Help! In Germany

Amt Neuhaus, Germany

Authenticity. Something you don't necessarily get too much of as a tourist. The hotel, shop and tour staff you encounter may appear nice but at the end of the day they have to be to get your business. Likewise with many tourist attractions - setup for tourists but not always very real. When you're travelling for longer this gets to you I find, and you crave real places, real life and encounters with real people. 

So after a fair bit of searching on the web I find myself in rural Germany - former East Germany to be precise, staying in a very run down farmhouse on a smallholding with a couple in their late 30's. It's very authentic, but in this case turns out to be not very pleasant.

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I'm here through a scheme called Help Exchange - where you work a few hours each day in exchange for board and keep, and then have time to explore the local area and get to know the locals in your spare time. I've done it before in New Zealand and it worked out brilliantly, staying in a nice beachside house with a lovely couple. Unfortunately here it's not quite the same experience.

I respect that everyone's different. People have different perceptions of what's normal and what matters in life so I hate sounding critical here, I'm just saying what I see. They are both nice enough people, who care deeply about animals and environment and try and live as simply and self-sufficiently as possible. Qualities that are admirable since our modern lifestyles are often wasteful, unsustainable and based on exploiting the third world. I try to minimise my impact on the world but don't come anywhere close to these guys. 

Before they bought this place they spent years travelling themselves, she living in a old van selling jewellery and leatherwork she made. He around Brazil mostly. They are hippies through and through, and have a lifestyle that suits them but wouldn't suit the wider world. But instead of them being relaxed as you'd imagine, this is a world of a thousand rules, tensions, and living in filth as you'll see...

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In the house: they pile up dirty plates on a shelf and wash them every three days, there's no fridge as apparently the cellar keeps food cool enough (11º vs 3º fridge, I think not), and they (not I) use tea bags two or three times. You eat bread off a small chopping board that just gets brushed off every time but not washed. The cat walks all over worktop, bread board and table and eats scraps from the sink. You each have your own tea mug that gets rinsed each time but washed every few days.

They (and therefore we) don't eat much meat cause they don't like commercial meat practices, there's no proper hot water - to have a shower you ask two hours in advance so they can turn the boiler on. Electric and water use is kept to a minimum, including the shower. The kitchen sink has no cold water as such, you use the adjacent bathroom, and the animals food buckets get mixed with water there, from the hot water tap, which is usually cold. 

Chickens wander in and out of the kitchen, and the geese wander and mess right outside the backdoor, which gets carried in. Floors are also all covered in mud and the only rooms you remove your shoes and wellys are the lounge and bedrooms. Only the lounge and their bedroom have heating, which doesn't get turned on much, and my bedroom was therefore pretty cold. They collect the waste water from the washing machine in a container, then carry with a bucket to flush the toilet. 

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It's OK to sit in the lounge in the daytime but not the evening. You can only use the Wifi in the evening. You can only use plates and food from certain cupboards. They only cook for you once a day, and you make your own eve meal from a handful of ingredients. The food is as basic as can be and prepared on dirty surfaces with food from a dirty cellar. 

Then there's outside which is totally inefficient. The horses don't eat from a feeder - you place planks of wood around a round bale tied in with ratchet straps which need to be tightened every day. The horse fences need to be checked every day as they sometimes break. The animals water comes from a well into a dustbin - the pump is carried out and plugged in each time - you then fill the horse and geese troughs using a watering can. The round hay bales for horses are stored behind a van that you have to push out the way, then back every time as it's got a flat battery. The wheelbarrow has a puncture and needs pumping up twice a day.

It's just a madhouse. 

I feel like a snob to criticise them, sympathise that they don't earn much which makes things hard, and respect the way they want to be self-sufficient which is honorable. They have a big task to renovate the place and few resources to hand. But you also need to clean, live healthily and have some degree of comfort, and that should come before everything else. Basically here it's camping, but in a house.

Everyone is different, you have to respect that. It's interesting to see it, but you don't have to embrace it. So I escaped. 

The kitchen at Hippie hell

Day by day...

 

Monday
Christer kindly drops me at the ferry in Trellaborg, Sweden and I have a smooth crossing to Sassnitz, Germany. I get a train 3 hrs south and 'Helga' lets call her, picks me up from the station - her friend drives as her car has broken down. I'm given a tour of the place. A few small sausages, spaghetti salad, bread and half a potato for tea. 

I meet Niv, a 27 year old Israely guy also staying there. He's a top bloke and is my allie through this experience. He hates it is well but is both more tolerant than me, and broke so can't leave until his flight home. 

Tuesday
Everyone gets up late so can't start work til 10am. Collect and chop wood, peel windfall peaches for freezing. Scrape flaking old paint off ceilings and walls in the cellar (aka the fridge), with just a couple of dust sheets covering all the fresh food. Hmmm.

After work, borrow a bike to explore. Buy loads of junk food from a supermarket as an antidote for the frugal blandness we're given at the house. 

Get home and 'Franz', lets call him, directs anger towards me that a horse is missing and the geese have no food. It's their animals and they've told me nothing about them. Very weird. I look outside anyway and horses are there, and geese have food from earlier. Very weird. He later apologises and says it was a misunderstanding. 

Wednesday
9am people seem to roll out of bed. We finish cleaning out the cellar (aka fridge) - we remove three huge buckets of paint scrapings, dust, dirt and rubbish. From the area most of the food is stored I hasten to add. Wanting to do the job properly, I ask if we can mop the floor and she agrees. I joke the floor might go from brown dirt back to the actual red of the brick - 'don't worry too much about that' she says. Hmmmm.

PM - we knock down an internal wall in the barn, takings care not to damage the original mud bricks as he wants to reuse them. On a good note, with Franz being a carpenter it was interesting to watch him building a doorway with some of the huge timber beams in a traditional style. 

Borrowed a bike... not allowed to use his one now, have to use an old 80's road bike stuck in one gear. Nice ride to the Elbe river - the former border between East and West Germany and see a sign marking this. On the journey I decide that's it, I have to get out of this place. I agreed to stay a week, but two days is too long. 

Niv and I cook eggs on toast again - the only proper ingredients available. I'm then determined to plan my exit.  Except the Internet isn't working. 

Thursday
Awake at 7. Get the Internet working and try to work out where to go, and how to go. Trying to do all this on my tiny phone screen drives me mad. Eventually at 11, I hand them a bottle of wine, say thanks but this isn't for me, and walk. It's a four mile walk to the train station with my rucksack, but she wasn't offering a lift, and just imagine the tension sitting beside her if she did! 

It was sunny, though cool and the walk was good. Cleared my mind, gave me a plan for the next step, and tested my walking shoes and rucksack which are ace. Get on the next train heading for Frankfurt - financial centre of Europe and a total contrast to hippie hell.