Maine? Check.

It was a whirlwind guys. If not for my friend, Anu, in Boston, I probably would have had a series of panic attacks at the outset of the trip.

Needless to say, I did get to Boston, then by rental car to Maine.

Where I promptly fell in love with a state.

As a southern girl, Maine has always been more of an idea than a concrete place. There for all I knew, people probably just traipsed around Bar Harbor and hiked through Acadia National Park, those being the only two places I could have named in Maine until recently.

Shoveling snow off the metro in Berlin.

As chaotic as the trip to Maine was, it was a welcome, if drastic, change from Berlin. One day I was riding the U-bahn and remembering my German phrases to be polite to shop owners, the next I was figuring out Boston’s metro system and on I-95, making sure I still remembered how to drive.

The last tulips I bought at Imke’s place in Berlin.

About the time I was crossing the Maine border, I realized that some suspiciously flu-like symptoms were coming my way, which only added to the overwhelming nature of the weekend.

Fortunately for me, I met some wonderful people up in Maine, including my Airbnb host. If you don’t know about Airbnb, you should probably do yourself a favor and click here. My host in Belfast/Swanville is shown here.

Donna’s amazing house at sunrise.

My first night in Maine I arrived at Donna’s exhausted, jet lagged and more than a little sick. She had prepared a great bed for me on the second floor of the cottage her grandparents built themselves several decades ago. And, guys, I broke about five years of pretty solid vegetarian eating that night with one of the best bowls of chicken soup I’ll ever have. (I must add though that it was local and free-range chicken…)

My suite at Donna’s B&B. I spent every second of the weekend I wasn’t visiting farms cuddled up in that magnificent bed.

I used Donna’s place as the base for my farm visits throughout the state. The area around Belfast was my favorite part of the state by far and I can only imagine how great it would be when the high temperature isn’t 12•F. But really, everyone should visit Maine.

And actually I’m going to take this opportunity to say that everyone who reads this blog now has a great reason to visit because I have accepted a position at Frith Farm in Scarborough, Maine!

From April to November of this year I will be doing a farming apprenticeship at Frith and learning all about organic vegetable growing. This particular farm also has different kinds of livestock during the summer including chickens, sheep, pigs and turkeys. I’m kind of beyond excited about spending a season there, but for the coming weeks I’ll be posting about the goat farm in western Germany where I have very recently landed.

Although I’ve only been here for three hours, I think it’s going to be a really great experience. Check back soon for lots of cute goat pictures!

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Settling In

Today I set out with the intention of documenting what has developed into my Berlin life over the past ten days.

I took this picture from the stairwell of Imke’s building looking out onto the courtyard.

It was around lunchtime and I had several stops planned. And while I stopped everywhere I wanted to and got everything I had intended to, I didn’t take a single picture. In fact, I didn’t even remember that I had wanted to take pictures until I got home.

Believe it or not, I’ve settled into a few routines in just the ten short days I’ve been in town.

Yesterday I finally found a superb bakery in the area, where I can get my daily dose of German whole grain rolls.

I walk a mile or so every Tuesday and Friday to the pop-up Turkish market along the canal where mangos and pineapples are two for 1 Euro, persimmons are a Euro for a kilo and pomegranates are a kilo for 2 Euros.

The Turkish market is also the only reason I haven’t died of frostbite yet. When German malls and department stores proved too overwhelming for me, I was saved by the Nepali woolen hats, mittens and sweaters that are sold by the dozen by the Turks.

I’ve even figured out the German postal service, which oddly enough, doesn’t require a trip to a post office in order to mail a letter. The corner store next to my U-bahn (metro) station has its own little scale and postage store, run by a chain-smoking German woman, who pronounced my German decidedly improved over the last time I mailed a letter, last week.

And speaking of my German, it’s actually getting to the point where I would label it marginally functional. I can count and read enough so that it is relatively close to correct. A somewhat annoying triumph from this week happened when I decided that I had surpassed the level of my German A1.1 class and will be joining the A1.2 class as of Monday. It’s nice to see that a bit of effort in learning a foreign language goes a long way.

The coming week will be my last at Imke’s Berlin apartment.

On Thursday, I’m heading to Maine to visit farms from the apprenticeship program I’ll be starting in April there. And once I return to Berlin on the 31st, I’ll be heading to a goat farm in western Germany to WWOOF there for a month or so.

Berlin has treated me extremely well, but I am eager to get out of cities for awhile and back to where there is enough space to see the sky and enough darkness to see the stars.

For now, Imke’s snow-covered courtyard will be one of my favorite parts of life.

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It’s Tough Finding a Farm in January

And that, in a nutshell, is how I ended up in Berlin on January 8th.

I had spent over a month contacting farms in Greece to no avail, then Imke and Jochen spent a lot of last weekend calling everyone they knew to find a farm in Germany. It seems like winter is not a time for agriculture in any country in the northern hemisphere.

Imke had the wonderful idea for me to stay in the apartment she rents and only infrequently stays at in Berlin. Then she enrolled me in a beginner’s German class and I was all set for few weeks’ stay in the nation’s capital!

It’s taken me approximately five days to get my bearings in Berlin and if I had to describe the city in one photograph, it would be this one:

One of two identical statues (?) on my street.

It appears to be a frog-alien, and it might belong to a school of sorts that lies behind it.

I show you this picture because I’ve decided that Berlin is just odd. The city is weird in a way that makes it clear that everyone is actually reveling in their oddness.

The city feels raw to me too.

With buildings crumbling and left from before the Wall fell right next to fifty-story shining new hotels.

I wasn’t exactly sure what a hipster was and I hadn’t spent much time thinking about it, but apparently Berlin is the very center of the hipster world, meaning lots of skinny jeans and interesting haircuts.

Other than my German class for a couple hours every morning, I’m getting back to swimming at that big wonderful pool Imke took me to, back in 2011. I’m always on the lookout for different markets and I’m eating a ton of fruit, which is dirt cheap for some reason in Germany.

A hole-in-the-wall that only sells tandoori naan (7,000 a day)!

I’m living in the very Turkish part of town, called Neukölln, that is just now becoming noticeably gentrified, or so I’m learning from this article and the huge protest against rising rent prices in the neighborhood that I saw on Friday.

I’m doing a lot of walking, though I’m mostly limiting myself to my neighborhood, as Berlin is very big and I have a tendency to want to do everything and thus get overwhelmed.

On Friday it started snowing and has been doing so off and on for the past three days.

It’s my first snow since leaving Russia and it feels nice to be cold again.

Today I even saw the sun for the first time since I’ve been in Germany and that, a homemade pretzel from Bretzel and Company and tulips on my kitchen table make for a lovely Sunday evening in Berlin.

Imke’s kitchen in Berlin!

 

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Germany 101

After my Paris sojourn, I said my goodbyes to Aus and hopped on a train to visit my friend Imke who lives in Osnabruck, Germany. The last time I saw Imke was exactly two years ago when I visited her in Berlin and had an awesome time.

Huge cathedral in Cologne, where I switched trains en route to Imke!

Unsurprisingly this time was no different!

Imke and her boyfriend Jochen picked me up at the train station and we set about doing normal German activities on a Friday afternoon…buying shoes for Imke, and buying a long-awaited German pretzel for me!

The first pretzel of many!

The one tourist attraction I visited was the room where the Treaty of Westphalia was signed in 1648!

A treaty I only know about because of AP European History at Bearden High School!

The next day the real fun began when I was invited to Imke’s sister’s birthday party! We travelled to a different town for a big breakfast, followed by a walk in a local, castle-filled park (!) and cake.

My first German castle, located in a city called Kassel!

I finally got to meet Imke’s parents, her sister Kirsten, even her grandparents.

The entire Pente family!

Germany is turning out to be a tad colder than France…

On Sunday we had a nice, relaxing day at home.

Jochen meticulously cleaned his bike.

It seriously looked brand-new once he was finished with it!

Imke and I went for a walk around the farm where her apartment is located.

A former moat surrounding a German manor house.

We spent time watching the animals around her house, including peacocks, sheep, ducks, and some odd-looking geese.

A peacock!

Later on Imke cooked not one, but two quiches, both of which were delicious!

The chef herself!

I also have to add that Imke and Jochen are two very competitive foosball players, encouraged by the fact that half of their kitchen space is taken up by a newly-acquired foosball table.

It’s a ferocious game between the two of them.

My last day with Imke was spent at her parents’ house in her hometown, Soest. Beginning with a lovely tour of the historic city and ending with two rounds of a German board game that I handily lost both times!

One of many homes in Soest that were built in the Middle Ages…seriously…

I got to see the ancient city wall that surrounded the old town of Soest.

Imke and her father, Karl-Walter, who led us on our impromptu tour!

I think what impressed me the most was that so many of the town buildings had been standing since 1200 and something and that the government goes through great lengths to preserve them for the future.

Imke, Jochen and her parents were beyond hospitable and truly by the end of this weekend, I feel like one of the family.

Which is turning out not to be such a bad things, as I have decided that Germany will be my new home until the beginning of March!

Guten nacht from western Germany every one!

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Oh Paris…

Kyle and I boarded a train early on the morning of January 1st with approximately 86 drunken teenage villagers. We were going to Paris; they were going to their villages to sleep off their hangovers.

Goodbye Chamonix!

Although I had already spent over a week in Paris, I was kinda itching to get back and introduce Kyle to the wonders of Parisian bakeries and…

The best meal of the trip (probably).

FALAFEL!!!

No surprise here, upon arrival, we went to the Austin-approved best falafel stand in the city, followed by Bertillon ice cream.

We filled the rest of our remaining days with long walks;

Jardin du Luxembourg

bus rides;

Cross town to Montmartre!

hot beverages;

What this picture doesn’t tell you is that Kyle doesn’t actually like espresso!

more hot beverages;

Mulled wine and mint tea in the shadows of Sacre Coeur.

metro rides;

Austin with his French student look; Kyle representing urban chic.

exposing Kyle to French culture via crepes;

Best crepes EVER.

biking around Paris on Velib;

Rain did not hinder these dedicated bikers!

and discovering more bakeries.

One of four we hit on our last day in Paris.

We wound down our last day with Indian food for lunch and Vietnamese for supper, with several pastry stops thrown in for good measure.

All in all, these boys are two of my favorite people and having them together in the same city for a consolidated amount of time was unbelievably fun.

Here’s to Prague in 2016!

Oh and I got new boots!

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New Year’s in Chamonix

My high school friend Kristen has been living, working and teaching herself to snowboard in the French Alps for the past year and a half.

Kristen on her board about to sail off the edge of a black diamond!

A quick (but annoyingly expensive) train ride from Paris, Chamonix turned out to be the premier vacation spot for wealthy French people (and Germans, Russians, Chinese, etc.). It was picturesque and very cold; the latter I sadly did not expect so much.

The view from the top of the French Alps!

Our friend Kyle who lives in New York also made the trip over the Atlantic and met both of us in Chamonix!

Kyle and Kristen hugging in front of the train station upon his arrival.

Because Kyle and I were definitively not skiing, we spent a lot of time wandering the town, looking for bakeries with good pastries.

Chamonix seemed to exist solely to provide winter tourists with gourmet groceries, boutique ski outfits, crepes and delicious waffles!

On Sunday Kristen took her board and Kyle and I geared up in ski outfits for the lift up to the very top of Brevent, a mountain in the range surrounding Chamonix. The views were actually breathtaking, as was the thought of Kristen snowboarding down the entire mountain.

Bearden High School 2005!

I am very glad that I had the opportunity to go to Chamonix and I am supremely lucky to count Kristen Winters and Kyle Fox as two of my best friends for the past 10 years.

More sky than snow is best.

 

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