The Countdown

I am writing this post from a McDolands located in Jyväskylä, Finland. It’s very nice, trust me. All McDonalds in Europe are pristine. Definitely worth the trip. I also write this while having just 17 Euros left in my pockets (after purchasing two cheeseburgers) for the next two days. We just left the farm earlier today to stay in a flat that our hosts have here in the city. After these two days, we will be back in the US. It’s surreal.

The past few weeks have been filled with discussions about our longings to go home, seeing our families, and actually sitting down in person to talk with our friends. “Excited to be home” is a bit of an understatement at this point.

But as an update, the past few weeks have been busy at the farm. Harvesting of the honey started about two weeks ago which make for a huge influx of honey at the farm. Also, a huge influx of bees. Bees were everywhere. Hive boxes, filled with frames of honeycomb, were placed in a large room within the barn. This room was situated right next to the honey extraction room. And lucky for us, this extraction room was right on the other side of our room! Normally, we would wake up around 8:00 am but the wake up time was pushed back a bit earlier due to stray bees coming into our room. Almost like clockwork, the a collection of a few bees started buzzing at 7:00 am as they tirelessly tried to get through the window located in our room. They were so dedicated. Because of this odd problem, this past Monday we put on our bee suits and attempted to get as many bees out as possible. It actually sort of worked. We have slept well ever since. But we are especially excited to sleep in our own beds–bee free.

Aside from releasing bees from our room, we both have been busy extracting honey, building pallets to hold barrels of honey and doing everything in between (all relating to honey). In addition to helping out at the farm, we have been prepping the zine with some editing and cataloguing. We are pleased with the work we have thus far and are excited to share the results with those who are interested!

Anyway, below are a few photos from the past few weeks.

(Also, this will probably be our last post from Europe–look for another post once we are state-side!)

-Stone

cheap meat

brian hadn’t swam in the lake yet so we decided to dive in the night before we left. we had the perfect soundtrack of thunderstorms in the background

this coffeemaker has no coffeepot so we improvised.

dusk

some fresssssh honey.

here is the extraction line. essentially, i stood here and took these frames and scraped any extra wax that covered the honey

freshly scratched honeycomb, ready for extracting

i was made designated griller earlier this week. i’ve never felt more american.

all of those little specs are bees. we quickly adapted to walking through collections of bees

we cleaned these barrels. then honey was put into them.

 

 

The bees, the bees.

After 30 hours of traveling, we arrived at the Komppa-Seppälä farm located outside of Korpilahti, Finland. Korpilahti is quite the small town–the scenic one kilometer drive down main street will provide a view of two bars and two markets. Oh yeah, and a lake. (Lakes are everywhere in Finland) The town is located about 20 kilometers outside of Jyväskylä–the 5th largest city in Finland. Most of our time is spent at the farm since we are a bit isolated.

The farm is surrounded by trees. So many trees. There are a few other residential houses nearby that share a lake. (Surprise, there is a lake behind the farm). We have been tempted to explore the wooded areas nearby but we have heard of a large spike in bear activities in Finland. Quite a few of the 1,200 hives our farm manages have been destroyed by bears. Our host mother recently saw a bear in the wild for the first time in her life. So yeah, “bears equal scary” thus “woods equals scary.”

Much of our work around the farm involves creating and assembling bee hives. Whether it be applying melted bee wax to pre-made inserts for the hive or priming and painting bases for the hives, we take comfort in knowing that we contributed just a tiny amount to the creation of a large family of bees. Last Friday, we had the chance to go to the hives (equipped with bee suit and smoker) to retrieve queen bee larva ready to be placed in an incubator that are then sold to other bee farmers around Finland to create new colonies.

Aside from doing work around the farm, our days have involved traveling to lakes and making new friends with the other part and full-time workers on the farm. Anyway, enough words–time for pictures.

-Stone

Here, There, Everywhere

It’s been a whirlwind of a past few days. We finally had the chance to settle down and relax in Freiburg, Germany this past week. We stayed with our good friend Katie who accommodated us with mattresses spurned out onto her small dorm-sized room. From hiking the Black Forrest to grilling out on a balcony, Southwestern Germany proved itself to be a place of majestic views and hospitable inhabitants. 

With Neko Case blasting in my ears, I’m slightly yearning for a grounded destination–similar to what I would feel at home in the US or on an afternoon drive to Bloomington. We are now settled in Riga International Airport in Latvia for the night, ready to grab a morning flight to Helsinki. From there we will take a four hour bus right north to Korpilahti to start our last adventure working on a bee farm. 

Until then, here are some shots from Freiburg.

(Oh and sometime we will upload shots from London and Paris… Sometime… Stay tuned.)

 -Stone

There’s No Two Without Three

In about 6 hours, we will have been in 5 different countries within 8 days.

After an early 3 hour train ride last Thursday morning, we finally made it to Paris. Last Sunday we were prepping to wait/stay/sleep in the Charles De Gaulle Airport for an early Monday morning flight to London. Our downtime has been very short due to all of the recent travels as we are just now posting about Paris… sitting in London Gatwick Airport at 2am to leave London at 8am and head to Basel, Switzerland then take a train to Freiburg, Germany.

So yeah, sleep has become irrelevant. Countries are only becoming distinctive by the languages spoken within them. This has also become “round two” of sleeping in an airport for this week. We were given some advice by some wonderful British friends in a vegan restaurant to buy flotation devices to sleep on–providing boundless sleeping areas within all airports.

Upon arriving at the Gare de Nord station in Paris last Thursday, we started walking northeast following the Canal Saint-Martin, stopping to grab a baguette and some brie (you just have to). We then made a trek to the Eiffel Tower and met up with a friend to have a night on the town in Paris. The next morning we met with our friend Paige who joined us on our journey to London for these past 5 days. Hence our blog title–a phrase that was mentioned to us by our Italian friend, Michele, whom we worked within in the Netherlands.

Back to Paris–There’s just too much to see in Paris. The grittiness of the city is met with spectacular views and gorgeous buildings making for a distinctive experience. One moment, you’re waking down an old alley with potted plants sitting upon every balcony and the next moment you may find yourself in Paris’ Red Light District. But all of these aspects come together to make for a fascinating, romantic city.

Here’s a few shots from our weekend in Paris–can’t believe we just typed that:

We were greeted to the Northeast side of Paris with this market. FREE SAMPLES EVERYWHERE

so dirty so graceful

some big metal contratption

“hahahaha”- Brian in reference to the guest appearance in this photo

parisian apartment selfie

“we lourve this arch”- Stone

we found aaron in paris and it was wonderful

its too late/early to think of a caption

We promise to upload more photos of Paris soon. Along with photos of London. Once settled in Germany, we hope to find time to figure out what even happened this past week. Until then.

-Stone

That Time We Actually Lived In the Netherlands

We have come upon our final days here in the Netherlands. In a little over 12 hours, we will be boarding a train headed for Paris thereby officially start our “backpacking” portion of our time abroad. Or I guess you could describe it as the “bread and cheese diet” portion of our trip.

Regardless, we are very excited to start traveling once again and this time it will include seeing a few of our friends! It will add some variety to the daily interactions of Stone watching Brian catch up on Fargo and Brian watching Stone’s neck beard grow.

But with two days left, we are both a bit saddened to leave. We have really become much more accustomed and comfortable within the market and just the Netherlands in general. We have even eliminated our regret and hesitation for speaking English at cafés. It’s especially disappointing as a few new WWOOFers from California and Italy have just arrived in the past two days.

Anyway, here’s a recap what’s happened over the past few weeks:
-We went to Castricum beach and avoided dead jellyfish like land mines.
-Stone sold some organic delicatessens at the Amsterdam Market last Saturday–fooling some (2) patrons that he spoke Dutch decently.
-Brian almost camped out in the train station last Sunday night!
-We biked over 40 miles to and from Amsterdam; almost needed knee-replacement.

And here are the pictures to prove it:

lil town of Lemmen

beach bum Brian avoiding jellyfish

Hansa’s grand-daughter Priija colored this for Stone. Stone’s heart broke.

two guys two bikes (with neckbeards)

canal by the museum mall of Amsterdam

hazy, lazy Vondelpark–“Amsterdam’s Central Park”

re: living in the Netherlands

sometimes you need to take a ferry to get home

the Amsterdam market where Stone tried speaking Dutch on a Saturday morning

and crazy Billy–who has the best smoker’s meow

-Stone

I can vouch for the truth of all Stone said, so here are some pictures to add to the pile.

On my way to getting lost in Amsterdam last Friday, which it turns out is not fun

Saw some old things at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, home to a lot of old stuff

and not-so-old stuff

 

moon over Amsterdam canal

Garden next door

This is a hallway we walked through every day to get to food, work, or the toilet (see below)

This toilet, this one

-Brian

Grains, Grains, Grains, etc.

It’s been one week since we have arrived in the Netherlands. Really, the two words that best describe our time here thus far are–grains and vegetables. The reason for this is that our first WWOOF destination is a small macrobiotic market that operates our of Castricum, a small town just 35 minutes north of Amsterdam by train.

So, what is “macrobiotics”? Well, as a diet, it mainly consists of East-Asian grains and vegetables and very rarely served portions of seafood. Macrobiotics is also described as a “way of life” that practices eating basic foods that balance the principles of “yin” and “yang,” as the diet originates out of Japan. From our interpretation, it’s essentially a vegan diet with some life principles involved.

This is millet. Don’t know what millet is? Well, neither do we but we eat it every day for breakfast.

And yes, it’s very interesting to say the least.

The market itself is run from a trailer that is taken to different markets throughout the Netherlands every Tuesday-Saturday. The market store is attached to an “old rye-bread bakery turned house” situated with multiple rooms to accommodate the store’s family and international volunteers like ourselves.

Our room–featuring clay walls made by Hansa.

The work we do consists of cleaning the house, filling bags with grains, cooking meals and cleaning more things. Pretty basic tasks done in exchange for 3 meals each day and a bed to lay in. During the first few days, we had to constantly adjust to the mental concept of working solely to live. The mindset of working for a “reward” or paycheck to fund other activities is non-existent–which makes you deeply consider how one uses their time and to an extent your purpose in life.

Some pretty fun stuff, you know!

But aside from existential crises, we have had the opportunity to get to know the family and other workers that operate market over the past week. The owner, Hansa, is a tall Dutch man whom has a low and booming voice that can be heard anywhere from within the house. Hansa has a ex-son-in-law Gurnam who operates the market from the trailer every day. Gurnam’s nephew also helps within the bakery and stocking section of the market. There is another WWOOFer by the name of Joshua who is from Australia. Naturally, the three of us have bonded over our English speaking ability. Finally there is a middle-aged couple from the Czech Republic who live in this little cottage set aside from the house. And yes, it’s as adorable of a situation as you are led to believe from reading that previous sentence.

Aside from working, we were able to get away and check out the cities of Alkmaar and Haarlem this past weekend. Now, here are the sweet voyeuristic photos you have all been waiting for:

Brian freaked out when he realized how old this church must be.

Stone freaked out when he realized how good this beer tasted after his meal at an Alkmaar café.

The streets of Alkmaar

The “Big Market” in Haarlem.

Surprisingly, the big market takes place by a big church.

beautiful alleys

are everywhere

We didn’t forget about you, Iceland.

We’re settling down in Hansa’s house on our Wwoofing stay in the Netherlands, but we’ve still got a lot of photos from Iceland. So we’re dumping a lot of them into this post for your eyeballs.

Reykjavik

A bench, via the Icelandic countryside

The moss here is the best moss

The plants, the plants

beach (plus Stone, being excited about being on a beach)

The mountains, hills, whatever they are–they’re incredible, and usually you can’t see the tops because the clouds are so low

Our sweet ride

b

Iceland essentially looks like Mars with all of the red and black igneous rock and craters.

I agree with Brian. Iceland has the best moss.

So much volcanic rock on the coast.

We originally planned to just stay within Reykjavik but our friend who worked at our Guesthouse mandated that we leave and check out the southern coast of Iceland. She was our savior for the weekend.

Walking on the black sand was about as close to walking on water.

We drove to one of the national parks within Iceland with a friend from Montreal. Our car was battered a bit by the wind and rain on a plain stretch of road. When you arrive in the parking lot it doesn’t seem like there is much to see. But once you reach the edge of one of the viewing platforms, you are graced with these views.

We were about to leave until these falls caught our eyes.

Strolling around after dinner we entered the Hallgrímskirkja Church which can be viewed from anywhere in Reykjavik.

SELFIE ON THE WAY TO THE TOP

View from the top of the church which made you tear up (mainly from the wind hitting your eyes but also the beauty).

Iceland has been calling us back ever since leaving. Hopefully we will find ourselves there again. For now we arrived in the very quant and cute town of Castricum in the Netherlands. We will have updates later!

-s

 

Three Hours of Darkness

It’s been about one whole day that we have been in Iceland and somehow I think we have managed to set our internal clock to their Greenwich Mean Timezone. Shifting our clock meant catching a few hours of sleep on our 6 hour flight from Toronto (leaving at 9:00pm Canadian time) to Reykjavik (arriving at 6:00am Icelandic time). Aside from the lack of sleep, it was really the perfect trip as the plane had a Sigur Ros documentary available to watch. And yes, we watched it. 

After arriving by bus to the city centre around 9:00am, we wearily wandered around most of the surprisingly small capital of Reykjavik. The city’s population is just over 118,000–Iceland itself has a population of only 325,000 people–which makes for very walkable streets and open spaces. Maybe it was our exhausted eyes and bodies but the city is very, very nice. Almost too nice–to the point where it’s disheartening. Have a look for yourself.

First street we ever saw in Iceland

Obligatory Instagram photo of Reykjavik

Some boats n’ stuff

We found a small French cafe to grab breakfast served by a stern but helpful waitress–don’t worry, both meals were accompanied with Icelandic salmon. We saw lots of knit sweaters. So many sweaters.

Sweaters are part of the unofficial dress code for all Icelanders.

Unlimited coffee was then consumed in a basement cafe named Tiu Dropar before we were checked into our guesthouse by a wonderful Australian traveler who is temporarily working in Iceland. For dinner, we accidentally prepared a typical Icelandic meal for fiskbullar (literally “fish balls”), boiled potatoes and a salad of greens. Here is a lovely picture of Brian eating such a meal. 

bb brian and his boiled potato

In order to avoid costly bus tours, we rented a car. In fact, just an hour ago a man abruptly arrived at the door of our guesthouse with a piece of paper in hand with “STONE IRR” printed on it, filling the page with an enormous font. The only words exchanged were “let’s go” and we followed him into a car which he immediately started and then swooped us away. At first, it felt like a deal gone bad–you know, the typical “car rental exchange turned kidnapping”–but he just took us to their office to sign some papers. Anyway, an Iceland Soul Searching Road Trip is now happening. Documentation may follow.

Two Packs, Two Boys

The countdown begins.

For those of you who may not have heard, we are traveling to Europe for ten weeks to participate within the WWOOF Program. Short for “World Wide Opportunities On Organic Farms”, the WWOOF Program connects participants with hosts to work on organic farms in exchange for shelter and food. The places we decided on were the Netherlands (Hallo!) and Finland (Hei!).

In less than one week we will be working for a macrobiotic market distributor Peaceplanet Netherlands located in Castricum, Netherlands. It is run by a man named Hansa and his wife. According to their website, we will be filling bags with grains, watching grandkids and making pies with no sugar. Basically, our whole lives have led up to fulfilling these tasks.

After our four weeks in Castricum, we have two weeks to do anything in Europe. Really, anything–with all of terror and excitement that comes along with being alone in foreign lands. Our sights are set on Germany and possibly England or France.

Our next destination will be Korpilahti, Finland to work on a bee farm. They harvest delicious honey and make all sorts of bee related products–which you can probably buy from their website here (but we’re not sure as we don’t speak or read Finnish). It should be an exciting experience–especially for Brian as we are not sure if he is allergic to bees or not! Luckily, there are a few gardens and greenhouses that need maintaining as well.

Due to all of the traveling, we have been reduced to taking one carry on bag each. For ten weeks. We have spent a few days trying to determine what necessary materials will fill our two backpacks. Stories of washing our clothes in hostel sinks and skeevy laundry-mats are soon to come. We expect to morph with our packs at some point over these next ten weeks.

OUR LIVELIHOOD

Before we arrive in the Netherlands, we will be stopping in Reykjavik, Iceland (Halló!) for a free 3 day layover. With less than 48 hours before our departure, we are still have no idea of what kind of adventure we have set in motion. But we are exciting to share our adventure with you along the way.

-S.B.