Kicked out

After our first Pueblo Ingles week we headed south to an area that we thought would hold great promise for us called the Alpujarras. In fact, several Pueblo Ingles participants had even suggested that we check out this region as one which might meet many of our criteria. The Alpujarras region is a series of valleys on the south side of the Sierra Nevada range, which is home to the highest mountain peak in Spain, the Mulhacen. The valleys in this region are dotted with small, white villages (pueblos blancos) which are huddled together to protect from the cold winters and painted white to reflect the extreme heat of the summer sun. One village in particular was well-known as being a bit of a haven for alternative expats and our HelpX resource listed dozens of hosts looking for assistance.

We chose a host who offered good food and comfortable, separate accommodation(at least that's what the reviewers said) in this "hippy" white village surrounded by mountains. Upon arrival, our Indian (by way of England) host served us a lovely Indian food lunch and we discussed the importance of "open and honest" communication in order for our host/helper arrangement to work out. She also asked whether we had liability insurance as we would be responsible for paying for any damage we incurred. This was a bit of a surprise as we had not encountered this sort of attitude or comment from any prior hosts. Furthermore, that evening she asked to have our passports so that she would have some "collateral" in the event that any tools go "walkies" (which apparently happened with a new weed-wacker). Aside from the fact that it is apparently illegal for a foreigner to walk around without a passport while in Spain, we were flabbergasted by the total lack of trust.

The next day, we started work on a difficult job doing traditional mud plastering over stone walls. Her generally crotchety husband did all of the training, but he barely spoke any English, so she did the translating and when they disagreed we had to wait for them to work things out. It was extremely hot in this part of Spain in late September but we were working inside a shed so we had some shade. We stopped work to have lunch, which was one and a half white bread sandwiches with a thin layer of tomato, a thick layer of mayo and one slice of meat and some potato chips. At one point during the work day, Michiel asked if we could have a snack of some fruit. She hesitated and said, "well, I guess you haven't had any time to go to town to buy and snacks so I suppose I could give you something" before bringing us some sugary biscuits.

Traditional mud plastering involves flinging trowel-fulls of sand and cement at a wall.


On the third day, the hard work, white bread sandwiches, grumpy interactions with the husband, no-snack policy and the total lack of trust ("you did lock the gate, didn't you?"..."why didn't you put the tools away during lunch. I told you to do that, didn't I?") forced us to test out her desire to have "open and honest communications". We told her that we were very uncomfortable with having our passports taken from us and that every other host had provided us with sufficient food to get through the day. She was pretty taken aback and claimed that none of her other volunteers ever complained about these things. In fact, there was another volunteer (a young British guy) who had no complaints about anything (not surprising, really, as most Brits are not comfortable with confrontation or complaining in person).

We finished our conversation, went to our room and 15 minutes later were visited by her with the message that "we just don't have enough time to sit around and talk about these issues, so we think it would be best if you leave." We were relieved that they had forced our hand and made the decision for us. We had spent both evenings discussing whether we should move on but hadn't made the decision to do so, now we had to get on the phone and make some calls to other hosts.

Luckily, we had already contacted a lady in the next town over and she was able to take us a week and a half early. Even more fortunately, we had decided in our 3 days in this alternative town, that we didn't like the feel of it at all.

The town - it looks nice enough, but we didn't take any photos of the dumpster-divers or the raggedy, skeletal and unwashed people.

English Village

For three weeks in the last couple of months, we have been volunteering for a company called Pueblo Ingles ("English Village" or English Billage, as pronounced by Spaniards). Amongst other services, the company puts on 8 day English immersion programs for Spanish-speaking adults. Most of the Spaniards attend the program at the recommendation of and paid for by their companies. Others choose to attend the training for new job opportunities or general interest. We, the Anglos, volunteer to live in this village and speak only English with the participants. In each program, there are about 21 Spaniards and 21 Anglos from all over the world. After a telephone interview, Michiel's English was deemed native-level and he was permitted to attend as an Anglo.

The backbone of the program are the one-to-one sessions. For the majority of the day, a Spaniard is paired up with a different Anglo for a 50 minute session of conversation. The Anglos are not necessarily teachers, so the discussions are just that - discussions on any and all topics (though we were counselled in advance that we might wish to stay away from potentially inflammable topics like bullfighting and the Civil War). In between one-to-one sessions, the Spaniards are required to give two different 5-minute presentations and participate in two different conference calls with Anglos role-playing business scenarios (sales meetings, team strategy sessions, etc.). We also have group activities involving games, theatre, presentations by Anglos, parties and drinking.

Normal people volunteer for only one one-week session per year, but we participated in three programs. After a tremendous first experience, we were asked back by the company to do two back-to-back programs as they were having difficulties finding Anglos to participate and we are conveniently located in Spain.

We've attended the program in two different locations - once in a restored, formerly abandoned village in the north-central part of the country. It was a very special experience because there were no outside distractions - no mobile phone coverage, no television signal and very few other people around. The feeling in this place was truly one of an English village.

Valdelavilla





The other location was in a spa resort, which was surrounded by mountains and the charming little town of La Alberca. The benefit of the location was that we had the possibility of walking to a shop or pharmacy, but the downside of outside distractions (other hotel guests, traffic, constant mobile phone calls, televisions, email access via iPhones and Blackberries, etc.) far outweighed the benefits.

Town of La Alberca




Tasting ham (jamon) and cheese in a bodega



Side trip to the Pena de Francia





Not only have we gotten to know over 60 Spanish people, we've also had the opportunity to get lots of information about possible "perfect places" to live. During each program, I have given a presentation on what we're doing (our volunteer placements) and have given our audience a list of criteria that we are looking for in a perfect place. Without fail, the Spaniards are at first confused and then blown away but what we're doing. Spanish people are not accustomed to moving and it is difficult for them to leave the town in which they grew up much less move to another country. They are generally quite conservative and not willing to live somewhere where they cannot eat their beloved ham. This lack of adventurous spirit is a bit of a concern for us and the more time we spend meeting Spaniards, even from the most open-minded region of Spain, Madrid, the more we think that we might find it very challenging to find a place that meets our most important criteria of a diverse and open-minded community. So, though the Spaniards we've met are some of the kindest, most generous and fun-loving people we've come across anywhere, we are, at times, put off by their inflexibility and lack of curiosity with regards to food and culture. It is not an exaggeration to say that we've seen grown men nearly come to fisticuffs over whether sweet red peppers are an acceptable ingredient in paella.

That said, if we conform ourselves to their customs, we are fully embraced and can have (and HAVE had) wonderful experiences. We've laughed and cried with them and some of them have become good friends. And every so often, one of them completely blows US away with his or her openness, friendship, generosity and humor. This is why we returned to Pueblo Ingles three times and why, though we are still not completely convinced that Spain is the right place for us, we continue to look for our perfect place...and now, we have a handful of new options to investigate.

Fun in Madrid

We left the nuthouse for three days of playing tourist in Madrid. We were unimpressed by our first impressions. In almost every Spanish city, the late nineties and early 2000’s brought an enormous building frenzy. Immigrants and the newly wealthy middle-class provided a ready market for the greedy building developers who went absolutely gangbusters with ugly and sprawling housing developments (urbanizaciones) ringing the cities. As you enter a Spanish city by car or bus, you find it hard to imagine that there are quaint old quarters or barrios and tasteful, beautiful architecture. This is certainly true of Madrid, which has sprawled outward in all directions for at least an hour.

Upon arrival at our hotel, Mom and I chatted on Yahoo Messenger and my reply to her question, “How’s Madrid? I’ve heard it’s beautiful” was “Hmmm. You heard wrong. It’s sprawling and unattractive.” I feel guilty about bad-mouthing Madrid, because after 4 days (on two separate visits), I am really fond of the city. The city center is chock-full of gorgeous buildings, plazas with elaborate fountains, lots of green park space and one of the cleanest and cheapest metro systems I’ve ever seen.

It’s a big city and exploring it on foot is quite a distance workout, but the streets are a delight to walk down (with the major exception of the fact that it was INCREDIBLY hot!) because of the profusion of attractive buildings and tree-lined promenades. I decided that Madrid seemed like a very livable city, albeit a bit expensive (especially compared to the rest of Spain). We have since been told that there’s a real problem with smog and theft, but that hasn’t diminished our enthusiasm for it (as a major city, anyway.)

We saw much in our time there so I’ll just mention the highlights, all of which were totally free!

The Prado Museum free hours – even though the place was packed, we enjoyed the fact that we had from 6 to 8 pm to roam the collection for free.

The cathedral with its Africanesque ceiling and its modern stained glass designs

The Royal Palace on the left and the Cathedral on the right


The rain forest growing inside the Atocha train station


The 1920’s era buildings, gates and fountains along the Gran Via – especially at night

The Bank of Spain


Puerta de Alcala


Buen Retiro and West parks

The architecture exhibit at the Caixa Forum

Walking around the different neighborhoods, from the hip Huerta area to the swanky Salamanca barrio



The Plaza Mayor



Of course, we did get a rather warped view of the city as it absolutely empties during the month of August. Many of the restaurants were closed for summer vacations and apparently, the traffic was reduced to nothing (at least that's what our Spanish friends said...we thought there was still plenty of car activity).

Family Affairs

As I mentioned in the last posting (before Michiel’s shameless plug for birthday wishes for me), our fourth volunteer gig was at a Bed and Breakfast in the center of the country. In Spain, rural guesthouses are known as “Casa Rurales” and are often very charming and restored old homes that may or may not serve breakfast as part of the price of lodging.

We travelled from Asturias by bus and crossed over the Cantabrian mountain range, which made for a tremendously gorgeous trip until we hit the high plateau that makes up the bulk of Spain’s interior. This hot and dusty plain is almost completely devoid of people as Spaniards have traditionally chosen to live in town groups where there was water. The rural farmhouse is not a phenomenon that is known anywhere else but Galicia (in the northwest) and Andalucia (in the south). For purposes of water, companionship and shelter from the roaring winter winds, much of the rural dwellers in the center of Spain live in small, sad-looking towns dotting the map. These towns have become all but abandoned as the young figure out that life is far more interesting in the city and never return to their village. As you drive through these small outposts, you see only some old people sitting on a lawn chair next to their front door; underfed, barking dogs and some cats.

In between these fountains of joy are dry fields of sunflowers. Spaniards are crazy about sunflower seeds. They bring their own bags of them – roasted and salted – to the terraces of their local bar and make piles of shells under their tables. It made perfect sense to us to see all these fields after our encounters with sunflower chomping enthusiasts.

To add to our increasing sense of entering the desert, the mild Asturian temperatures gave way to the blazing hot climes of central Spain that we had been trying to avoid. We arrived in our town with temps over 90 F (32C) and discovered that there was no one to pick us up. We had arrived late and we later learned that our hostess didn’t have a car. The taxi drivers refused to drive us to our destination but with our less-than-stellar Spanish, we weren’t exactly sure why. A friendly on-looker told us how to walk to our destination, “at the end of this block go up and keep going up" (“arriba, arriba, arriba!”). Damn! We aren’t exactly travelling light but we had no other option so we got on the big packs, strapped the day packs to our front side and hobbled up the ridiculously steep slope.

The height of the B&B above the not-so-attractive town was a definite plus later, but at that moment, I cursed every step. We eventually found our hostess and from that first moment discovered what she was like. The words spewed forth like a fire hydrant (which was lucky since I could barely breathe from the hill-climb and the heat), “I was so worried. I called my friend the bar owner to come look for you. I called my friend the shop owner to fetch you, but you’re so late,” etc, etc.

The talking didn’t stop all evening, nor did the name-dropping (“my friend, the ambassador/minister of” such-and so or “my bosom pal, the owner of a very successful company”) or the topic-jumping. It was tiring for me but utterly exhausting for Michiel, whose motto is "speech is silver and silence is golden". In fact, the talking didn’t stop at all during those two weeks, whether she was talking about how advanced the Chinese are or how great the Lebanese cuisine is (“far superior to modern Israeli cuisine, which has just stolen Lebanese dishes”) or how much better men are than women in spatial orientation or how those poor Kurds are struggling. She actually said more than once, “I downloaded Kurdistan on the internet.”

The first couple of days I was utterly irritated by her inability to listen to anyone; her insistence in swooping in on any task I was doing, taking it over for 5 minutes and then dropping it to do something else (she had the attention span of a fly); and her completely old-fashioned ideas about the roles of men and women. She seemed to only ask us questions about subjects that she wanted to talk about but never waited for our answers. After about three days of listening to her, I realized that if I just laughed at what she said, she would continue gleefully and I could manage not to go bonkers. The real turning point in my dealings with her occurred when I gained empathy for the impossible family drama occurring in her household and how devastating it was to our hostess.

We met our host’s daughter soon after arriving. She was the total opposite of her mother: gruff, unworldly, crass, chain-smoking, and shabbily dressed. She sauntered into the kitchen at 1:30 pm after just arising from bed and would plunk down at the table waiting for food. Then the yelling would start. Our host would begin with “you can’t just show up here expecting food without helping to set the table”, then the daughter would turn into Regan from the Exorcist, “why are you always #$^*&$ing on my case!” and so on. “My daughter has some mental and physical problems,” she told us later. And so it went…we had landed in the middle of a loony bin with two co-dependent family members: an adult daughter with no ability to control herself (including a suspected drinking problem) and a completely resentful mother who'd lost two husbands and now put aside all her dreams in order to "care for" this ungrateful and belligerent daughter.

Michiel did his best to keep his head down, work hard (especially if it meant picking and eating mulberries) and not be in the house. Since I was expected to be a “daughter of the house” (which is exactly how my duties were described to me in advance), I couldn’t escape. I was responsible for serving breakfast to guests (the daughter was conveniently sleeping when they were around) and cleaning rooms, as well as some cooking and other tidying up tasks.

We survived it by reminding ourselves that our situation could make good fodder for a future book. Furthermore, along this journey we've come to grips with the fact that even bad situations have good aspects - in this case, international cuisine, great location and whole wheat bread with sesame seeds (you scoff, but it is nearly impossible to find good bread in Spain). We even got some interesting advice from our host about possible places to search for a place to live. The question for us is always whether the good aspects outweigh the bad and whether we have other options in an area we want to explore. Sometimes schedules (the hosts' or ours) and money concerns simply don't allow for us to move on as soon as we'd like. It's character building (and we always have the blog to vent!)

Calderillo (pork stew) Fiesta


One of the oldest bullrings in Spain. We opted not to attend a bullfight, though I was sort of interested. We were advised that the amateurs in this town would make it more of a bloody mess than an artistic pursuit



Inside the bullring


View of/from the city's old walls



View from the Bed and Breakfast

Sheri's birthday!

Hi everyone,

I am shamefully going to abuse our blog to remind you all that tomorrow (Sept 6) is Sheri's 41st birthday. Her e-mail address is still the same (smbluest at yahoo.com) and I am sure that she would appreciate birthday wishes from her blog readers.
Many thanks in advance.

Michiel

Sheri trying to look angelic in the light of the stained glass of the Madrid Cathedral

Getting out in the middle of Spain

We left our new friends with hugs and kisses (the traditionally Spanish kiss on each cheek) for parts further south. This time, our host was someone we found using a different website, www.workaway.co.uk. This website is very similar to HelpX.net, but has volunteer opportunities of a different nature like working in Bed and Breakfasts, campsites or rental homes; taking care of children; and caring for horses. We chose our next host mostly because of the location of her Bed and Breakfast and partly because we hoped that we would have nice accommodations :)

Our host was a sixty-something year old Englishwoman (well, Welsh, actually) who was a two time widow and a long-term (24 years) resident of Spain. When I wrote to her, she told me that her location in a small mountain range about 40 minutes away from Salamanca would be a perfect place for us to consider for relocation. We were very eager to go to this part of Spain as Michiel's dad was very enthusiastic about Salamanca and we knew that we would be able to have some great outings. We did, in fact, have terrific outings. Since it's been such a long time since our last posting, I'll make this one short and allow the photos to do most of the talking.

Included in this posting are photos of Salamanca and Candelario, a small, "white village" in the hills of the Sierra de Bejar range, which was a 50 minute hike from our Bed and Breakfast. We hiked there at least 3 times as we were really enchanted with the look and feel of the village. We even attended a re-creation of a traditional wedding, complete with procession from the groom's house, to the groom's parent's house to the bride's house and finally to the church for the ceremony. At each stop, the wedding party (and the tourists) were treated to aguardiente (otherwise known as moonshine or firewater) and almond cookies. They needed the fortification as their costumes were made from black felt, velvet and fur and it was probably at least 90 degrees F (32 C).

We were so enchanted with the town that we enquired at the visitor center about other foreigners living in the area. The slightly surprised worker at the Visitor's Center replied, "I think there's one English woman teaching at the institute" (in Spanish, of course). This wasn't a problem per se, but we had already talked to our host about living in Candelario and she told us that she had been equally charmed by it, but her husband at the time talked her out it because of its remote location and, more importantly, its closed attitude to strangers of any kind. In fact, though there were plenty of tourists around, we felt a bit like we we had crashed a private party.

As for the town we were staying in, though our host was eager to extol the virtues of her chosen home (plentiful and clean water, less hot than the south of the country, low crime rate, understandable Spanish spoken (this is a real issue) and close to Salamanca), we weren't at all impressed. It was run down, full of graffiti, unattractive and way past its heyday when it was one of the richest towns in Spain due to its many woolen mills (all currently closed and many turned into supermarkets). She did have a beautiful spot high up on the hill with great sunsets and sweeping views of the rolling hills and mountains beyond and we loved sitting on her upper deck, eating dinner and watching the sunset as the temperatures dropped to a comfortable 75 degrees (24 C).

Luckily, we had all this to keep us sane in an otherwise sort of insane family situation, which I'll write about in the next posting....stay tuned....

Candelario:

The view of the town from the trail



Street scene



One of the churches



The groom's house



A young guest



The bride



Toasting with aguardiente



Candelario house



SALAMANCA





The Plaza Mayor



The University - these tourists are trying to ensure marriage within one year by finding a frog sculpted into the facade





Central Spain is known for its ham (jamon iberico) and boy are they crazy about it. In the meat and veg market:



Hervas: a mountain town recommended to us by our host as a possible place of interest. It's known for its Jewish settlement

A Breath of Fresh Air

After our dispiriting second host experience, we braced ourselves for all of the possible things that could be difficult in location number three. Our third hosts were a Spanish family (husband, wife and two children 7 and 3) who spoke very little English. The experience was a bit like an immersion Spanish language course, only we didn’t pay for it and didn’t get formal language lessons. We chose this particular host because we wanted to stay in the north of Spain during the heat of late July (good thing, too…as the rest of Spain experienced a heat wave while we enjoyed temperatures in the high seventies (22 and 23 degrees) and there weren’t many other options in the region. We were starting to rule out Asturias as the perfect place for us – too damp and rainy and very dreary in the winter, furthermore, if we lived here, we would have to drive 5 hours to Madrid to get a can of coconut milk to make Thai food. That’s just criminal. We learned that for most of Spain, actually, the concept of ethnic cuisine consists of Italian pizza places, Turkish kebab shops and an occasional Chinese restaurant. We’re hopeful that the south of Spain will have more Moroccan-influenced cuisine.

But I digress…coolness won over cuisine (free idea for a band name: Coolness over Cuisine) and we stayed in the north for three weeks. What a wonderful thing that we did so, as our hosts were exceptional! We really clicked with them – especially the husband, J, who, though he spoke almost no English, made us feel as if we were kindred spirits. He is the same age as us and is a former professional bicyclist for the Spanish team. He retired after lots of injuries and now works the organic farm, cooks, cares for the kids and manages any volunteers who might be around. His wife, S, is a school teacher and educator of special needs and disadvantaged adults who want to learn about eco-farming. The beautiful children, 3 and 7 years old, were on summer holiday, so we saw a lot of them and we eventually became an accepted part of the family.

Our accommodations were in a separate wood house with a bedroom, kitchen, dining area, bathroom, and even its own strawberry patch! It was wonderful to finally have some privacy again. This was their original home for the first five years in the small town on the eastern coast of Asturias. Their current home was perched high on a hill just 10 minutes walk to an excellent beach. When it wasn’t stormy or too cool, we (Michiel, especially) truly enjoyed the waves, as well as the beauty of the surrounding natural reserve. Michiel had the added thrill (scare?) of being a part of a life-saving rescue of a teenager who couldn’t swim into shore.

Almost all of the land just meters away from the coastline was devoted to growing corn and the primary structure of the town is a cattle-feed processing facility, which also served as the location of the local cooperative store (shopping was for members, only…a strange and difficult arrangement for the many tourists who stayed in the town for its famous beach). There was almost nothing to do in town except go to the beach and I use the term “town” lightly, as it was really just a strip of cornfields, homes, a couple of hotels, a train station and a church. The beauty of the place was the ocean, the green of the fields and the people we met while staying there.

The town as viewed from a nearby hill


Cornfields and coastline


Our hosts provided us with yogurt, cheese, vegetables, fresh eggs and homemade bread for snacking or dining in our own little house (casita). They even brought over wine and beer in case we needed “aperitifs” before the 10 pm (or later) evening meal. We also enjoyed the benefits of the daily bread delivery and twice weekly fish delivery to the front door of the main house!

The casita - our home!


Not only were our hosts ridiculously generous and accommodating, they introduced us to their family members and friends, as well. J made sure that we understood what was going on in the rapid-fire Spanish conversations by distilling it down to the gist and using simple language. We also met the three expats who lived in the town (one Swiss who discovered the town while walking the Camino de Santiago and an Italian couple). The Swiss woman seemed to enjoy socializing with all the Helpers who came through and she invited us to join her for fiestas, trips to the beach and local highlights and to listen to traditional Asturian music with gaitas (bagpipes) and accordions. It was great to have a guide who could answer our questions in English and help decipher some of the puzzlements of living in a different culture.

We worked from 9 to 2 on Monday through Friday and a couple of hours on Saturday morning. Our work was either on their property – picking and shelling peas, cleaning onions or sorting potatoes for sale, weeding or cleaning leeks, or working in the greenhouse pruning tomatoes or planting basil for pesto, which the 3 year old had become addicted to thanks to their Italian neighbors – or on the farm belonging to J’s parents, who lived just down the road. (He had grown up here.) They had a much larger piece of land with rows and rows of potatoes and fava beans growing aside cornstalks. Much of our time on that property was spent winding the beans around the cornstalks which was seen as less time-consuming than putting up strings and wires (we’re not so sure).



In this part of the garden, they decided to use strings for the beans


Putting in an "aromatic (herb) garden". That's the main house in the background and the ocean beyond


My favorite day was spent with the whole family harvesting potatoes. On that day, cousins, dad, a friend and our host family all gathered to walk behind the tractor and collect the potatoes that were “kicked” up by the bouncing rake (for lack of a more technical term). The work was hard on the back, but the spirit of community and laughter made it really enjoyable. I also got to drive the old tractor, which made it all especially fun!



Afterwards, we enjoyed beer and homemade chorizo (as a matter of fact, beer, wine and cider were regular lunchtime staples, much to Michiel’s delight). It’s really nice how families gather and drink together. We enjoyed the same phenomenon at our first Spanish fiesta.

Almost every day on the calendar is a festival day for some Catholic saint in Spain. If the church in your town has a relic (a piece of clothing or a body part) of the saint being celebrated on that calendar date, the town organizes a fiesta. The fiesta normally starts around 9 pm and will always have a stage and ridiculously huge stacks of speakers so that the people in the next town over can “enjoy” the music, as well. There will also be a mobile trailer that has been converted into a fold-out shop with loads of sweets and junk toys. The guys who run and own these must make a killing in summertime! Finally, there will be a bar of some kind.

The fiesta we went to was located in the little town where J’s sister lives. The evening started with families gathering at their own folding tables in the town plaza and enjoying big bread rolls filled with chorizo, cheese and sauce. These were provided by the fiesta organizers, along with crates of cider and bottles of red wine. The best part of the whole experience was watching the older folks in their folding chairs tagging swigs off of a bottle of red wine and passing it around. It was good fun getting sloshed with J’s dad, who didn’t really realize or care that we didn’t speak as much Spanish as he thought.

We didn’t go on too many outings as we really enjoyed just hanging out in our own little house, but we did spend a day in the Galician port town of Ribadeo, where we sampled the local specialty – pulpo (octopus), which was surprisingly tender and learned first-hand that, indeed, every province of Spain has its own fierce pride and sometimes its own language (indeed, Asturias has its own language, as well, which is enjoying a resurgence of interest in schools). Even though Ribadeo is just over the provincial border, the people here speak Gallego, which is a completely different language than Castillian Spanish. It’s the biggest reason why we chose not to consider living in Galicia, despite hearing about its greenness, beauty and affordability.

Ribadeo's Harbor


Downtown Ribadeo


So…was this the perfect place? We were awfully sad to leave our remarkable host and the couple of friends we made. We were even more sad to leave our comfy little house and the 10 minute walk to the beach, but truthfully, we couldn’t see living in such a small town with such limited transportation connections. For me, a discussion with a friend of our hosts clinched the deal. While cutting my hair (she did it for free and did a good job, too!), she told me how depressed she gets in the fall and winter because of the grayness, dampness and the lack of light. Hmmm…..sounds a lot like the reason we don’t stay in Alaska or Amsterdam in the winter. We decided to move on…

Leeks, leeks and more leeks

Alternative title: How to survive a host who can’t stand you

Our second host’s location was in a more industrial part of Asturias near the coast. Our arrival was a dispiriting one as we left the beautiful Picos mountains and drove past ugly old factories and belching smokestacks. The town had grown in size recently and housing developments had crawled up the hill from the town center to the hill where our host lived on her family’s property.

Nevertheless, we arrived full of high expectations. Our host was running a market garden and was preparing weekly boxes of organic produce for 21 customers. The reviews from other volunteers on the HelpX website were very positive and mentioned fun trips to the beach and the host’s good humor and sweetness. We hoped to learn some of the best methods to maximize harvests without using pesticides. We asked to arrive a few days earlier than planned as we soon discovered that our original plan of taking 5 days off between hosts would become quickly financially untenable - even the cheapest of hostals (small, independent hotels) were over 50 euro per night and campgrounds were often far from bus stops and supermarkets.

We arrived on a Friday and didn’t know that the volunteers did no work on Saturday and Sunday. We did, however, join the other volunteer after lunch for a couple of hours of weeding as a show of good work ethic. The other volunteer had been there a week and seemed to have a good relationship with the host. We, on the other hand, got absolutely no explanation of how things worked or any sort of a welcome at all. Perhaps we should have seen this as a sign of worse things to come.

Our living quarters - a converted horreo or granary


Common dining area and our host's bedroom (she slept on some blankets thrown over a camping mat and some wooden pallets!


We were quite surprised to see how young our host was and over the next two weeks felt the full consequences of dealing with an immature and undeveloped manager, communicator and coordinator. At first, Michiel and I were unsure if we had done something wrong, misinterpreted the situation, or were experiencing cultural differences. We found her to be self-absorbed, unfriendly (to us, anyway) and inconsiderate (we had to ask for toilet paper for 2 days before we got any, luckily we have learned that while traveling it is always handy to carry some in every one of your trousers), and we discussed early on whether the situation was too intolerable to stay. The success of her garden and some of the techniques she used were compelling enough for us to stick around. From day 2, she made it clear that she didn’t care for us by saying as little as possible to us when we were not working and providing only the barest of instruction and explanation. Questions about why she was using certain rotation techniques were met with responses like, “I follow that book. You should read it”….which happened to be in Spanish and she knew that our Spanish wasn’t very good. She didn’t care for comments like “Why do you do it this way?”. Either she thought we were judging her or she didn’t have the energy or desire to explain her methods to us.

It could very well have been that she was tired (who wouldn't be after trying to sleep on wooden pallets???!!). She had hosted over 300 volunteers in the past 4 years and it was clear to us that she had lost any sort of interest in being a real “host”. She provided little to no instruction, no follow up on our progress, very little encouragement and simple one or two word answers to our questions.

Things got even worse during a tour of the fields when I said, “we ate battered comfrey leaves at our last host’s made with eggs and flour.” She blanched and said, “you do realize that this is a totally vegan household? It was on the website.” I had read so many HelpX host descriptions that I completely forgot which was which. Somehow in our excitement in working in an organic market garden, we conveniently forgot that her household was run on a strict no alcohol, no meat, no caffeine and no dairy policy and furthermore, she had no refrigerator. She looked annoyed, but it was only a couple of days later when she actually asked us, “Do you eat meat?” We weren’t the only ones who said “yes”. The other volunteer also answered truthfully….”um, yeah”. In fact much of the conversations between the three of us in the evening in our little dormitory (we slept in a converted granary that is common on Asturian properties) had to do with food and what we were missing in our diets. We snuck out on Day 2 to eat cheese; the other volunteer went to town almost every evening for an ice cream. On Day 3, we giddily slurped down a bottle of wine with lunch in town. It was unavoidable, really, since all set menu lunches (which is the most economical way to eat) come complete with a bottle of young Rioja. We simply didn’t want to waste anything.

Since I’m on the topic of day menus, I want to wax poetic for a moment about what you can get for 8 to 12 euros per person in the set menus (menu del dia) that are available at all Spanish restaurants. All include at least a salad course, a main course, a bottle of wine or cider, fizzy water, bread and dessert. Some even include a small appetizer. It’s a great way to try out lots of different food for a very reasonable price. Since lunch is the biggest meal of the day, this bonanza feast is a great way to get into the spirit of Spain, especially since a bottle of wine at 2 pm is enough to get almost anyone ready for a siesta. Sadly, it’s really hard to take a siesta in the middle of a city when your bed is a 25 minute walk back uphill, but the parks are usually empty from about 3 to 4 when everyone else is comfortably snoozing at home.

The old part of the city of Aviles


We returned from our excursions to town slightly tipsy and full of the dreaded dairy products (mmmm…..sheep cheese or pizza) that our host wouldn’t allow in her kitchen and crawled into bed early in preparation for the pre-dawn start. The work day was 6 hours and we agreed as a group that we would work from 7 to 11 am and then another two hours from 3 to 5 pm. It made for a long day, especially since the work was occasionally rather strenuous. Our host didn’t believe in using machinery (are you getting the trend?), so all of the garden beds were dug and turned by hand. We also did a lot of wheelbarrow ferrying of mulch and manure from one lot to the other. In addition to lots of weeding and mulching (application of dried grasses on the beds to retain moisture and stop weeds from growing), removal of aphids by hand, planting of beans and basil, and harvesting of strawberries (we weren’t trusted to harvest anything else), our primary task during week two was replanting 2,500 leeks. This was just the beginning of the host’s gargantuan task of replanting 10,000 leeks over the week(s) to come. We were leaving just in time. The replanting work was tedious, backbreaking and boring and it served as an unpleasant reminder to me of how many of our meals were based around leeks.

Leeks!


Our host cooked many of the lunches for us, but agreeing on eating times was a real problem as she didn’t really eat breakfast and, like most (all?) Spaniards found it inconceivable to eat lunch before 2 pm. After a bit of a confrontation, we all came to an agreement that we would eat at 12:30, though she made a point of telling us she wasn’t hungry when we sat down to eat. Prior to the confrontation, this issue was mistake number 3, where Michiel and I attempted to take our hunger into our own hands and start to prepare lunch at 11:15. Doing such manual labor required more than a bowl of oatmeal at 6:30 am to last us until 1 pm. Though our host had no problem, I was constantly hungry and found the vegan diet completely incapable of satisfying my hunger. I became totally obsessed with food and the fact that we were not permitted to self-harvest or eat self-purchased fish or dairy items in the kitchen made me totally insane. We were only permitted to eat items from the garden that our host put in the kitchen for our use with the exception of currants and arugula, which we could harvest ourselves. These were mostly surplus or unsellable vegetables. For snacking, there was beyond-prime fruit given to the host by the organic shop and white bread and, of course, our own supplemented purchases of nuts, dried fruit and muesli bars. Michiel seemed to do just fine, but for him, it was a bit of an interesting experiment. I had done vegetarian for 16 years and had troubles with my energy levels and blood sugar. I knew it didn’t work for me, but hoped that a new attempt with a new chef (not me) would succeed where I had failed. I’ll give credit where credit due , our host was good with a pressure cooker and beans and lentils, and she did come up with different ways of cooking the same old ingredients.

The market garden was really a family home plus two separate lots, each with their own greenhouse and rows and rows of vegetables. The host’s mother and sister lived in the house and it was clear that the mother didn’t care for us either, which made the place feel quite like a prison compound, complete with iron bar fencing and barking dogs.

One of the greenhouses


Beans


Panorama of one of the garden lots


We gritted our teeth, made the most of our location to do a bit of sightseeing in the city we were in and in nearby Gijon, as well as the beach town of Salinas, lost some weight and vowed to be far more selective in choosing future hosts. On our last day, our host drove all of the volunteers to the bus station and she made a big deal of repeating to the other woman that she was welcome to return any time. We took note of the absence of a similar invitation when she thanked us and sent us on our way.

Gijon


Traditional folk musicians performing for a wedding party...notice the wooden shoes!


Needless to say, this wasn’t the perfect host, the perfect place, nor the perfect vocation – organic market gardening is hard work and the profits are small to non-existent. During this stint we thought back with increasing fondness to our first (quirky) host and appreciated the freedom we had experienced, his incredible generosity and the creative living-off-the-land skills he taught us. We wondered if we would change our opinion of this host during our future HelpX assignments as well (hint: NOPE!) We hoped for better things ahead.