Auf wiedersehen, Deutschland and Buongiorno, Italia!

We left Schnepfendorf this morning and are on our way to Venice! The morning was a little stressful because the German regional train conductors union chose today to go on strike! So we had to wait a while for a train back to Munich and were a little worried that we'd be stuck for another day or so, but it all worked out fine. We got to Munich in plenty of time for our 1:30 train to Italy.

This train ride is great, we're really enjoying it. We're on one of those trains with individual seating compartments (you know, a Hogwarts train!) and riding straight through the Austrian Alps. It's pretty magical.

Yesterday we went with Tobi to the butcher where we processed (for lack of a better word) an entire cow. It took all day to go from the cow just quartered to dozens of sealed packages of all different meats. Sorry it sounds a bit gross, we weren't sure we wanted to go except that Tobi needed the help, but it was actually a very interesting experience. The butcher, William, just has a small shop and all of his meat is organic. He was very nice and it really was amazing to watch him work. Butchers have to be such knowledgeable anatomists! I wonder whether a butcher knows an animal's anatomy and physiology better than a veterinarian. We saw all of the huge ribs and bones and not a bit of the cow was wasted, except for some pure fat. We even got to help making wursts which really felt like being part of a German tradition.

Leaving the farm was a little bit sad this morning. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone and think that we may not see them again, though hopefully we'll stay in touch. And we are excited to move onto a new place - it's hard to believe we've been in Germany for almost a month already! We just heard our first announcement in Italian; we must be getting closer! It is SO different from German, it will be fun to be surrounded by a completely different language for the next month. We have some fun plans for our time here, and thank you to the lovely Juliana for sending some great recommendations!

In other news, we heard from a woman named Anna in Sicily who would like us to house-sit for a couple of weeks in January while she's on vacation in Australia! We're definitely planning to do that!

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Home alone for the weekend!

Lots of things to talk about and we can finally do it because Tobi, Susi, and the kids are away for the weekend visiting Grandma in Munich so we have the house (and computer) to ourselves! Very nice. We've done a bunch of laundry and got to sleep inside for once! We also spent several hours this morning trying to upload at least some of our photos but finally gave up. This computer is way too slow, it was going at a rate of 15 minutes per picture and we just couldn't wait. Hopefully we'll find some other opportunity to do that. Tobi and Susi said that we could have whatever we wanted to eat from their kitchen or the store. So, faced with an entire store filled with fresh produce and organic goodness all for the taking, we chose to have canned ravioli for dinner. At least it was organic.

We only had to do potatoes that one day last week and we were surprised that we weren't too sore afterwards, though we found out that between the two of us and Tobi we harvested a little over 3,000 pounds of potatoes in one day! The rest of the week we harvested some leeks, picked tomatoes, and learned how to feed the pigs. We really like the pigs. We also played soccer since, naturally, they have a soccer field in the backyard. One of our very favorite chores this past week has been catching runaway chickens and returning them to their coop. They somehow manage to get out no matter how much fencing is put up, there is one orange one that gets out almost every day and it's great chasing it around the yard. We actually just saw it walk past the window so when we're done writing this we have to go catch it again.

We have figured out a lot more of our itinerary for the next few weeks. We plan to leave here on Friday and go to Venice for about a week, then to Rome for 10 days before our next farm in Tuscany. Exciting!

Before we leave here, we have to cook one dinner for the family and we still haven't figured out what to do. We are open to suggestions! Something "American" that's easy to do.

There are some interesting things that are different here compared to how they are at home. The fridge for instance is the same size as a normal college dorm room fridge and it's for a family of 5. There's no freezer or microwave, and you have to pour the water out of the dryer after every cycle. They use a broom, not a vacuum (that seems to be just a toy for the kids, they like to suction it to their skin) and the milk and eggs are not refrigerated, though the cheese is. They also have a very interesting system for strengthening the local economies in small towns that is too complicated to explain here but that seems like a good idea. On the other hand, some things are the same, most notably the constant soundtrack of Beatles music and the radio playing almost exclusively American pop music (the first song played at Oktoberfest was Gwen Stefani's Sweet Escape).

We're off to chase the chicken now, hopefully we'll be able to post one more time this week, otherwise auf wiedersehn/arrivederci until Italia!