Stateside

Firstly, pictures are coming soon. At least on facebook...

I've finally made it home! I've got a phone, a computer, a car, and a nice selection of clothing, but unfortunately not much time. Packing is proving to be quite a daunting process, as I decide what crap to take back with me to Maine. I'm thinking there'll be plenty of time in a couple weeks to post pictures.

The last leg of my trip, the Poland study tour, was very well run, and I think I got to see people's actual lives, despite being an outsider. My group, consisting of a few Americans (most over the age of 40) traveled around the south of Poland, visiting farmers that have been helped by Heifer over the past decade or so. At each farm, we asked lots and lots of questions, got to see the actual animals donated by Heifer, as well as growing herds, and were fed excessive amounts of food.

There was no way we could turn down the homemade cakes, cheeses, sandwiches, soup, sausages, etc etc etc that each farm served us in turn. I've finally met a situation in which more food was a bad thing (the only other one I can thing of being the infamous lunch buffets at Tandoor of India).

The biggest thing I got out of Poland was that agriculture was not an option for these people; it was the only way they could live. There is high unemployment in the region we visited, meaning that there simply aren't jobs for people, even if they wanted to stop farming. This is sustainability in a more extreme sense. Sustaining a way of life, as well as the individual farmers and their families, and sustaining the health of the environment while their at it.

As a side note, Polish is a ridiculous language for English speakers. L's with slashes=w, w=v, c=s, cz=ch, and so on. I flew into a city called Wroclaw...you'd think it's pronounced "Wrah-claw," or maybe "Vrah-clav" if you're really savvy. Nope, it's actually "Vrosuave."

Having been so busy since getting back has also meant that I haven't had too much time for reflection on my trip. I still need to figure out a cohesive mental map of what all I've learned and done. So I'll prolong this blog as long as possible, if you'll all bear with me!

Final Hurrah in Poland

Sooo blog updates have been few and far between. But Internet access and desire to sit at computers have been too. So, I'll give a brief overview of what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks.

I think I left off with England...my time in the land of Marmite and English breakfasts was spent mostly a short train ride out of London. I honestly spent a bit more time vacationing than studying (ahem), but I did visit a town called Totnes. Picture the British version of Ithaca, ie smaller, with a cathedral and a craft market run by little old ladies dressed in Elizabethan clothing. And no Ithaca Bakery. But it did have lots of pseudo-hippy intellectuals wandering around with cloth bags full of organic produce. It was a nice town, since I love homebaked bread and raw milk cheese probably more than the average person, but it also has a rather secret side.

Totnes is the home to a movement called Transition Towns, which aims to deal with climate change and peak oil at a local, town level. The movement in Totnes has created a currency used only within the town, does a lot with education about energy efficiency, and may create a community garden or two in the future. However, after finding their office closed, I had a long chat with a wonderful women in the Tourist Info shop. She informed me that the average citizen of Totnes really has nothing to do with the movement, and that it suffers from low participation. Sounds like sustainable movements everywhere...Furthermore, because Totnes is such a desirable place to live, at least for relatively well-off, educated people interested in these sorts of things, housing prices sky-rocketed. Some people now need to have three jobs to live in Totnes, but apparently like living their so much that they do so.

After adventures in England, I moved on to Poland. On the last leg of my journey, I have been on a Heifer International study tour with 5 other Americans, a Heifer group leader, and 3 Heifer Poland staff members. It's a very, very different way of traveling than I've been doing: hotel rooms to myself, planned transportation, arranged meals, siteseeing tours. It's mostly a welcome change, especially as the whole point of the trip is to visit farms that have received animals from Heifer. We've visited lots of families who have gotten cows, horses, or sheep, and have, I think, improved their lives. I love Heifer because they try really hard to be culturally sensitive. We're not rich American tourists oggling at poor Poles...we're interested (fairly rich) people who are interested in agriculture and want to know what these people have done using resources provided by Heifer.

Maybe I'll write a bit more about Poland once I get back- I'm still here, so I'm still processing everything. In any case, my flight back to the US is SUNDAY. But I'll still be backpacking...I'm pretty much flying to Portland, going to a conference, and then attending AmeriCorps camp for two days. Like, sleeping in cabins and having bonfires. And THEN I'll be coming home for a break next Saturday, packing, visiting, not sleeping. Maybe updating.

I've finally emerged from my Internet-less hole in Egham, England. It's about a forty minute train ride west of London, and the current home of Samara, who is studying music at Royal Holloway University for the year. It's nice seeing a friend from back home, since I've been traveling essentially alone for two months. We visited Rochester yesterday, and giggled every time we saw signs saying "medieval Rochester" or "Rochester castle," and we're heading into London today and tomorrow for action packed days of museums, markets, theater, and food/drink.

Speaking of which, I have barely mentioned food for awhile. I thought I'd compile a list of the best food I've eaten whilst in Europe. In order of appearance:

Estonia:
1. Pirukad- Estonian pastry pies and pretty much the national dish of the country, filled with the ubiquitous smoked fish, lamb, beef, or cabbage usually. I had all of these at one point or another...

2. Crepes with caramel, banana, and ice cream- not particularly Estonian, but delicious nonetheless

3. Pickles- Estonians are particularly fond of pickles, and make them quite well

Ireland:

4. Fish and chips- I am constantly craving fish and chips, and the best I've had so far was in Howth, Ireland.

5. Scones with butter and jam- finding a good scone is a bit hard, but I found a nice, fluffy one in Cork. Ireland also has some of the best butter and milk in the world; I'm not looking forward to dairy products back in the US after having been spoiled by Irish ones.

6. Tomatoes- The farm I worked at in Ireland had over 600 tomato plants, and they were all amazing. Not sure how many pounds of tomatoes I ate there...

Scotland:

7. Tea- It really is a tradition in the UK to have teatime in the pm.

8. Milk- Straight from Molly the cow and used to make yogurt, butter, cream, and ice cream. The elderberry flavored ice cream we made was literally some of the best ice cream I've ever had, even if it was a strange, brown color.

And there's still England and Poland to go.

I'm now flying back to the US Oct. 10 to start my job. Hopefully I'll see some of you soon after!

Zoom

So this blog has been layed by the way-side, mainly because I literally have not had Internet for the past month, aside from a couple of breif Internet Cafe sessions. Nevertheless, quite a lot has happenend in the past month. I've traveled from Ireland to North Ireland to the north of Scotland, where I am now living on a homestead/farm/brewery/furniture workshop complex working long days and learning wonderful things. The brewery work is dull and unenlightening, as only assembly line work with a bunch of surly and pessimistic Scottish young men can be, but the rest is great. I've practiced milking a cow, making butter and jam, cooking in an aga (oven that stays on all the time), and baking bread, along with garden work.

Most excitingly, looking back toward the US, I now have a job! I've accepted an AmeriCorps position with St. Mary's Nutrition Center in Lewiston, Maine. That means I have to fly back early, on Oct. 10, and immediately to Portland. Very exciting, but I'm also super-frustrated with trying to change my flight because I can't figure out how to put money on my phone. Note to US: please make phones that work in Europe.

I'm off to visit Samara on Tuesday, after which I will be more of a tourist and less of a farm girl, and will have more Internet, so a better post will follow!

Ireland in a Blur

I've been in Ireland for a couple weeks now, and have been travel(l)ing for nearly a month! A semi-quick overview of my schedule: After leaving my hosts in Saaremaa, I spent a couple of days in Tallinn ,the capital of Estonia. I remember it being rather quiet, medieval, and undiscovered during a frozen April last year. Not so on a Saturday in August. There were too many people for anything to feel undiscovered. I spent most of my time revisiting places I had been to while studying abroad. Honey beer at the medieval restaurant (though slightly disappointing since it was not enjoyed as a respite from the cold and I was by myself), views from the top of a church tower, and a walk to the airport figure prominently.

My first few days in Ireland were decidedly underwhelming. Dublin is a giant tourist trap of a city in the middle of the summer, in my opinion. I'm sure it's perfectly lovely when we're not all tramping through wearing Guiness hats and gawping at things, but while I was there, I waded through crowds of tourists in search of anything to do with sustainable agriculture. I spent four nights there and found a total of one locally sourced restaurant and an Organic Food Co-op that was tucked away in an almost-impossible to find location. I did see plenty of nice museums and parks, and took a trip out to some breathtaking cliffs covered with heather. But in general, people weren't particularly friendly, and I didn't find much of interest for my studies. However, I did go to the public library...

By this time, I was tired of living in hostels and traveling alone. It's awfully hard to fill every hour in the day sometimes, and it's hard only having the briefest of conversations with shopkeepers or hostel guests. I was more hopeful of my next stage, Cork, but was starting to look around for a farm or something I could go to for a few days at least.

As soon as I got out of the bus station at Cork, I knew it was a much better place to be. I walked to my hostel, past coffee shops and outdoor living stores. When I got in to the lobby, I immediately picked up a brochure for a musuem dedicated to butter, which happened to be free that day, and about two steps from where I was standing. I headed that direction, but first found a cafe that served homemade food made from local ingredients. Aha! People were also much friendlier in general- for example, a random old women told me about her childhood in Cork, and I met a couple people in my hostel that night and finally got around to a glass of Guiness (fyi, a bit better in Ireland, but NOT the world's best beer, I will fight with anyone).

The next day I wandered around the city a bit more, and stumbled across a farmers market. And here is where I acheived some of the spontaneity I was looking for in this trip. I started talking to a vendor, and got an invitation to work on her farm for a while. I had no idea where I was going, but I jumped at the chance to stop spending money at hostels and find some focus!

So, I've been working at an organic farm for about a week, picking many, many pounds of tomatoes and weeding carrot rows while lying down on this contraption that looks like a hang-glider. The family is nice, a bit colorful, and there are other young people working on the farm as well. (I've learned that a thimble is called a fingerhut {finger-hoot} in German, one of the many exciting lessons of the past few days).

I'm off to Black Isle Brewery in Scotland sometime next weekend- it is surprisingly hard to get from where I am now to where I need to be, so I've got to spend some time planning that and buying tickets. I'll write some more about agricultural/culinary lessons when I can wrap my mind around what exactly I've been doing and learning.

And finally, it's strange not to be going back to school of some sort right now, the first time in 18 odd years. Happy studying to all of you going back to school...enjoy it while it lasts!

Goodbye Eesti

Today is my last day in Estonia- I had a wonderful time, and like this country immensely, but as I'm heading off to Ireland, I won't be too sad.

Well, I came to learn about food and agriculture, and that is mostly what I have done so far. Estonia is a good example of a country that is not, in my opinion, in desperate need of an organic movement. My hosts would dearly love it if everyone suddenly thought organic and local were the sole way they chose food, and are trying to start up the trend. However, I'm struggling to understand why exactly they feel so strongly about this. Estonia doesn't need an organic/local food movement precisely because their food is already mostly organic and local. To be fair, I am looking at it from an American perspective, where factory farms, pollution, and corn rule. In Estonia, almost everyone has at least some of their food sourced directly from a small garden or farm and buys local packaged goods because that is what is available.

I asked Karen, my host, what she sees for the future of Estonian agriculture. She cited a food system that sounded a bit more like what we see in the US today. If she's right, then perhaps she and her minions are right to start this organic thing now, rather than wishing they did 20 years from now. The problem they are coming up against is that they want to add meaning to the words organic and local, so that it becomes a conscious choice, a valuable lesson for their American counterparts.

In other news, I spent a day foraging for mushrooms and blueberries in the forest. We cooked up our bucketful of chanterelles that night for dinner, after which I woke up at about 6am with the realization that something was very wrong. My hypothesis is that somebody picked a bad mushroom and I was the lucky person to eat it. Or the sheer volume of mushrooms I ate overwhelmed my system. The next day was, needless to say, spent in bed. It was interesting, however, that everyone kept offering me herbal suggestions rather than medicine. I drank some rosemary tea (didn't help) but eventually felt fine the next day. Mushrooms are now eaten with a wary eye.

Why didn't I bring my Renaissance gown?

I've finally got a couple of free minutes, so I should take a minute and digest exactly what's been going on for the last five days.

I stopped over in London for two days, which was lovely, but somewhat of a whirlwind. Traveling alone is certainly different than traveling with a companion, though not necessarily inferior. You can do what you want, travel at your own pace, and no one cares when you get lost except yourself. It also forces you to talk to people, since it's easy to slip into a world of your own, and listen only to your own thoughts. I enjoyed my first solo meal in London at a nice Moroccan restaurant, talked to a farmers market manager about London markets, and slept in a hostel bunk that resembled a small and comfortable cave.

The real adventure began in Estonia. I feel as if I've been here for a week, though it's only been two days. This is probably because I've only slept about 7 hours in the past 48+. There's so much going on, all of it rather bizarre compared to, say, the day before I left.

I'm currently in a town called Kuressaare, on the island of Saaremaa, closish to Finland if you'd like a reference. It felt a bit as if I were going to the ends of the earth, as I boarded first a bus, then a ferry, then another bus to get from the capital, Tallinn, to Kuressarre. It turns out that it's a quaint little town where people leave their keys in their unlocked cars, and leave their doors to their houses wide open. There is a nice little downtown, a 700 year old castle, and a harbor.

I was under the impression that I was going to work on a farm that provided food for a restaurant. Once I met my hosts, Karen and Alar, it was soon clear that the restaurant was closed, the garden out of comission. Instead, I am helping them with their several "projects," which are a little vague, but mostly involve encouraging organic food production and local eating. So far, I have used my anthropology skills to interview people about their food choices. Too bad I never learned how to conduct interviews in Estonian. Or at an Estonian festival, complete with dancing and smoked fish with heads. I managed to find a few people who spoke at least broken English, and learned some interesting things.

And then last night, my first night in Kurresaare, I accompanied my hosts to a birthday party: a medieval themed birthday party. We showed up, and there were various Estonians wearing medieval garb, with clay mugs, and gathering around a roasting pig. The entertainment for the night included a magician, fire breathers, and lute players. Ummmm, not what I was expecting for my first night here, or really ever, but a fantastic experience. Many Estonians speak a little English, and there are various North American expats around (my hosts are both Canadian- Estonian) so the awkwardness of being the only one who didn't speak Estonian was kept to a minimum.

I have no idea what I'm doing the rest of the week, but I expect it will be great fun. When I'm done with my time here, I'll post something extensive about the agriculture and food- I've already learned a lot, but there's a lot more to figure out.

So, I'm alive, having a lot of fun, and being productive. I'll keep up with this when I can!