Down on the Bauernhof

Well howdy there or should I say Guten Abend. I haven´t even attempted to learn any German, it is way to complicated for my little pea brain, especially at this stage in the game...but I can´t help but want to learn a few words here and there.

So...I am in Bavaria, way in the Southland of Germany, I can see the Alps from the kitchen window here, that´s how far south I am.

I am living on the farm of Monika and Ullrich Leiner for at least another few days; I arrived here last Wednesday and have been happy as a clam (giddy as a goat?) ever since.

They have been on this particular piece of land for twenty years, have a herd of 60 milk goats, and churn out wonderful, organic goat cheese which they sell at the local market here twice a week and make their living here in this way.

Having me here is not unusual for them at all as they have practicum students here frequently from the local agricultural college. They don´t usually have folks here for such a short time, and normally Monika wouldn´t have allowed it as you can´t really learn anything in ten days and it can be more trouble than not to have someone ghosting around. But...they´ve never had anyone here from the States and they were interested in the cultural exchange, and she knew how interested I was in the farm operations and the cheesemaking, so she allowed it.

So far it´s been an incredibly cool experience. I have mostly been in the cheese making room, watching fresh milk turn into both soft and hard cheeses, a process I have never seen. But twice a day the goats get milked, and I have hung around the stable on a few occasions to watch them clamor around.

(see video of this if you like...)

Monika and Ullrich are incredibly good at this, very efficient...they have to be since it´s just the two of them (they have 3 children who are all grown and aren´t interested in farming...two of them still live at home and are in college). I keep thinking about Gwen when I´m watching the cheesemaking, because I know she would absolutely appreciate the speed at which Monika moves around and how spotlessly clean every aspect of her operation is.

She makes cheese every day because there´s milk every day. That is, until February when all the goats give birth (all sixty of them are pregnant). It doesn´t add up to tons of cheese, but it´s enough for them to sell, and have plenty left over for them to eat. they aren´t interested in expanding their market, they have plenty of work already, but they easily could.

I have really enjoyed being in a home, with my own little room that I don´t have to check out of every day.

I generally get up around 6, and am in the cheesery between 6:30 and 7:30. We work until around 10 o´clock and then have breakfast. Yay for real breakfast! The Germans eat wonderfully, and the food here is mostly from their farm. In the mornings we have cheese (there are about 7 to 10 kinds to choose from), a few slices of meat (usually goat and\or ham ´cause that´s who lives here on the farm...) homemade bread (wheat and rye...no white!), fruit and tomatoes with butter and jam, coffee and tea. Real food! I have grown so accustomed to the non-existent breakfasts of Portugal and Spain that I forgot about actual breakfasts!

Lunch is their big meal, a soup followed by some sort of meat and two or three vegetable dishes. We have mostly had red cabbage cooked with cinnamon and cloves, and a really nice beet dish. There are usually potatoes as well. And they have dessert at this meal...we have been having stewed apples from their tree with fresh cream.

Dinner is pretty much a repeat of breakfast with slightly different additions, like pickles, coming to the table. It´s been...lovely to eat such nice fresh food, so it´s been a real treat.

Anyway, I´m gonna sign off for now...there is only one computer here and Johanna, their youngest needs to use it...as does Ullrich...so, I´ll write you again before I leave (I will go into Munich for a little sightseeing on Friday and then head back to Madrid a week from today).

I just read over this post and it seems really scattered...ugh, my brain. I keep thinking that when I get home I want to sit at the computer and clean up this writing, egads...

okey doke...talk to you soon...

madrid to munich

It's cold and raining here in Madrid and I'm a little shaky from my night train ride...it was a very good deal, just under 60€...but it was coach for 10 hours and therefore sleep was elusive.

But tonight I'm in a nice little hostal room, I've got my travel clothes drying for tomorrow (I am soooo looking forward to being able to go to a laundromat when I get home and I thought I would never say that - but two months of hand washing my clothes in a sink....) and I just had a nice meal and am ready to tuck in for the evening.

I just got done spending a couple of hours at the Museo Nacional del Prado, one of the great art museums in the world (and it also happens to be the oldest public art museum, established in 1819). I only saw a portion of the collection, but two hours is really what I'm able to do and still appreciate the work.

They have works that I've studied in school hanging there live in front of me (most well-known to me were Velazquez' The Drinkers and Las Meninas. But there was also the tripped out Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosch, eerie still-lifes and rock anthem pieces by Raphael, Fra Angelico, Goya and El Greco. I will be back in Madrid for about 8 hours in a couple of weeks and plan to come back to see the pieces I missed since the museum is only about a fifteen minute walk from the train station and there's a place at this train station where I can stash my backpack for the day.

So tomorrow I get on the Metro and head to the International Terminal of the Madrid airport and head on into Munich. There's something still kinda fun about figuring my way around a city. Taking public transport, consulting the little maps...when I'm in the right space it's just a big game board and I'm this tiny figure trying to maneuver points A to B to J.

I came out of the movie theatre last night (saw W. - was disappointed) and it was just pouring rain. It had been clear skies when I went into the show, so it took me by surprise. I knew I had about a fifteen minute walk back to the Metro station...and fifteen minutes in a downpour can wreak havoc when you're walking around in it. The thought of wet boots for an overnight train ride did not excite me. But it's funny...I had this moment of panic about it until I remembered that I wasn't in a hurry (I had over two hours before my train left) and so just sat there under the awning for a few minutes, put my raingear on, wrapped up my pack in it's little cover and by the time I settled in, so did the weather and I strolled through a light Portland-ish rain without much trouble.

I love how panicked I can get on one occasion, and in the next be perfectly calm. There's no rhyme or reason to it at all. A couple of days ago this girl was so rude to me in a cafe that I almost started to cry about it...but I tried to turn it...I've been taught over the years that a cure for this kind of stuff is to pray for the person you feel has wronged you...and even though I wanted to yell at this young woman, and I did (in my head)...I decided that living with that resentment all day long was just going to bum me out, so I said a prayer for her and for everyone else out there that maybe had a moment of feeling like an outsider on that morning.

I was watching TV the other night and there was this program about this little ten year old girl who has that horrific disease where you turn old at a very young age...I can't remember the name of it, but it's one of those tragic illnesses that they can't cure and it causes these kids to go through a terrible amount of pain and disfigurement before the disease claims them.

But this little girl was such a spitfire, and she had this great mom, and an adoring older brother and these two really great friends and she has just been in my thoughts ever since. The show was in Portuguese so all I was able to do was watch the pictures. There was a scene where she was in a ballet class and it both broke and lifted my heart to watch her there, on those aching, wobbly legs...being quite graceful along with her classmates. She was so physically different from these kids, but she had this great expression on her face of concentration and joy and it was really just very beautiful. Talk about feeling like an outsider in the world...whenever I feel like that, from now on...I will think of little Claudia, whose strength in that aspect, shone through loud and clear.

Okay...need to get back out in this weather and make a phone call to the German goat cheese woman and then get on "home."

Thanks Big G (and PJ!) for your comments. It's funny, I was thinking about that "produce hose" bit the other day as well. I was running a few of Ellen's routines through my head and cracking up out there on the trail. I'll have to watch that too when I get back.

Okey doke my friends...say a little prayer that we have grand weather for flying tomorrow just after noon. You'll all be tucked into your beds, but maybe you can think about me before you go to sleep.

Lots of love, I hope I get to talk to you soon.

Lisbon to Madrid

I arrived in Lisbon a couple of hours ago and am wandering around this massive and busy city in search of something to fill the 8 hours I have before catching the night train to Madrid.

I ended up wandering in here to say hi to y'all.

I'm trying to find a movie theatre...haven't seen a movie in quite some time and thought there might be an American movie at the Cineplex. It's a few blocks up the street, so when I'm done here I'll see. It's Monday and most of the museums are closed. I also have my backpack with me which loads me down and makes me feel vulnerable, so I don't like to wander too much with it on. I'll be back here for a couple of days before I leave the continent and will get in a decent spate of sightseeing then.




Went to one of the Fatima shrines this morning before getting on the bus. This place, unlike the massive sanctuary, is set in the oaks not far from the childhood homes of the little shephards. I was wondering yesterday where the greenery was in all this shrinedom. Mary did appear to shephards who were grazing their flock...and yet the sanctuary built around her appearance seemed to be have no natural life to it.

But I talked to a guy this morning and he pointed me in the right direction and I found another site where She appeared and enjoyed the setting much better. Except I was so saddened to see that even here, there was cigarette butts, candy wrappers and toilet paper (!!!) littering the area right around the statue and marker of this sacred site.

We have soooooo far to go.

I want to read more about Fatima and the words of St. Lucia...but it seems the basic gist of the messages she received were that we were all to pray for the sinners and convert to Catholicism. In this the world would be healed. That's a pretty thumbnail sketch.

I'm not converting to anything today...I like the broad spectrums of faith out there too much to bow before one idea. But I do agree that a deep conversion needs to take place if we are to ever evolve. Maybe we're not really supposed to...it seems like an unmanageable task to shift our consciousness at this point. We still call each other names based on skin color and the flavor of each other's accents for pete sakes. We still traffic in the slavery of humans, four-leggeds and our winged ones. We value money over land, river and sea. These all seem to be base concepts that we are pretty far from changing globally.

There are a lot of American programs on T.V. here in Portugal. But they seem to show an episode of National Geographic every afternoon. It's heartening to see all the good work happening out there, and I know there's a lot of it...but my goodness we are digging ourselves out of a deep, dank hole.

That's what I was thinking about this morning as I was wandering the paths in those Holm Oak groves.

My time is just about up here. I'll probably find a spot in Madrid to write again.
I'm looking forward to having more than thirty-sixty minutes of writing time when I come home!

Lots of love.

there must be something about me and goats...

Ellen DeGeneres has a hysterical routine about marrying a goat...I can't remember which DVD it's on, Big G would know, but I was running it through my head the other day while I was working thru this plan. (and here it is...thanks to YouTube)





Anyway...last week I met a German woman at an alburgue in Barrios. I was telling her that I was going to have an extra couple of weeks on my hands and I wasn't quite sure where to go once my walk was over.

She suggested I come work on her friend's farm in Bavaria where she raises goats and makes about fifteen different kinds of specialty cheese from their milk.

Well, that sounded like something.

So it took a little finagling, but on Wednesday morning I'll be flying into Munich and then heading into the mountains to hang out and work on this farm for a little over ten days.

I'm pretty excited about getting my hands dirty and learning how to make goat cheese. I'm also looking forward to being in one place for awhile. There's a lot left to see here in Portugal, but I'm way over hotels and pensions and having to look for places to stay every night. I hope I can come back here at some point and tour it again, maybe in a car...

I am writing you today from Fatima. It's quite a place. The cathedral and the shrine devoted to the vision of Mary by three young shephards here in 1917 is extraordinary...




As are the sheer numbers of devotees. It's Sunday, so this bumps the numbers up I'm sure...but man, you should see the parking lot, it's filled with tour busses and RV's. People picnicking, grills are going. It's like a big, holy tailgate party.


And with that comes some moving, reverant sights, like the people walking on their knees, or crawling around the chapel built on the site where the first vision occurred. I didn't take any photos of this either for obvious reasons, but here is a picture of the plaza early in the morning before Mass.




There's also a massive pyre where people by the hundreds line up to offer candles.




Mass this morning was beautiful and I wandered the crowds, watching people, listening to the words I couldn't understand piped over loudspeakers, and loving the sounds of the choir as they sang in between.



Those moments make up for the bazillion shops selling plastic Fatimas and beads and trinkets galore. It's like Fisherman's Wharf. Cellphones going off during mass, people talking on cellphones in the Chapels...eegads...makes me crazy.

Anyway...have to get off the computer now. I will try to write to you when I can. Tomorrow I go to Lisbon where I am boarding a night train to Madrid and then to Munich from there. I could've flown from Lisbon, but it would've meant changing planes in Madrid anyway and so I'd rather take 2 flights instead of 4 (I have to come back to Lisbon to catch my flight home). Don't think about it too much...it makes sense to me. I like trains better...if it wasn't going to cost me and arm and leg I would've taken a train all the way to Munich...but there you go.

SO I don't know what my scene will be like in Germany. I know I am going to be in the town of Kempten in Allgau. And that's all I know right now.

So...I'll talk to ya soon! Oh, by the way, Big G? You are hysterical and I knew you were going to have a quote for me. But you know what scene I was thinking about? The one where she and Ryan O'Neal decided to pretty her up a little bit and they get that ribbon for her hair and the lady says something like, "Well it makes all the difference." Can't wait to watch that movie with you again!

Lots of love folks

I...AM NOT...AN ANIMAL!!!

Seriously, you would think I was lurching around the town square with a flour sack over my head the way some people have been looking at me these past days.

And okay, I will admit that I'm looking slightly less than "well put together," but I mean c'mon, I don't think I'm ready for the bell tower just yet.

And it's difficult to convey a sense of style (and for me, difficult is the tamest of words I can use here) when you´ve been living in the same pants and t-shirt for two months. I long to buy new clothes, but the ones I've got have been perfect for the hiking I've been doing, and any other clothing would just be something else to carry.

So I probably have a bit of a street urchin look going on for me, which really stops working once you get past the age of say...ten. I've also lost a considerable amount of weight, so these cargo pants that were comfortably loose for walking have become clown-like. We won't spend time talking about this t-shirt. I wore it for LW2, and all across Spain and I should really get rid of it...but I can't, just can't do it. And then there's the decidedly male flannel shirt I wear over everything to really bang that outfit home.

So, okay...maybe I get it a little bit.

I was telling Gwen that if I was in Portland, no one would look at me twice. But I happen to be in Western Europe where fashion is quite the thing. It's like being in New York...people look good here. When I was trouping with the pilgrim hoards on the Camino Frances, there were so many of us dusting around in our shabby clothes that no one noticed us. But, that's not the case here either and so even in the smaller villages I regularly get "the once over." And I'm not just talking about furtive little glances. I'm talking about full-on, eyes covering me from head to toe, trying to take it all in. Children, teenagers, workmen, the woman watering her garden. Doesn't matter. I'm the side-show of Portugal.

Yesterday a guy was walking across the lane a couple hundred feet in front of me and he actually stopped and backed up a few feet to take a gander. And I'm not entirely sure about this, but I think he may have crossed himself.

And maybe for someone more secure, all this attention would be somehow fulfilling, or at the very least not bothersome. But this isn't "Hey, Breck Girl!" attention, and it bothers me a great deal. I can't seem to get very comfortable and have become downright clumsy with it.

Today I was at this diner type place, and so many people were looking at me that the piece of chicken I was cutting flew onto the floor while my cutlery clattered and screeched to a halt on the plate. I looked up with that goober smile I have as if to say, "ha ha, silly me!" But instead of sympathetic shrugs people quickly averted their eyes back to their meals, hoping to stave off any further outbursts.

So...maybe now that I'm done walking, I'll try to find something else to wear. Think they make gunny sacks in a size 8?

Think I'm done.

Done with walking that is. Had a couple of hard days in a row (cold rain, well-meaning locals misdirecting me way out of my path) and after 7 or so weeks of slugging around with a backpack, decided to bus it down here to Porto and go from there using the wonderful cheap and easy public transport of Europe.

Part of it is that I'm simply tired, both in head and body. But a bigger reason I think is that as I near Lisbon (or Fatima...I'm going to both places), the walking is becoming increasingly tiresome with the ratio of heavy traffic roads outweighing the quieter country paths. And here, as in Spain, the traffic moves very fast, there are little or no shoulders to walk on and it just seems foolhardy to continue like this. Plus, it's annoying. And actually, there was a stretch yesterday that was so ridiculously dangerous that it pissed me off.



So, in the alburgue last night at Rates, after talking to other pilgrims who were making their way towards Santiago (and here they are), I decided to end my walking tour there. They had told me that the walking was sucky from Porto on up, and that I may as well just take the train or the bus.

So there we are.

So, I found a little pension here (little is the operative word!) in the amazing city of Porto, with the ocean in the background, and I'll spend a day or two here, enjoying the sites and figuring out my next move.




This pension, Pension Duas Nacoes - right in the heart of the city , is a mere 14 euros for a single room...yay. And even tho it's REALLY small, it's very clean and relatively quiet.




I still have three weeks here to float around and I'm working on a couple of extra options to fill that time without burning through my last cent on hotels and pensions; there are few alburgues here in Portugal..but you know what they do have? The Bombeiros Volunteer Fire Departments where you can stay for free. I stayed in one the other night...got to sleep in a dorm room above all the firetrucks. My little friend Hank would've been all a flutter in that place.





Anyway - so there's a quick update. Over the next couple of days I should have a plan worked out and I'll fill you in. Lots of love to everyone.

Thanks Everyone....

Thank you, all of you who sent me birthday wishes...it was really sweet and super welcomed this morning as I'm sitting here in a public library in Ponte de Lima, Portugal.



I've been in Portugal for two days now and am so far enjoying this country quite a bit, despite having absolutely no way to communicate with any ease at all. I keep finding myself slipping into Spanish, which people don't fully seem to mind, but I would much rather garble Portuguese. And yes, it's similiar...but it's not similiar in the way that say American and British English is similiar, you know? They are entirely different languages and my comprehension level has dropped down to nearly nil.

I will say though, that I find it a lovely language to listen to...softer than Spanish in many ways. But... I just don't think I'm gonna get much of anywhere with it in the short time that I'll be here.

In case you're curious -- I had a wonderful birthday - it was full of magic and grace and fun.

It didn't start out that way as I had to leave very early from the alburgue in Pontevedra to catch the train to Tui. There was only one leaving that morning (a Saturday) at 7:00am. The woman at the ticket booth was only mildly helpful that early in the morning, but I got my ticket and then immediately screwed up by getting it validated in the machine. But instead of punching my ticket, the machine sucked it up, leaving me standing there, with that "well that was stupid" look on my face.

Then I realized I was in Spain, not in France and that perhaps you didn't validate your ticket that way. Regardless, I had 4 minutes to catch my train and I needed to purchase another ticket. So I went back to the lady, explained what I did...she actually rolled her eyes at my stupidity, as if it would cost her an extra 3.15€, and slipped me another ticket just as the train was being called. I made it.

Had to transfer in Redondela, where another non-helpful attendant told me to listen to the announcement instead of just telling me what track I needed to be on. I tried to explain that I couldn't always understand the announcement, but that wasn't really his concern. Thankfully, there was a nice guy standing there and let me know where I needed to be, as he was heading the same direction.

I made it to Tui (it's funny...what would've taken me three days walking took me about 25 minutes by train) just as the sun was rising and, shaking off the whole train experience, got a tea, found out where downtown was and headed off.



There's a bridge, called the Puente International, that separates Spain and Portugal. It's not overtly flashly or symbolic, but it had a fine footpath and as I walked across the Minho River, the Cathedrals on either side of the water chimed out the hour. On the Spain side, it was turning ten o:clock, and where I was heading, the bells tolled out the earlier hour of 9. It was good I was gaining and hour, as I was getting a pretty late start and still had 20 kilometers to walk.

I made my way easily through the city of Valenca and suddenly I was back in the lovely eucalyptus trees, heading further south.

I don't have a lot of time left on the computer, but I can tell you that I received a Mars bar from a group of British Columbians I ran into.








Two lovely men, a retired opera singer from Hamburg and his Galician partner, are in the habit of inviting pilgrims into their home for refreshments and I was the lucky recipient that day. Sitting by their pool, overlooking the Minho valley and having Nestea and German cookies.




I arrived at the alburgue in San Roque around 5:00, and was greeted by three Brazilian pilgrims who had just cooked a meal and invited me to join them. The food was good and ample and although they didn't speak English (Jose spoke very little), we had a lovely time. Later, I was talking to their friend Valter and he was asking me where I was born...I told him that I was born on "this day" near San Francisco and his face lit up and he grabbed my hand and led me back into the dining room where he excitedly told Jose, and his wife Maria, that it was my birthday. Whereupon they leaped up and sang me the most rousing version of Happy Birthday I've ever heard...with clapping! Then they all hugged me and it was all very festive and sweet.



Turns out we were the only four people in the alburgue that night, so we got to spread out. And there was a nice courtyard and a lovely night sky for me to sleep under the stars. So...in all, it was a truly lovely way to begin my forty-third year.

And now I'm here, taking a kind of undeserved rest day...but this town has a great deal of historical signifigance and I wanted to take some time to enjoy it. Also, there is a three-star hotel here that offers pension prices to pilgrims and I wanted to take advantage of that.

Plus, tomorrow's stage is a full 33 kilometers. That's a very long day on the road, and I wanted to be rested for it as I'll likley be walking nearly ten hours tomorrow.

So...there you go. That's the news...I'll try to talk to you again in a couple of days when I reach the great city of Porto.

Much love, thanks again for all your birthday wishes, I'm sure they helped make that day really special for me.