KG & Coco B go to Europe: Part 3, WWOOFing

"We live in the big building, also known as 'castle,'" read an
email we received from the Franciscan Milieuproject a couple months before pulling up to the large building in Stoutenberg, the Netherlands. For the next week, Corey and
I would be "working" here in exchange for our room and board. We found the site
through an organization called WWOOF, World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, and after scoping out farms in Slovenia, Belgium, Croatia, and the Netherlands, we chose this one. Turns out we were their first WWOOFers--fitting since this was our first WWOOF experience,
too.

Not knowing what exactly to expect, we were warmly welcomed by Carolien on Sunday evening after a long day of traveling. She poured us some fresh tomato soup for dinner and gave us the "quick tour." "If Marco was showing you around, it would take at least two hours," she told us. There are 6 people who live at Castle Stoutenberg throughout the year: Carolien, Marco, Guy, Cocky, and two Afghani refugees, Nadar and Shojan. Unfortunately, we didn't get to know Cocky and Guy very well, as they left for holiday shortly after we arrived. In addition, there was also another WWOOFer who showed up on Sunday--a Berkley grad who had been living in Belgium and Holland for the past year.

We started the week on Monday morning, getting up at the 7:15 bell and meeting outside for morning meditation at 7:30. Each day went, more or less, like this:

7:30 Morning meditation
8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Work
10:30 Coffee break
11:00 Work
1:00 Lunch
2:00 Siesta
3:00 Coffee/tea break
3:30 Work
5:00 Free time (i.e., cleaning up)
5:30 Silent meditation
6:00 Dinner
9:30 Evening meditation

Work consisted of weeding, planting, weeding, harvesting, weeding, digging, weeding, cleaning, and some more weeding. The garden was fairly large, and they had help from various local volunteers throughout the week. They used the produce to feed themselves and other visiting groups, and anything that was left over was canned or frozen for use in the winter. We became very familiar with a certain invasive weed called heermoes. After a while, we started having contests on who could pull out the longest root. I usually won, with the longest stretching just over 2 feet (though, apparently, they can grow up to 3 meters!). During our week's stay, we harvested asparagus (white and green), strawberries, mustard greens, rhubarb (though Corey would hate to admit it), and various herbs.

Andre and Danielle were right about the weather. It was sunny about 5 minutes of each day. But, since the ingredients were fresh and prepared with such love and care, the food was delicious. Everything was vegetarian--no problem for me, but by the end of the week, Corey was craving some meat. One meal that stands out was an asparagus soup. I have no idea what Carolien put in it--aside from asparagus--but it was absolutely scrumptious. For breakfast and lunch, we generally ate lots of whole-grain bread with a plethora of spreads, schmears, and cheeses. One Dutch favorite is something called Hagelslag, i.e., chocolate sprinkles, which they put on bread and crackers, often on a layer of butter, peanut butter, or honey. It was a little odd, but I couldn't argue with chocolate for breakfast...

Another thing we enjoyed was the scheduled coffee breaks. Despite the feeling that we weren't accomplishing much in the garden by being interrupted by these breaks, we grew to appreciate them. We often had cookies of some kind during the morning break--anise, speculose, stroopwafels, and even chocolate chips. I developed a slight addiction to the stroopwafels, a sort of waffle sandwhich cookie with a gooey, caramel-like substance in the middle. It was a special treat finding them at the market in Utrecht, fresh off the iron.

On Thursday, Corey and I were assigned to cook dinner. Marco joked that we could make anything--even order pizza. Instead, we just decided to make it. Corey and I had brought some wild rice with us from MN as a gift, but decided it would be better if we incorporated this into our meal, playing off of one of our favorite pizzas in Minneapolis, "The Paul Bunyan" from Galactic Pizza. Our version consisted of tomato sauce, mushrooms, onions, arugula, cheese, and, of course, the wild rice. Corey used the other half of the wild rice in a rice salad. Pressed for time (dinner is at 6 sharp--I felt a little bit like we were in Top Chef or something), Corey had the ingenious idea to make lettuce wraps with the wild rice salad, instead of doing two salads altogether. Somewhere in there, Corey also found time to make an apple crisp using muesli for the "crisp." Everything turned out splendidly. They were intrigued by the wraps, and there was only a couple slices of pizza left!

KG & Coco B go to Europe: Part 2, Brussels

The train to Brussels took 8 hours. And that was the "fast" train. However, when we weren't sleeping (or when Corey wasn't skunking me in cribbage), we got to see a great deal of beautiful countryside.

Within 15 minutes of arriving in Brussels, Corey made a very astute observations: "The Belgians are fashion-autistic." Ties with polo-shirts, stripes and polk-a-dots, suspenders with capris, combat boots and dogs--these are only a few of the odd fashion "statements" we witnessed.

We took the subway from the Gare du Midi to our hostel, Sleep Well, of which I was rather apprehensive. Having never stayed in a hostel, I had visions of dirty, cheep motels where young people liked to party. Fortunately, my fears were settled when we checked in to a private room with its own bath. The view was a little sketch, and a Mariachi band was staying next door to us, but asisde from that, everything was clean and neat.

After a meat-laden Flemish dinner, Corey and I met his friend who was stuying abroad in Brussels. She took us to a place called Coasters, one of the few places in the beer-guzzling country where one could find mixed drinks. After a delicious margarita, we moved on to a classy bar known for dancing on tables. (No worries, there were no poles and there was a dress code to get in.) Corey's friend explained that there always seemed to be one nerdy kid who stood up on the table first and then everyone joined in. Wearing our Tom's shoes, we busted our moves while being careful not to fall.

The next day was spent eating Belgian Waffles for breakfast; awing over the ornate architecture and beautiful flowers of the Grand Place--the only truly clean part of Brussels; munching on Earl Grey cookies for mid-morning snack; tricking our eyes ("trompe d'oeil," en francais) at the Magritte Museum; dining on the rooftop of the Musical Instruments Museum for lunch; siestaing in the park; walking past the European Parliment (to say we'd been there); and indulging in a few beers at various pubs throughout the day. Brussels in a day can wear a person out. Despite our fatigue, visiting the Delerium bar was an absolute must. Corey dragged me there after dinner, and I'm very glad he did, as it's one of my favorite beers. We ended up getting a "boot" of beer for about the same price as one glass in the US!

The next day, Sunday, was our journey to the farm. We had train tickets from Brussels to Amsterdam, but there was no time or train reservation. We showed up to the station just before noon--after a prolonged breakfast at a cafe where I ended up translating for a group of British girls--only to find out that the next train didn't leave until 2:30. So, we killed time writing postcards and munching on Belgian chocolate. When the train showed up, we asked the conductor where we were to sit. "This is not your train," he told us. "This is fast train. You pay more money if you take this train." After this huge debaucle at the station, we finally found the correct train and made it to Amersfoort by 5:30.

The farm we were working on was just outside of Amersfoort near the small village of Stoutenberg. We called a taxi and pulled up to the castle, feeling excited and relieved to finally be at our destination.

KG and Coco B go to Europe: Part 1

On Monday morning, May 31, Corey and I left for our grand European adventure. We flew from MSP to ORD to JFK to MXP (Milan, IT), where we took a train to Cagnes sur Mer, a town on the Mediterranian just between Antibes and Nice. However, upon arriving at Malpensa International Airport, we waited for our luggage at the carrosel until we realized the inevitable: it was not coming. This wasn't too surprising, as we had had bad weather in Chicago causing us to barely make our flight to Milan. Nonetheless, we were assured in New York that our luggage would make it. But, as was now evident, it didn't. We went to the desk and gave the lady our information. She said she could send it to the airport in Nice the following day. Happy to be traveling light and with the promise of eventual luggage, we continued our trip.

After nearly 36 hours of travel, we were greeted at the Cagnes sur Mer train station by my "French father," Andre. (Andre and Danielle were my homestay parents when I went to France in high school.) We drove up the narrow street to their house in Haute de Cagnes, a 300-year old house just a hop, skip, and jump away from an old castle. Your average American car would never make it up there. I'd be hardpressed (note, the computer from which I´m typing this does not have a hyphen...) to fit the Prius through the roads, which, not to mention, are NOT oneway. The house and living quarters were nearly as narrow as the street. Corey and I stayed in the house Andre grew up in just across the way from where he and Danielle currently live.

Over the course of our three days with A&D, we ate many a delicious meal on their terrace overlooking the Mediterranean, browsed through the old market in Nice, meandered around Monte Carlo, set sail to the island where the Man in the Iron Mask was imprisoned, gawked at ginormous yachts (including that of Microsoft's Steve Jobs), and took in the generous pace of life in Souther France. A&D's generous hospitality and fine cooking was greatly appreciated.

On Thursday, the day before our departure for Belgium, we were getting nervous about our luggage... No one had called us yet, and Andre spent an hour on the phone trying to track it down. On our way to the nice Nice airport, we received a call saying our luggage would be in later that day. We turned around and returned later in the day when they had told us, but no one in baggage services had any idea what we were talking about. Numerous phone calls and several minutes of heated banter, tout en francais, led to a man (we have no idea who he was or why he had our bags, as he wasn't even affiliated with the airlines) bringing us our bags on a trolly. We didn't even care because we finally had clean clothing and Andre had his ''Big Ass Red'' wine from my dad. Turns out our bags had traveled even further than us, flying from Milan to Paris before coming to Nice. Oy vey!

It was hard to leave the beautiful Cote d'Azur where ''the sun shines all year.'' Even A&D told us ''You don't want to go to the Netherlands. They don't have good food, they don't have good weather...'' But, we had a train to catch to Brussels where we would spend a couple days before our week on a farm in Holland.

Leave your comments. Love to hear from you! And check back tomorrow for stories from bustling Brussels...

Peace, love, and Mediterranean sunshine,
Kels and Corey