestra led by Marshall Allen. Many of the musicians had been with the band since the 1960s. Here is a video of Sun Ra from his film Space is the Place so you can get an idea of what we saw. Be prepared for weirdness; you've been warned.
The next day, we hopped a train to Munich. We arrived in the middle of the afternoon. We checked in to our hostel, and went out for a quick bite to eat. After dinner, we went down to the city center and took a couple of pictures. The city center itself has been over run with kitschy shops and outlet stores. However, The Rat Haus (what the Germans call their City Halls) was one redeeming factor. We snapped a few pictures, grabbed a quick drink and called it an evening.
The next day we set out for the Dachau Concentration Camp. This time we decided to bring our camera, but tried to be humble about when and where to take pictures. Dachau, of course was incredibly depressing. Like Auschwitz, I was struck by the industrial nature of Dachau. I find it so unbelievable that a massive industrial system was devised to slaughter millions of people. The cruelty of this place is truly unfathomable, and yet as soon as you walk through the gates, you’re struck with the reality of it. Here are a few pictures from our visit to Dachau.
We didn’t really feel like doing much after Dachau, so we cooked a meal at the hostel, did laundy, and took it easy for the rest of the evening. The next day, we set out for the Museum Brandhorst: a large private collection of one of Munich’s top collectors. This was one of our favorite museums of the trip. They had multiple pieces from Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst; the latter which we came to appreciate more so after this museum. He had one piece, the effect of which would be lost in a picture, titled Looking Forward to a Complete Cessation of Pain, which was a glass box containing four televisions blaring migraine medicine commercials; we thought it was hilarious. The top floor was dedicated entirely to Cy Twombly, an artist neither of us understand and would appreciate an explanation of, if someone could please provide us one. Here are a few of our favorite pieces from the museum.
We spent the rest of the day wandering around Munich, looking for an English bookstore and trying to find food. We snapped a few pictures here and there. We had a mug of Gluhwein in a park outside of a giant structure modeled off of Chinese tower. We’re pretty sure the park we were in is where they have Oktoberfest every year. We ended the day at a veggie restaurant, where I had a plate of veggie curry-wurst and had a fantastic glass of Bavarian lager. Ashleigh doesn’t recall what she had to eat but she does remember that there was definitely a Disclose poster on the wall! Hey Dan!
A square devoted to the famous sociologist Max Weber. 
The next day we set off for Strasbourg. We arrived in the middle of the afternoon, cooked a meal at our hotel and walked around for a bit. The next day, we set off for the modern art museum. The museum was really neat; they had a lot of stuff from artists we had never heard of. We particularly enjoyed the wood-carved pieces. Here are a few pictures.
We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the area known as Petite France looking for a decently priced cheese plate. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful. But we were able to snap a few photos before the camera died.
We had trouble staying busy in Strasbourg. After the modern art museum, we were somewhat at a loss for what to do next. The next day, we wandered around some more and took some pictures. The cathedral in the middle of the town was particularly cool, but it was hard to get a good photo of it. We did our best with the fisheye lens. After this, we found a desert shop and had the best Crème Brulee ever, as well as an amazing cherry tart.
The next evening, we killed as much time as we could before taking our night train to Peripignan, where we could catch a bus to La Roque Des Alberes, the small village our next WWOOF farm was located in. We killed so much time that we ended up missing our direct train. We had to take a night train that involved a 4:30 AM change in Avignon, with a three hour lay over at the station. We didn’t leave for Peripignan until 7:30 in the morning, arriving there around 10:30. We ended up missing our bus, so we had to wait until 6 o’clock that evening to catch the next bus. Groggy, and with five hours to kill, we worked on the blog in a coffee shop. We caught our bus to La Roque that night with no problems, and made it to our WWOOF farm where we would spend the next three weeks.
Our host was named Namua. She lived with one of her son’s, named Ralph. Another one of her son’s, Louie, ate regularly at her house, but didn’t actually live there. Her and her husband bought their little olive farm about 15 years ago. She was widowed about two years ago. When we arrived Ralph was on vacation, and there were three other WWOOFers at the house: Sena, Darryn, and Oli. Sena was a Iranian-born Canadian, who was incredibly out going. Darryn and Oli were both English and considerably more reserved than Sena. Darryn was about thirty and had a master’s from Warwick (one of the grad schools I applied to); Oli was about eighteen, and we got along well from the beginning, largely due to a mutual interest in Black Sabbath. While we were there, Ralph would return from vacation, Sena would leave, and others would arrive. By the time we left, Darryn and Oli were still there, and Marie Claire, Lea, and Glyn had arrived, and would also still be there by the time we left. Marie Claire, originally from the Netherlands and currently residing in Belgium, was a free-spirit type, who was very interested in the spiritual aspects of permaculture and organic gardening. Lea was from Germany and taking a gap year before heading off to University. Like us, she was trying to travel cheaply through Europe. Glyn was from Wales, and was technically not a WWOOFer, but a Help-Xer. Help-X is a program like WWOOFing in that it provides laborers for those that need labor, but is not specifically geared toward farming. He had been to Namua’s before, and knew his way around more so than the rest of us. All of these people were incredibly friendly, and it was a pleasure to get to know them over the three weeks we stayed there. As for the farm itself, Namua did much to try and recycle her water usage. That means that anything that was put down a drain had to be biodegradable. We weren’t allowed to use any of the soaps or toothpaste that we had brought, but thankfully Namua provided some we could use. Namua used store-bought soaps, but made her own toothpaste out of clay and mint oil; it was like brushing your teeth with dirt, but surprisingly very effective. All of the water that was used was connected to pipes that would lead out into the garden to water her plants. Namua also made use of compost toilets, which was essentially like using a cat-box for our bathroom needs. Instead of a toilet-bowl, there is a bucket with a biodegradable plastic bag in it; after you are done using the toilet, you cover it with wood-chips. The buckets need to be taken out daily to the “shit-shack” (see pictures below, nothing graphic), where the plastic bags (the contents safely contained within… unless the bag breaks) are placed and covered with branches to keep the animals out. This of course was only necessary for the indoor toilets; their was an outdoor toilet, as well as a urine bucket for the boys, which needed to be taken out every month or so. It takes about a year for the bags to biodegrade before they are usable as compost. The compost is not used for any plants that will be directly eaten.
Given that it was just Namua at the house, we did a lot tasks that were not related to farming. This was no problem; we were happy to help. We had to do a lot of work related to the compost toilets, such as make more woodchips by collecting dried wood and running it through a wood-chipper; as mentioned above, taking out the indoor toilet buckets was a daily task. We had to water the garden and the poly-tunnel (see pictures below) everyday, too. A poly-tunnel is basically like a green house, except considerably cheaper to make and maintain, and more earth-friendly as you’re still making use of the natural environment. Basically, it’s just a plot of land that’s covered by plastic; it helps keep pest out, as well as moisture inside. This isn’t the first time we encountered a poly-tunnel; the WWOOF farm in Wales also had a poly-tunnel, they’re very common on European organic farms. Namua’s land was divided into two parts: the lower part, which is where the house and garden was located, and the upper part, which is where the olive trees were being planted. It should be clarified that Namua was in the process of creating an organic olive-farm: it wasn’t producing olives yet. When we weren’t doing work maintaining the house, we were on the upper part of the farm either planting olive trees, or clearing land for planting. About a week before we left, Namua purchased a hundred olive trees for us to plant; by the time we left, we had planted about sixty of them. For income, Namua sells books at a local weekend market, as well as online. We did some work related to her book business. Overall, the work was very light and pretty relaxed. We could work at our own pace. As long as we worked 5 hours a day, she wasn’t picky about how we spent it, or when exactly we did it.
Namua is a practicing vegan and has been so for most of her life. All of the food we ate the farm was absolutely amazing vegan food. She was an expert in vegan cooking, and as such, all of the meals we ate were very well rounded. When we arrived initially, our sleeping arrangements were in the house, but as more people arrived, we were moved to the caravan outside. Besides people, there were a plethora of animals: four dogs (Ben, Freya, Ash, and Obie), 15-20 cats, and 8-10 chickens in a chicken coup. We had one cat that liked to hang out with us in our caravan named BC. We spent many of our off days lazing around the farm, reading or cooking. A couple notable exceptions would be a trip to Coullier, which is a small beach town, where Dali and Picasso used to hang out, as well as an eight hour hike up to the highest peak in the region, the name of which I can’t remember. We also went to the market in Ceret with Namua, where we bought some fantastic cheese. Here are some pictures from our time on Namua’s farm.
The indoor compost toilet.
Clay toothpaste!
Freya and our caravan.
Ashleigh and Oli in Coullier. 
Left to right: myself, Sena, and Oli
the view
Namua with an armful of clothes. 
looks beautiful...! and to see the Sun Ra Arkestra(!) wow.
ReplyDeletecan't wait to hear some stories in person about the trip, looks so amazing
Happy for the update.....wondering what you two have been discovering! It all sounds (reads =) wonderful!
ReplyDeleteNice post, and very imformative. My son is going to be staying with Namua this summer.
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