Pigs don't care where they shit but I do!





Wednesday 18th July

I had come to do Workaway with Honsa and Jana, and today my work started, with cleaning the pig pen. It came as a bit of a surprise that this should be my first job but I got on with it without complaint. It wasn’t so bad, of course smelt but you get used to it. When I finished I asked Honsa if I should sweep it out but he said it should be jet washed. Jet washing pig pooh in a small enclosed space is not a good job.

I had had a shower earlier and now I needed another one but I didn’t get it.

The shower Honsa and Jana have is definitely worth a mention. It's located at the top of the stairs. Honsa and Jana only occupy one main room on the first floor, the rest of the large house/barn is in varying stages of construction or neglect. Later in the day I came into the house, walking up the stairs when I heard Jana’s voice, I looked up and she was drying herself on the small landing after her shower; I made a hasty retreat. The shower, like so many things at their house is rough and ready. It stands on some rocks and the sides are so flimsy that if you leaned heavily against them, you would fall out. Around the shower is so much clutter, there’s barely any room to put one’s towel.

They don’t have TV but at least they have wi-fi, and they do have a dishwasher and a washing machine. What they don’t have however, is an inside toilet. I was in the house alone and looking for it, and so telephoned Honsa. He told me it was outside and gave me instructions to find it in the yard. It took a while to find it and I was taken aback when I opened the door of the very small hut. Honsa had told me it was a dry compost toilet but it only had a large bucket under a big plank with a circular hole in it. I decided to use my own toilet in the van.



At lunchtime we visited the local pub up the road. Honsa said “We go beer.” Three delightful words on such a hot day after all my labours. At the pub we also had a light lunch.

In the afternoon we visited another delightful town. Honsa had some business to attend to and Jana was delivering some milk in large plastic buckets to a friend, she wanted to make some butter. I wandered around the town and visited an old wine cellar with giant barrels of the elixir before taking a beer in a shady courtyard. I was served by a young man who could have been on his first day at the job; he seemed a little flustered. Another older waiter was even more flustered and hurrying around. I watched them have a heated discussion over a bill and the older one drinking beer to calm himself down. It took them ages to get around to taking my money.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Katy's Garage

Image
Saturday 7 th July Yesterday afternoon I arrived in Dresden to meet my new CS hosts – Franziska and Marco, and their two young children. Franziska has fiery red hair and Marco hair down to his shoulders; they are a very interesting couple. Franziska speaks excellent English, also Russian and Marco speaks well but often has to think about his choice of words, he also speaks Russian fluently. It always amazes and humbles me how good many people in European countries are at speaking so many other languages. I am embarrassed about what I know of other languages. I met Franziska first and when she told me Marco is a nuclear physicist I felt a little daunted at meeting him but when I met him, he was very down to earth and easy to talk with. Why I call them very interesting, is because for their honeymoon they travelled from Germany across Russia to China via the Trans Siberian railway and then through China to Tibet by train and after Tibet to Nepal and India; it took them three month...
Read more

Swimming in the lake

Image
Friday 6 th July Yesterday was lovely day. I spent a few hours in Kradow before driving to the side of a lake where there were few people. The lake is bordered by woodland and in various places there is access to the crystal water. Along a dusty track I passed by small numbers of people enjoying the tranquillity and sunshine. To my surprise there were a few who were bearing all to the sun but then I shouldn’t be surprised because this is Germany. I found a spot, put on my shorts and entered the water; there were a couple nearby and my modesty forbade me from going with shorts. It was easy to enter the water because it was not that cold, unlike the sea where you have enter slowly and allow your body time to adjust to the coldness. When the couple left I took off my shorts and wallowed in the pleasure of being naked in the water. I was cautious of swimming too far out however, the experience of nearly drowning in the river by my home in Zunyi had altered my attitude to the w...
Read more

Elusive butterfly

Image
Saturday 14 th July When writing a blog, the feeling you get is that you should constantly write something, after all, one is doing and seeing different things but is it really interesting? For instance, yesterday was pretty much the same as the day before, except I didn’t get the blues. I went out walking, took photos, did exercise in the park, sat in the café and drank beer, watched people. The only real difference was Monika took me and her daughter to play mini golf and show me her old haunts. Monika grew up in Marianska Lazne and has lived here for a good part of her life, although she has lived and worked in San Francisco, Ibiza and England doing various jobs. Monika and Elen It’s always good when a local shows you around; you get to know a place much better. Monika showed me the ice hockey stadium where two teams were playing, two local teams and no spectators. How easy they make it seem, hurtling over the ice and rarely falling over, unless someone deliberately k...
Read more