My Octoberfest

Even though I did not make it to Munich I still got the chance to sit around a big wood table and drink tall beers with Germans, German farmers that is...
After Ute my host picked me up at the train station she drove me to the farm located in Weitsche about 20 minutes away.  This is a tiny village in northwest Germany between Hanover and Berlin. All I wanted to do when I got there was to eat some dinner and shower and go to bed. But that was not the case... 
The first monday of the month my hosts Ute and Marcel have the entire village over for drinks to talk about farming and whatnot.  When I got to the house they showed me to my fantastically beautiful apartment that I would have all to myself and I dropped off my luggage and went back over to the main house for dinner.  Dinner was a slice of homemade bread with a liver/sausage spread. Then I was ushered to the main table with 8 German farmers (yup that was the entire village)around it drinking beer.  I was given a beer, which was home brewed by Ute and was introduced to everyone at the table and by the time the last person said their name I couldn't remember anyones.  I just sat there with my beer and tried to follow the conversation...it went something like this- wah wah wah blah blah yada yada yada but with a German accent of course.  My main concern was to not look too loopy at the table and make it through with out falling asleep.   One hour in and I am nursing my beer when Elisabeth a horse farmer (exact translation) comes in with a bottle of Kalishnakov vodka, yes Kalishnakov, and shot glasses are passed out.  Now I am hoping just not to throw up again.  I tried saying no then only a little but she had just become a grandmother and this was the sort of thing you could not get out of.  So we all held up our glasses and toasted 'To the baby's pee'!! That was the translation they gave me when I asked;)  We toasted a couple more times and after my second beer people finally decided it was time to go.  During this time I had noticed that the farmers were making tally marks on their coasters of the beers they had had and at the end of the night they all paid up--€1.50 (thats euros) each to Marcel and Ute-I couldn't believe it--I started wondering if I had any money in my pocket and when I didn't (Czech crowns don't count) I asked my host if I needed to pay right now if I should run back to my luggage they said no it was ok and not to worry about it-whew! what a relief!   I finally could go to bed and asked what time I should be up in the morning...7:30am for breakfast...My apartment had a living room, full kitchen, upstairs loft bedroom and a tv/vcr/dvd player and a stereo!! I could not believe it --it was so nice!! I went over to the stereo to check out the cds and found some were in English, so as I unpacked and got settled I got to rock out to Foreigner and Cheaptrick!!
Boy it was hard to get up in the morning...but I was back in their dinning room at 7:30am for breakfast
which was a coffee and a slice of bread with jam and or meat spread then off to the garden for potato harvesting.  I harvested around 100 kilos of potatoes that day.   Big ones, little ones, ones that looked like fingers and purple ones, so many potatoes.  My first day I was working in the garden from 8am until 2...no breaks --wasn't sure what to do.Towards one o'clock I am just wondering where my hosts are and if they even do lunch in this country?! Was it ever going to come?...Finally after 2 one of their sons came to call me into lunch---which thankfully was a tasty hot meal and not bread.  After lunch I was so tired and since thank goodness my 5 hours were up I went back to my place and just passed out on the couch listening to more 80's music.  It is dark and I am hungry again and wondering what time dinner might be and what do I do if it doesn't happen.  I had one piece of chocolate with me and the kitchen in my apt was empty save for chamomile tea and a bowl of sugar and a mini fridge of their home brew beers which seemed definitely not for me to drink.  So 5 cups of tea a one chocolate piece later I am starting to get a bit desperate.  20:30 (8:30pm) and I get a knock on my door that dinner is ready-YIPPPEE!!! Dinner was a slice or two of cold bread with jam and meatspread...
On the third day of this I asked if it was a standard German tradition to have only one big meal of the day and they said yes.  Great, that explains America's weight problem...all those hot meals...;( I dreamed of IN'N OUTthat night.
And so it goes and so it went for 3 and a half weeks.    Not a lot of conversation happened...they would speak in German at the table and and English to me only if I asked a question.  They had another visiter from Gambia (West Africa) Mulawi, who was 27 and spoke a little English and not much German, but a fair amount of Spanish.  But he was quiet at the table except for a few comments in Spanish.    So we just sat in silence waiting for the meal to be over and we were allowed to leave the table. 
The weather was pretty chilly around the 40'sF during the day and 30 degrees F at night.  I got in a few 3mile runs with some fantastic looks of shock from the locals as I would run past in my soccer shorts and i-pod beenie.  But mostly I just watched movies and read after my hours of work were done--Ute had a great collection of fantasy and sci-fi books and a fair amount were in English.  I got hooked on the Seeker series but unfortunetly she only had the first 3 in English which I blew through in about 6 days and the rest were in German so I am looking forward to an American library when I get home so I can finish the series. 
The nearest towns were about 10k away and me and Mulawi biked out there.  The ride was crazy because there was not really a speed limit and it was a country road with no lanes and no shoulder.  So we froze a bit on the ride but once we got to Luchow the town we had a great time. We walked around and went into the supermarkets and just looked at all the cool stuff.  When we were walking he asked me how old I was and then when I told him he asked if I had any kids or was married.  When I said no but I that I had a dog he thought that was hilarious!  He treated me to a box of chocolate covered biscuits and an espresso before we biked back.  He kept riding in the middle of the road and would not get over when cars were coming...he was gaurding me from the cars and then when sometimes I was just not paying attention or whatever and would ride in the gravel or grass slope area he asked me if I wanted him to ride on that side so I would not fall down--very sweet but I thought he was going to be squished in the road.
The end of the second week was the time for making apple juice.  It was really cool to see how it was done, but so cold.  We set up the contraption in a barn attached to the main house.  The contraption consists of a metal table with a apple pulverizer on one side and a press on the other with a huge bin underneath that the apple pulp would fall into.  The press was made up of wooden frames and a thick meshed cloth and you would place the mesh cloth in a frame and add apple pulp and fold up the corners and then repeat with the other frames until you were stacked all the way up and then you would ues a jack and squeeze the juice from the frames that would then drain out a tube and into a bucket.  We pasturized the juice as well in big pots.  It smelled wonderfull and I got to drink a lot of fresh juice. 
My towards the end of my stay one of the local farmers needed workers to sort rocks from his potatoes as they were being harvested.  He was paying 5€ an hour and at first Malawi was only asked but since I was in the room I said I would be up for some paid work.  The farmer, Vulker, picked up me and Malawi the next day it did not rain in the morning which was a few days later.  I worked about 4 hours in the morning already and my host said it was fine that I could go with Vulker but that I would be hungry since I could not take a lunch with me but that he would do a hot meal for dinner instead for us when we got back.  I had no idea about the work required, I even thought it would be inside.  We drove to a field where we got on the back of a harvester pulled by a tractor.  We were on either side of a huge conveyor belt.  Our job was to pull off the stones as my employer calls them, as fast as we could as the belt moved by and dump the rocks in a shoot to a waste bin below.  I was given yellow kitchen gloves and we set off.  Imagine the 'I LOVE LUCY' episode at the chocolate factory but with rocks and potatoes on a very bumpy orange harvester.  It was crazy! The belt was moving so fast and there were so many rocks.  And they were pretty rocks, bright reds, yellows and oranges.  They said they were fire stones, I think flint.  I would sometimes get so distracted looking at the rocks that I would forget to pick them up when they were in front of me so I had to lean farther down the belt to get the ones I missed.  It was so cold just standing there without moving your body save for your hands and arms.  Those kitchen gloves were not helping and before long I could not feel my hands.  Then it started to hail on us, we all stopped and ran for shelter under the tractor until it passed then went back to work.  The best part of the day was when 2 hours into it Vulker's wife Ulka showed up with hot caraffes of tea and sandwiches and even pastry!!! I did not have to go without lunch! We worked until 6pm when it got dark and even got to finish off the tea and food left from lunch on our way home--wonderful.  The next day I noticed my pointer fingers were swollen and hurt to touch them, I thought I had just bashed them on the rocks a bit since they were frozen all day-boy was I wrong.  I worked for Vulker for a total of 5 days 6-7 hours each day, ate great food and saw a lot of rocks and potatoes--it was cold and hard but great!  He also invited me to dinner to cook for me a local traditional meal.  Ulka served boiled peeled potatoes, cooked cabbabe, meatballs wrapped in cabbage leaves and gravy with a German white wine.  We had a great time and conversation.  The next night on my last day of work and my last night there he took me back to his house so I could experience his favorite German meal, potato pancakes with applesauce on top sprinkled with sugar--they were amazing.
Ulka even drove me to the train station the next morning!! THANK YOU VULKER & ULKA!!
Cheers!
check out some pics...Pictures of Germany