A traditional swiss house. Zoom out once and you see it’s sat amongst the trees and a beautiful garden. Zoom out further and you see the deer that roam in the field next to it, the sheep, the ducks, the geese and the chickens. Zoom out again and you see the hill it’s perched just below the brow of. Zoom out yet again and you see the farm that’s just up the dirt track from the house, and the village that’s around the corner. This is where I’ve lived for the past 2 weeks. Alone, with an 88 year old Czech lady called Eva. I’ve been on a workaway, which means I work for around 5 hours each day in exchange for free food and accommodation. It’s been a really interesting time, in a lot of ways.
The Work
The work I did was mostly dealing with the animals (cleaning, feeding and putting them away at night), and the garden (planting, weeding and mowing). I learnt a lot. It’s been a long time since I’d done any gardening, and I realised I do really enjoy planting seeds, watering them and watching them germinate and sprout. Transferring them from the little pot in the greenhouse to the soil in the vegetable garden. I also found my favourite gardening task - cutting down weeds. One morning Eva told me she’d like me to cut down the nettles in the deer enclosure and other places around the garden. I imagined this would be using a petrol strimmer or something. Of course not. It was using a scythe (a literal grim reaper scythe). Eva told me she had brought it with her when she moved from Prague in 1969, so it was definitely a lot older than I was. She showed me how to use it and it seemed very simple. I tried it myself on the nettles and it was indeed very simple. And very satisfying. And hard enough work that you felt good and like you’d done exercise, but not too hard that you got tired after a few hours. I really enjoyed it and decided that when I have a garden that requires a similar treatment, I’d get a scythe rather than a strimmer. I did, however, wake the next morning with blisters on my hands, which was a first for me. There were some jobs that I enjoyed infinitely less however, namely one involving the chickens. Please see the food post about chicken to read more… I also had my first near death experience on this workaway. If you asked me to predict when I’d be in a dangerous situation before I left I would not have guessed driving to pick up some stale bread in Switzerland, but there we are. It was a 30 minute drive to the bakery and Eva wanted me to find the directions. I used google maps and saw that there was a toll, I mentioned it to Eva and she said she didn’t know what it was, but we’ll see. We set off, Eva is not a very good driver, but she is 88 so that is to be expected. After about 15 minutes we see a sign for the autobahn, Eva exclaims that we mustn’t go on the autobahn as she hasn’t paid. I now realise that this is what the toll was obviously for, and Eva perhaps hadn’t understood what toll meant, but I did think to myself that this bit of information would’ve been good to know before. She asks me to find a different route, I can’t really explain to her that I can’t because I have no data, but then I remember I have maps.me downloaded for the area so I use this to find a route avoiding tolls. It takes us through the city of Bern, I think because we were already a bit in it ready to get on the autobahn. Eva wasn’t happy about this and her driving got even worse, we were clipping curbs with every corner, I had to keep a constant eye out for cyclists so I could shout a warning as she kept drifting across the lanes. It culminated when we almost crashed into 2 cars on a roundabout. I could see it happening so managed to wave my arms enough to make Eva stop and swerve to the side. I stayed very calm to help Eva who I could tell was not happy. Eventually we made it to the bakery. Nine huge sacks of stale bread (which I found out was for giving to the animals) loaded into the car and we made a slightly less stressful drive back. I stopped asking Eva for lifts after this, hence the switch to the electric bike! The opposite of death is of course life, which offers a perfect segway into perhaps my favourite thing about this week: the birth of a new lamb! I went to check on the sheep one morning and saw there was a new addition that had clearly just been born (I had to pull the rest of the gunk out of the ewe). I was the first person to see the new lamb, pretty cool!
The Food
The food I was rewarded with after the work was always delicious, and there was always a lot of it. We had some traditional swiss dishes: fondue, raclette (my favourite) and rosti. We also had some traditional czech dishes, all involving egg and potatoes and all surprisingly delicious. Eva also made cakes and jams for after lunch snacks. I’ve never been so aggressively encouraged to eat in my life. Every meal Eva would cook enough for, I’d say, 4 people, and insist that I finish it. And then insist I have cake afterwards. Luckily I was always quite hungry after working in the garden, but I still never finished what she prepared. One lovely thing was that the milk we drank came straight from the cows of the farm up the track. Nice, fresh, unpasteurised milk that I’d leave an empty canister on a hook outside the barn for, and collect it a few hours later, with it magically having been filled.
A little something different
One evening Eva and I went to a concert. It was a saxophone, a cello and an accordion playing in a local church not too far away. It was really wonderful - they played both traditional music and then more experimental pieces, using other parts of the instrument to make wave like sounds in one of the pieces. We both really enjoyed it and spoke about music on the way home.
The Reality
When I called a friend one evening and recalled some of the craziness, I realised how this fortnight has given me some pretty great stories to tell. And honestly, that’s why I’m travelling, to have some weird experiences and to have some fun stories to tell. To live an interesting life. These stories are likely to be the main memories from this experience that last the tests of time. But they are the lesser component of my two weeks. I spent this time mostly alone. I saw Eva for meals, and some of the people in the village every few days, but beyond that I worked alone, I relaxed in the evenings alone, I felt alone. I spent two weeks inside my own head, exasperated by the menial tasks I was often doing. For a lot of that time I also felt lonely. I still hadn’t settled into travelling again, and I was plagued by doubts. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken a year out? Maybe 6 months travelling would’ve been enough? Maybe I’d miss my friends and my family too much? Maybe my relationships with people at home would be weakened by me not being there for so long? Maybe I should be spending a year off doing something more productive for my career? Maybe I should be travelling quickly, staying only in hostels and socialising more? The doubts sat heavy in my stomach (probably another reason I could never finish the food Eva prepared!). But I would ask myself: do you want to go home? And my gut would scream no! So I’d ask myself instead: do you want to move to the next place? And I’d feel relief in that idea. So that’s something! But I didn’t leave early, I stayed for the two weeks. I had a feeling it would do me a lot of good. And, now I’m leaving, I can see that it has. I worked out some things, and most importantly, my mindset for this trip has settled. I now know what this year is for me, and it’s not comparable to a few months travelling, more like living abroad crossed with travelling. I’m also really proud that I was able to do two weeks alone! And I do feel better for it, I feel very refreshed. A lot of people I spoke to about travelling alone would tell me that they could never do it, that they didn’t do anything by themselves. I get it. But I do think that most people would enjoy doing something alone every now and then, and everyone would benefit from it. Maybe take this as a sign to go out for dinner by yourself - if I can do two weeks, you can do two hours!
Overall…
To summarise, I had an interesting two weeks. It had moments of extreme craziness and I’ve made memories that I’m sure will stand out even at the end of this year. But the rest of the time was often lonely. I think I’d have preferred to this two week stint later in the year, after I’d spent a lot of time in hostels and needed a break from all of the socialising. But Switzerland is located where it’s located, and I think it might actually have been very beneficial to do this so early on. I’ve definitely settled back into travelling now. But I am very happy to be on rejoining civilisation this evening!
Little update: I safely arrived in Munich last night, immediately made lots of hostel friends and didn’t go to bed until 6:30am (wild I know…), so definitely not feeling lonely anymore!
