Midnight Sun and Swedish Clubbing!

We were sweltering hot in Italy and seriously in need of some cooler weather.  For that we headed to Scandanavia.  Our excursion to the land of the midnight sun started and ended the same way; sleeping on the floor of an airport.  Sort of.  We left our hosts in Sarzana at around 10 in the evening to head to the Pisa airport because our flight to Oslo, Norway was at 6:30 the next morning and we could not get a train early enough.  We passed a few hours reading and wandering around the airport before finding what seemed like a good place to sleep.  Lisa fell right asleep and at 1am I was just dozing off when the security guard came around and informed us that the airport was closing and that we had to leave.  Who has ever heard of an airport closing?  There were about 20 to 25 other people in our position so we just followed the crowd outside where we found another 30 people or so sleeping in the grass in front of the airport.  So we joined the campout on the grass until the sprinklers went on.  We then moved to the side walk to try and get some sleep.

After about a total of 20 minutes of sleep, we arrived in Oslo early in the morning and Lisa´s friend and ex-client who had just moved home to Norway came and picked us up.  We stayed with Anna and her family for a couple of days in a town south of Oslo called Porsgrunn.  We went hiking around the fjords, slowly because her kids Lena and Niklas (and Lisa too!) were more interested in picking the wild strawberries and raspberries along the way.  We also went climbing one day on an undeveloped crag but lost interest after not being able to make more than a move at a time without a huge hold breaking off.  We did get a little bouldering in though.

We left Porsgrunn and headed to Oslo in the morning to spend the day seeing the city before catching a late afternoon train across the country to Bergen.  Oslo was nice but pretty boring compared to some of the spectacular cities we had just been in in Italy.  Every thing was exceedingly clean and everyone spoke perfect English.  Not quite the adventurous feel of southern Europe.  The train ride to Bergen was stunning.  It meandered between fjords before crossing a glacial plateau with little red cottages with sod roofs in front of blue glaciers and tundra as far as you could see.

Bergen was beautiful as well, sitting on a fjord on the west coast.  The first day we were there it poored all day.  We had planned on it though because Bergen gets 340 days of rain a year.  We just spent the day wandering around town.  Our second day there was clear but cold.  It was only about 45deg.  That's what we came for though.  We decided to try and climb.  Not surprisingly though the rock was soaked.  I don´t know if they can ever climb there!  We did however get a nice consolation prize in a huge hanging ladder that we found!

We left Bergen on a night train and it was strange to wake up on the glacial plateau at 2am with light still in the sky!

We arrived back in Oslo at 6 in the morning and spent the rest of the day climbing just outside of town.  It was really nice climbing but we are upset to be getting rusty!  That afternoon we hopped a train to Gothenburg Sweden where a friend of Lisa's from high school, Anders, lives.  Anders showed us around the city our first day there.  That night we went to his friend, Stephan's, sister's house for a garden party.  That was great because there were about 10 kids between 1 and 3 running around to entertain us.  Stephan and his 3 sisters were a lot of fun as well.  They are Icelandic and taught us the differences between Swedish and Icelandic.  They are also a very musical family so we got a great private concert.  After the party we went to an outdoor bar.  We found Swedish style to be an interesting mix of 1980s pop meets the Fonz.  There were very very blond guys with dark rimed glasses, white tee-shirts and colorful sweaters.  Most people looked like they would have fit in in Ferris Bulers Day Off.

The next day we went to the local amusement park because Anders used to work there and got us free tickets.  It was a lot of fun but we felt old when we felt sick after only a few rides.  That night I made dinner for Anders and Stefan.  After dinner Stefan was excited to take us to a club where he sometimes worked because the most popular Swedish DJ was playing.  We felt really cool when the head of staff met us outside and let us in the back through a curtain skipping the huge line (and the huge cover charge)!  The club was fun and packed  (Yes Cait and Caitlin we did go out two nights in a row!).  We later found out that it was the record night for cash flow at a club in the city's history.  No thanks to us.

The next day we took a train a few hours north to Anders families summer home on the coast.  It was absolutely beautiful with granite domes coming right out of the water.  It had the same cutesy sailing feel as Cape Cod or Northern Michigan.

After a couple of days there with Anders parents we headed South to the college town of Lund where Anders generously gave us the key to his apartment.  From there we went to Copenhagen for a day before spending another night in the airport and flying out early to Berlin.  Copenhagen was a really nice city.  Again not exactly adventurous feeling because everyone spoke perfect English and everything was spotless, but it was beautiful none the less.

We went to an area called Christiana, that we thought was going to be a cool hippie neighborhood with shops and cafes.  Not so.  It was a hippie shanty town inside an old military base.  It was made up of little shacks and all that was sold there was pot, totally in the open, and bongs.  It was interesting to see and there were really cool murals everywhere but not exactly the neighborhood we wanted to hang around for too long.  Otherwise we just took up our usual wandering around the city (in the rain again) and seeing as much of it as we could.  We loved all the cool towers everywhere.  Late in the evening we called it a day and headed home to the airport.  Luckily this one did not close!

Hippies and Honey in Tuscany

We arrived at the train station in Sarzana just as it was getting dark. We were meeting our new wwoof hosts, Gianni and Christina, to start a full month of wwoofing. We were really not sure what to expect and did not even know if they spoke English. When they were not at the train station 15 minutes after we were supposed to meet them we started to get nervous. When they finally did show up we were even more nervous. They pulled up in this shity van\truck thing that could only be in Italy, with cigarettes in hand. The seats were covered in trash bags and the trunk was full of hay. They drove us down the back roads to get to their farm. On the way we passed a dilapidated old mill, and Lisa and I were both sure that was their house. Luckly we drove right past it to the very end of the road to where they had the small farm and bed and breakfast.

They looked about 60 and like Italys answer to Haight-Ashbury. Gianni looked like a character that Jonny Depp would play. He was smallish, had a buccaneer moustache and beard and ear length hair. He did not have a gray hair but his wrinkled face showed a life lived hard. His arms were marked with tattoos that he gave himself as a teen. There was a picture of his first girlfriend, a poppy flower, an anarchy symbol and the initials L.S.D. We found out this was to avoid the military, he was kicked out when they saw this. Gianni sang songs like Yankee Go Home. Christina had long gray hair, usually wore a little white jumpsuit and unshaven armpits.

Their house was more like a small apartment building, with different sections painted differently in traditional tuscan style as it was right on the border of Tuscany and Liguria. The property sat in a valley with a small creek running through it. The land was terraced and steep. On one of the hills you could see a tiny medieval village called Giucano. As well as a bed and breakfast, they ran a small restaurant with a set menu which was great because it meant that I had a commercial kitchen to play in.

The first work we did was cutting the weeds on the terraces by hand with a seethe (they got an electric trimmer the day we left!). We also worked in the vegetable plots, cleared and covered the land around the olive trees and helped with guests. We also put the geese and chickens away at night.  For the geese you would literally quack and they would follow you into their pen.  As well as geese and chickens there were also bees, donkeys and a little dog named Na Na.  Gianni informed us that he only had nice bees.  Lisa was promptly stung.  It was ok though becasue we got a ton of fresh honey!

We quickly learned that like most Italians we met, they knew everything about everything. Italy was by far the best place on earth, and their region of italy was far superior to any other(that’s how all Italians spoke). They were very much hippies and very into eastern philosophy. They had certain ways they wanted everything done, but would not tell us until we had finished the job that we had done it wrong. By the end we were very sick of being told how to do every thing. We got pretty annoyed by this but were torn becasue at the same time they were extremely nice, catering to Lisa`s gluten intolerance always making her homemade bread and pasta, letting us take their scooter around and giving us free use of the kitchen and all food. We thought they were too nice so we never said anything about too much work.

The second half of our stay, a pair of French girls came to wwoof as well. There was definitetly a French Italian rivelry (both countries were far superior to the other, their people were nicer and each had the best food in the world.) We quickly became the clear favorites becasue while we smiled and did the work anyway, the French girls got a snoody attitude and bitched a lot. One night they even took us out to dinner and didn't tell the girls they were not making dinner.

Our last week we spent building a huge stone retaining wall along side some Italian contractors. It was a nice change because they were not telling us how to do things. We also found out why they expected so much work. Italians may be at work for eight hours but at least four hours are spent talking and arguing about everything from coffee to homosexuality. It was also good because they could really see how hard we worked. Gianni and the other contractors were especially impressed by Lisa, lifting and working harder than the men. They loved the fact that Lisa would jokingly tell the Italian foremen to quit talking and get back to work. The foreman, Stefano was hilarious. Eventhough he spoke no english he would have us laughing. Another funny incident occurred on the first day working before he knew how strong lisa was. Lisa squatted to lift a large rock using her legs to protect her back (as she well knows how to do). Stefano told her this was not the proper way to lift. He demonstrated the right way. He kept his feet touching, and with straight legs bent over and lifted the rock using only his back. He did take her way after he found out she taught people the proper way to lift for a living. Gianni was hilarious to watch work. He was not very strong and while we were lifting and moving the large rocks he would carefully position small rocks to make small walls around the main wall. He also had a really interesting shovelling technique. He would choke way up on the shovel, press it against his hip and sort of just thrust his hips, never taking more than half of a shovel load. Of course, this was the right way and we were doing it wrong. They were however, very appreciative of our hard work and invited us back.

On our days off we went to nearby towns and beaches. We went hiking and explored the mountain roads on their scooter. We got two day of climbing in but it was usually too hot and we were too tired from moving rocks. Our favorite place nearby was an alpine meadow that was above the Carrara Mable Quarries. It overlooked the quarries that could easily be mistaken for glaciers from all the marble tallas. The meadow was at least 15 degrees cooler than the valley and we picked wild blueberries and strawberries. There was and Alpine club Refugee where we could get cappuccino and enjoy the view.

The wild blueberries and strawberries were about the best food I have ever eaten, but all the food was very good. We ate homemade pasta and bread almost every day. We drove the scooter to a neighbor to get fresh milk (she milked the cow while we waited playing with a kitten). We gained lots of ideas for the future restaurant.



While we were there we had fun playing with the kids of the families that came to stay. One night we got an italian lesson from about six kids doing skits to demonstrate what a word meant. We did pick up some Italian while we were there (Lisa more than me) but more so our English got worse. We started speaking english like them so they could understand us, but would forget and speak to each other the same way. "Close the lights because coming the night."

Our first taste of the Alps!

After most of my family left, Lisa, my dad and I headed to Lake Como to stay with a friend of Lisa's dad. We drove from Venice to Como and around the lake to the north side where they live. Luigi and his wife, Elena, met us at the tourist information office, greeted us as though we had been friends for years and said it was time to go eat. We went to a little trattoria where they ordered fish from the lake for us. We then went to their house which was right on the lake and had a jaw dropping view of the alps across the lake. Luigi and Elena were hilarious and very excited for us to see their home. They were passionate about skiing (water and snow) to say the least. Luigi was out on the water at 5am just about every morning. They also had high hopes for their son as a skier but he decided to pursue academics and become an engineer instead. This, they said, was crushing. Around Luigi Lisa was a celebrity and she was introduced to everyone he knew as Dave Goode's daughter. He was also very disappointed that Lisa was not some professional skier. The first day we were there we took a ferry around to a few different towns on the lake, each more resorty than the last. The views of the mountains though, were perfect. The next day we took a drive into Switzerland stopping first to climb near the border, then at a tiny traditional Swiss village that looked as though it were taken right out of The Sound of Music, the ski resort St. Moritz as well as a few other towns. The scenery was breathtaking mountains with huge glaciers and cows grazing in green meadows. Exactly how one would picture Switzerland. The next day Luigi's son, Giovanni the ex-skier, took us on a tour of the lake in their boat. It was the first day that was warm enough to swim and we had a great time deep water bouldering and cliff jumping. We also had a chance to climb in the beautiful Val de Melle. The weather was iffy but we did get a great view for a few minutes. We even got a few routes in before it started to rain.

After a couple of days Luigi had to go to Dubai on business and My dad had to go home, so it was just Lisa, Elena and me. Lisa and I drove their scooter around and went hiking, and we all cooked dinner together. We met their other son, Piedro who was just as nice as the rest of the family.

One night we went to watch a world cup match with Giovanni at his uncle's restaurant. His uncle had an extended cab Dodge Ram parked outside. If you have never been to Italy, a ford torus would be big here, and I have no idea how it could fit down the street. To make things more like Texas, he opened it up to show Giovanni and the back seat was stacked with 15 to 20 shotguns!

It rained at least a little every day which was a bummer, but it made for interesting scenery. Lisa and I also took the train to Milano one day. We were really excited to see it since we had passed through so many times with out every actually seeing it. We were a little disappointed that it really didn't do anything for us. We liked most other Italian cities much better.

After about a week, Lisa and I were sad to leave, but took the long train ride south to Sarzana to start another wwoof for a full month

Family Vacation

After arriving back in Milan for the third time and still not seeing the city, we met my dad at the airport and picked up a rental car. My dad had arrived a couple of days before the rest of my family and was going to stay a few days after they left. The three of us drove south towards the Italian Riviera. Most people who know me know that I would much rather be the driver than passenger as I am a terrible passenger. I am usually convinced that whoever is driving is trying to kill me. I am a particularly bad passenger with my dad because he is always looking around pointing things out to me (usually geological features) instead of being as focused on the road as I would like. Unfortunately I am not yet 25 so I could not drive the rental car. I was a nervous wreck. Italians are extremely fast drivers and not afraid to pass on a completely blind curve. Motorcycles weave in and out of cars travelling at 90mph as if they are parked. They use their horn liberally and for both gratitude and scolding. Italian roads are also about 90% tunnels. Needless to say my dad was quite tired after travelling from the US and then driving for 3 hours. When we were almost there I finally got the nerve to take my eyes off the road and look at the map. As soon as I did, BANG. We had hit a reflector in the tunnel and broken the side mirror. This did not help my nerves. We did make it to the B&B in the agricultural hills above the sea where we were staying safely. After we settled we headed out to get some food. On the way back we sideswiped a stone wall on the side of the driveway at the B&B. This is why you should never buy an ex-rental car. After the first day, there were not any more driving incidents (except us saying right and him going left. Oh, and not knowing how to shift.) The driving did improve greatly as the week went on.

While in the Riviera we drove down the coast into France. It was beautiful in spots but generally really built up. It was a Saturday so there were motorbikes swerving in every direction and people everywhere, but nothing open. We also took a really nice hike over a mountain on the sea to the next town and got to grill in the backyard. After two days we headed to Tuscany to meet the rest of the family. They arrived after us and were pleased to not have had any accidents of their own. They did get stuck in a rest stop though. The next day we all drove the Cinque Terre and walked the Via Del Amor that Lisa and I had done in April. This time we were experts, going in the opposite direction so the hard part came first and not accidently hiking 45 mins to a nude beach. Everyone was blown away by the little villages. We bought pesto in the deli which is as far as I can tell the best in the world. Cait and Anna (my sisters) were happy because they are picky but love pesto.

The next day we went to Florence. As usual we took two cars and were tailgating to get there. The two cars got split up though when my mom got in the wrong lane at a toll booth and had to drive across eight lanes of traffic to correct. I was in the car with her, Lisa and Cait. We had read about a limited traffic zone in Florence that carries a 100 euro fine if you drive in it. Not wanting a fine, we parked as soon as we thought we were near the city center. Turns out we were not. It was an hour walk to the city center. We had no plans for where to meet anyone else so we just headed to the Duomo, the first stop they wanted to see. Sure enough the rest of the family was there as well. We just walked around to some of the highlights in Florence. While we were in Tuscany we also explored Pisa and Lucca and took a really nice drive though the mountains of Tuscany. We did drive into one town and had to back out about 500 meters because the street was too narrow to turn around.

Where we stayed there was a wood burning pizza oven. I had a blow to my cooking ego when I made a couple of scrambled pizzas and a couple topped with burning embers from the wood. After Tuscany we headed back to Venice. Since you cannot drive in Venice we parked on the edge of the island and lugged our stuff across town to our apartment. Again we pretty much just wandered around going back to the highlights and checking out the neighborhoods that we had missed last time. Anna and her friend Lacy had just graduated high school and Anna just turned 18 so they were very excited to be able to drink legally. Every night Anna had a glass of wine and she never liked it. She did however like the Bellinis. One night we were getting ready to go out to a bar and had seen where they were earlier in the evening. We asked her if that is where she wanted to go and she said that it looked boring, “the people are just standing around drinking!” We were sad to inform her that that is what you do at a bar.

Anna and Lacy were also prime targets for the pushy vendors selling knockoff purses and sunglasses. I guess small, blond Americans look like they want to shop. They were also way too nice. When they were being hassled they would just say “I’m really sorry but I don’t have any money on me right now.” Of course they vendors English was not so good so they didn’t know they were being shut down and would continue pushing. The girls would just keep saying “no, but thanks anyway.” The vendors would not relent until they saw the girls were with Cait and me. I guess we did not look friendly.

Overall there were not really any incidents and it went really smoothly. My mom did almost burn the place down by plugging in her American hair dryer. She said that she thought it was strange that the handle was getting red hot. Luckily the circuit tripped right away, leaving us in blackness but not burned to the ground. When the girls left they headed to Milan for a day before going home, while Lisa, my dad and I went to Lake Como to stay with a friend of Lisa’s Dad.

Casa Pollo

We left Torrox behind and made the short 1 hour journey back through Malaga to Casabermeja. In Casabermeja we were met by one of our new hosts, Anne. Anne drove us to their house in the tiny 200 person town of Puerto Del Barco. Puerto Del Barco means passage through the mountains and that is exactly what it is. It is set in an agricultural region in the mountains of Andalucia. Out of our window were mountains as alpine and rocky as the 14ers at home even thought they were only a few thousand feet high. They had olive groves and wheat fields stretching up as high as possible up the steep sides before they gave way to rocky outcrops and buttresses. It really looked as though someone stretched the farmland of Pennsylvania over the topography of the Rockies.

For the first few days we were there we had another wwoofer staying with us as well. Harold was an 18 or 19 old German who was practicing English and Spanish. Harold was very proper and polite, quite the opposite of our last German friend. One day when his job was to trim the lawn out front of the house Harold came out in a suit that looked as though it belonged to the ghostbusters, complete with rubber boots and a full face mask. He would certainly be safe from flying grass! Our hosts John and Anne were more British Expats. I’m starting to wonder if the UK is somewhere I want to go since they all seem to be leaving. Our eating at Papa John’s Place was British food on a Spanish time table. We got up and ate a light breakfast, then would eat toast, coffee and fruit at about 11:00. We would then eat our largest meal of the day at about 2:00 and a light snack at night. When they first told us about the eating we thought they were nuts, why on earth would we need two breakfasts, dinner at 2:00 or 3:00 then nothing until late in the evening. Well it didn’t take long for us to start counting on a second breakfast and we were sure ready for dinner at 2:00. The food was very good but very British; creamy fish pies and steamed veggies for example.

While we were there we did some similar work to what we have been doing; watering, planting and weeding. But our main job was to build a chicken coop. We first had to do some research to find out what a chicken coop entailed and how big it should be. We were given a pile of old junk wood and palates to work with. The only power tool was a compression drill from 1984. We had to fix the saw before we could use it. After some carful analyzing we decided to build the coop out of an old wooden dog crate and a masonite bookshelf. We added vertical shelves to the book shelf so that it would have little chicken cubbies for them to lay their eggs in, complete with doors to access the eggs. The dog crate became the roost where they could sleep on some dowel rods that we installed. We used palm wood and bamboo mats for the shingles to give it a nice tikki look. We even installed window shades and a little door made from a wine box with a nice grape pattern. We also had to build a fenced in area for them to scratch around in. It was a challenge using less than ideal materials and tools but in the end it was a really fun project and a nice change from digging and weeding.

As usual we had plenty of time off as well. One day we went climbing at El Torcal, a tourist attraction on top of a plateau. It was all small limestone towers. The rock was bombproof and the usual fun limestone pockets. Towards the end of the day while I was belaying Lisa I got surrounded by a flock of a hundred sheep. Luckily Lisa scared the crap out of them when I lowered her and they took off. John and Anne were nice enough to drop us off that morning but we decide to walk home. It was a few monotonous miles of pounding downhill on a paved road followed by a fantastic few miles on farm tracks through the wheat crops and olive groves. Another day we climbed the most prominent mountain nearby. It was a scramble right from the start as the only trails were old goat tracks. After scrambling for an hour we got to a high saddle that had about 500 sheep in it. From there, we had a short section of semi-technical rock and another short scramble to the top. We also took some time to explore the nearby city of Antequera which had a cool castle and bull ring. On our last day we took the train to Ronda, about an hour away. Ronda was just another white Andalucian village, except that it is divided by a 200ft deep gorge. It was pretty touristy, but for good reason as it was absolutely spectacular. We had a nice lunch overlooking the gorge and watching the tourists go by in their lines following whatever shiny nic-nac their guide was waving. The next day we were back to Malaga to fly to Milan to meet my family.