Couchsurfing

I'm now celebrating four months of staying abroad without paying for accommodation. What does it mean? Is couchsurfing a magical thing you just have to discover and then start roaming the world for free?

Couchsurfing.
It's sleeping on the bare floor, on a mattress on the floor, in a double bed, single bed, in the same bed with strangers. It's sleeping in a hammock, in a one-person sofa-chair, not sleeping all night and going on until the night after. Sometimes it's even sleeping on the piece of furniture the website gets its name from - a couch.

It's sleeping in a squat, in a 20 square meter attic, in a family home. Sleeping in a shared apartment of 6 flatmates, in regular shared apartments, in a tent. It's sleeping in a villa with a seaview, having your host leave keys for you when they're out of town and lend you their bed without even meeting you in person.

It's going on a fishing trip, going climbing, hiking, biking. Going to parties in houses of strangers, bar-hopping, swimming, running. It's spending 9 hours in the streets of an unknown city with two big backpacks, waiting for your host to get home from work and welcome you, with a home-cooked dinner, a bottle of wine and lots of love and support.

It's eating frozen pizza for 3 days, not eating at all, eating only beer, coffee and cigarettes. It's eating gourmet meals, eating in local street-food places that no tourist has ever set foot in, eating bread with nothing on it. It's always being out of clean clothes, wearing the same shirt 2,3,5 days in a row. Lowering your hygienic standards to "showering every third day isn't that bad, right?" And "these socks still smell almost decent! Time to wear them again".

It's meeting friends for life, meeting friends for two days, talking about everything in the world, being awkwardly silent, being sad, happy, stupid and embarrassing. Talking in different languages, hearing different languages, meeting people who speak 5 languages fluently and envying them. It's envying your hosts for their lifestyle, for their home and stability, and having them envy you for your lack of home.

It's meeting kind, huge-hearted souls, angry souls, souls that had been hurt. It's leaving a place with a broken heart, breaking other hearts, crying on the train from one place to another, crying in bed (or on the floor for that matter), feeling like life will not be able to continue correctly once you leave a certain person, it's wanting so badly to leave a host/place but staying for lack of an alternative.

It's learning how to cook a new dish and ridiculous food combos you would have never thought of eating. It's learning guitar, learning a song in a foreign language, learning a foreign language. Learning how to ride public transport for free and how to escape when you're caught, how to deal best with the local cops, how to sneak into a museum, how to get free food, free drinks, free smoke, a free car-ride, motorcycle-ride, a free bicycle.

It's being tired and unsure, going to a place without knowing where you'll spend the night, being tired, tired, tired, tired, never sleeping enough, never eating enough, it's sleeping too much and waiting in your sleeping bag with your eyes open for your host to wake up, it's eating and drinking too much and feeling like a bloated zombie the next morning.

It's sharing thoughts and philosophies, having a whole conversation about how to grow tomatoes, about the secret meaning of some song lyrics, about conspiracy theories, about Southpark. It's saying you definitely surely do not want to  talk about politics, then talking about politics for two hours. It's watching prejudice and stigma shatter into pieces on the floor while understanding we are all EXACTLY the same, realizing anybody who thinks otherwise is crazy, not using the word crazy anymore because it's not cool and insinuates you think there is a clear line between sanity and insanity.

It's having people not understand your name and stop wanting to introduce yourself by it. Or? And that's short for what..? Is it like either/or? Is it from the Bible? How is it spelled? Why do all Israeli people have one-syllable names? How should I pronounce it? Could you remind me of your name again? I'm Paolo/Giulia/Sarah/Dani/any other regular, comprehensible name.

It's making pancakes for your hosts, buying them a round of drinks, buying them a used book, bringing a bottle of wine, monster-zucchinis from the farm, home-made jam from the farm, cookies. It's hearing them say they adore gorgonzola and then fill their fridge with 2 kilos of gorgonzola just for the heck of it. It's cleaning their house, leaving it dirty, leaving a note, forgetting belongings and then have them mailed to you. It's not knowing to answer the question "what is your mailing address?".

It's being "open-minded, easy-going, active, spontaneous, always smiling!". It's spending hours searching for a host and sending out Couchrequests and then getting 10 declines, 10 fascinating invitations, 10 no-replies. Losing your wifi and hence losing your host. Calling foreign numbers from foreign numbers, calling someone who left their number in their public profile, out of desperation, crying, and instead of them judging the crying stranger that you are, hearing them say "tell me everything, I'm here to listen". It's laughing so hard and for so long you think your eyes and heart will pop out. It's experiencing such happiness and bliss and generosity you feel like you want to wrap your arms around the world and hug it.

It's hugging goodbye, shaking hands goodbye, jumping on a train yelling and waving goodbye, kissing goodbye. After goodbye, feeling relieved, homeless, lost, tired, lost, abandoned, lost, grieving for every person who added a word, a phrase, a chapter, to your book and then kept walking into the unknown, leaving you an open, ink-stained, mess of a book.
It's learning how to say goodbye and stay alive.

Ch-ch-changes

I arrived to my current farm after a full week of Couchsurfing and fun with three different hosting homes: in Milan, in a small town near Milan called Melzo and in Genova. These were 7 days of bliss, insane heat-wave in the north east of Italy and much-needed live music, drinks, middle of the night junk food (in Italy, mascarpone-filled canoli coated with pistachios is a night snack. In Israel it's more like a pack of M&Ms) and the best company I could have wished for.

True, traveling by train, bus, foot and whatnot in the middle of what felt like hell (35 degrees and terribly humid) took its toll on me, as well as searching for last-minute couches, never knowing where and with who I'll end up and sleeping on couches/folding beds/floor because it was too hot (seriously). Three pairs of my trousers had been cut to shorts by the end of that week. It was clear that I was in need of a more stable place again - where there would be a routine and I could do my laundry and sleep with actual sheets.

After taking a train to a middle-of-nowhere station somewhere near the coast of northern Italy, I took a bus which drove me 400 meters higher in altitude, hoping with all my heart that i was in the right place where my farm owner was supposed to pick me up. The night before, we spoke on the phone about how to reach the farm and it was clear at that point that I was dealing with only-Italian-speakers again. "I hope I understood what she explained to me correctly", I told the guys who I was staying with, and they helped me figure out what I should do using the broken names and bus lines I managed to understand.

Train rides to nowhere

I got picked up by a friendly, smiling man who took me yet ~100 meters more in altitude, through a one-way-two-way winding road (very common in Italy) where you have to honk the horn before every curve in order to avoid dying. When I got to the beautiful farm, a light late lunch and coffee were served to me and then the question - so shall we go outside to work?
But of course we shall! Let's ignore the fact that I'd just traveled for a bazillion hours and hadn't even put my bags in my room yet, and run out to the fields, The Sound of Music soundtrack playing in the background.

In the vegetable garden I met who would prove to be my good friend and ally - an adorable German girl who's been interning at that farm for a week and a half at the time. And so the questions began: when do they eat lunch? It varies. How many hours do you work a day? It varies. They work all the time. When do they eat dinner? Usually around 21:00, could be later. You have got to be kidding me, I smiled at the girl. You can't work outside all day and then eat dinner in the middle of the night. But that's exactly what they do, I found out later while anxiously waiting for the gong to ring, indicating dinner is ready. It was already 20:45, and I was miserably tired, hungry and disorientated. Then I was served a four-course meal I didn't know what to do with.

Picking cherries - our favourite job

It was extremely hard for me to get over my initial shyness and actually start talking. But I know for a fact she speaks Italian! Said the farmer. She spoke perfectly on the phone! (Really?). And so I sat quietly at the table, always listening, almost always feeling more lonely then ever. I don't deal well with chaos, I wanted to shout at her when she told me, after I finally managed to raise the courage to ask, that there were no defined working hours. And chaos it is: it's hot, then there's a thunderstorm. You work on something, and before finishing it are commanded to start something totally different (I will not sleep until I've finished with that asparagus field!). You eat lunch at 13:00, 14:00 or 15:00, try hopelessly to take over the hot mess of a kitchen, work until nightfall and then eat dinner at what feels like the next day already.

While crying on the phone during a precious Internet moment and having the call break again because the whole village uses one router, scratching my many mosquito bites, I suddenly got enlightened: Wwoofing is not for me anymore.
(Having said all of the above, I feel obliged to add a disclaimer stating that the family is more than nice to me, I get fed dishes that I could only dream of getting in top restaurants back home, I'm learning tons of Italian and all about even more alternative and high-end organic agriculture. All in all Wwoofing is a great thing).

So long, picturesque farmhouses

And what a hard realization that was. I, the toughest person in the world (right), am giving up? Am I a lazy loser? Am I, God forbid (take a deep breath for this one), spoiled?????????
No. Maybe. I don't really care. I'm just longing, for the first time in my life, to not work and ONLY be on vacation for a while. After congratulating myself for finally becoming a normal human being, I canceled my last farm, found two couches to cover me for at least a short while after I leave this farm and started contacting some international friends. Long story short, I'm going Couchsurfing and camping on the shore of Italy for an unknown period of time. It will be challenging, interesting, happy and sad, and I can't wait.

Then I realized another thing: for the super-anxious person I keep believing that I am, I'm not behaving all that anxiously. The previous week I even missed a train because I'd lost track of time, and didn't stress on it one bit. So it's true - I don't deal well with chaos, when other people create it for me. It's time to create my own chaos now.
And as I explained to a family how to eat the pita with hummus and shakshuka that I prepared for them - "with your hands, and get as dirty as possible".

Silence - We are living.

"A silent sister... it's a thermometer without any markings, and the doctor checks it by laying a scale up against it and draws the chart himself "
"...and he had a brilliant insight about what time actually is - nothing less than a silent sister, a column of mercury without a scale"
These are the thoughts of Hans Castorp, the main character in Thomas Mann's masterpiece The Magic Mountain (which I'm reading these days with great pleasure). One of the possible interpretations of this quote is that time is a subjective matter and all our attempts to quantify it in objective units of measurement are in fact irrelevant to the genuine human experience of it.
And oh, how relevant this philosophizing is to my current life. On the farms, one day often feels like a month in my "previous life", which at times consisted of "work > eat > sleep > repeat". I sometimes can't believe that something which had happened three hours ago did not in fact happen three days ago. I almost feel like farmers here have longer lives because of that - like their eighty-something years of life are fuller, in a way, than "normal" peoples'.

6:30 - I wake up, totally naturally, when the first rays of sun come through my window. No rooster in this farm, Grazie a Dio. I get ready for the day (3 minutes of taking off my pajamas, wearing the same work clothes as the day before and brushing my teeth) and go downstairs. I set the table for breakfast and then have a few cherished Internet moments for myself.

7:30 - everyone comes downstairs for breakfast. It's supposed to start at 7:30 but almost always somebody's late and I want to kill them. They say their prayers to thank God for the food on our plates, wishing that it will strengthen our bodies and souls, etc. It's quite a nice prayer, actually, but I can't hide my glee when they finally say "in the name of the father, the son and the holy spirit... buon appetito!". We eat.

The communal dining hall

8:30 - we start working, each in his or her field (see what I did there?). The work varies: with the animals, in one of the many gardens, in the flower nursery... today one of the girls explained to me that she was late for helping me cut the grass because she had to clean (?, It was all in Italian) the pony's genitals. She proceeded to explain something about when a male animal is alone with no females.. and that she did something with olive oil.. at which point I made it seem as if I understood absolutely nothing in order to avoid further details.

12:30 - the bell rings, we stop working and go eat lunch, at which point I'm usually famished. Italians don't snack between meals, even when spading the earth for four whole hours between breakfast and lunch. Somebody's always late and I want to kill them in even more ruthless ways than in breakfast. They pray. We eat.

14:30 - we resume work, usually finishing what we'd started in the morning. If it rains, I cut strawberries or peel nuts indoors. It usually doesn't rain, though, until the very moment I've finished working outside, or the moment my afternoon/day off begins.

17:00 - I stop working while everybody else continues. Haha (said in a Nelson-from-The-Simpson's manner of speech, while pointing at the others). I take a shower and read my book. If I have a few drops of energy left in my body and it isn't raining, a take a stroll outside.

19:30 - we eat. Somebody's always late and depending on my level of hunger, I want or don't necessarily want to kill them (lunch is quite a big meal). They pray, we eat. Three courses at least, if not four, are always served, one after the other. I usually can't handle more than two, in response to which they either mock my inferior eating abilities or feel sorry for me. "Look at the girl, she's not eating anything!", after I've had salad and a huge bowl of pasta with sauce and cheese. "She seems so pale!", when I'm visibly more brown than most of the big-eaters combined. I appreciate their concern but learned the hard way how to say "no, thank you" to an Italian cook. There's no reasonable reason to eat this much, I personally feel, and since not finishing off your plate is NOT an option here, I simply have to refuse. The mystery as to how Italians remain quite fit while eating so much (and no, they don't just "eat all the good stuff but in small quantities", but I suspect it could have something to do with their rather small breakfasts) remains unresolved to me for the moment and all I can do is envy that magical metabolism system of theirs.

20:30 - sometimes we play cards, sometimes we watch a movie. I read, write, surf the net for a short while when conditions allow it (there's only wifi on two square meters in the farmhouse, inside the communal kitchen).

22:00 - I try not to go to sleep before this hour, or else I simply sleep too much. Good night, sweet, weird, dreams, in "the pink room" with pink everything where the rocking chair seems to move on its own accord. Just sayin'.

One angle of The Pink Room

Then it struck me: I'm living in the Magic Mountain. Except for a few minor differences, like "work cure" instead of "rest cure" and no second breakfast (Germans and their breakfasts), it's exactly that. I even physically am on a (small) mountain (Ok, maybe it's more like a hill) and am constantly surrounded by clouds.

In between writing the draft for this post and publishing it, as I continued reading and without me even asking, Hans Castorp has once again answered my question:
"I've always found it odd, still do, how time seems to go slowly in a strange place at first. What I mean is, of course there's no question of me being bored here, quite the contrary... but when I look back... it seems as if I've been up here for who knows how long already, and that it's been an eternity since I first arrived... it has absolutely nothing to do with reason or with measurements of time - it's purely a matter of feeling".

I wish everybody a long life, or at least as long as they want it to feel at the very moment.

Farms (Wwoof!), what are they good for (absolutely nothing?)

An open letter to the farm rooster:

Dear Mr. Rooster,
I would like to inform you that dawn, in fact, does not break at 3am in the night, but way later in the morning.
I would therefore  appreciate it if you could delay your wake-up calls to around 6am, if not later.

Best Regards, Or (aka the underslept Wwoofer)

I arrived at a beautiful family-run farm near the city of Verona on a rainy day. After everything that could possibly go wrong, did go wrong (two train delays, bus to the wrong nowhere instead of the farm nowhere) and while heavily hungover after 4 days of partying in Florence, I thought my mood couldn't get worse. Until the confused rooster started crowing in the middle of my first night, that is, hence deepening my sleep depravation.

On my second day on the farm, still raining outside and in, I started to develop a (light, yet pretty embarrassing) medical situation which I did my best to ignore. "Tutto va bene", I kept telling myself and the family. Of course I can spade like two acres of land to create the vegetable garden. I'm happy, I'm healthy, I'm... sobbing incontrolably for no visible reason, while pulling weeds.
But I'm a Wwoofer girl, and Wwoofer girls don't cry, right? I kept suppressing both my physical and emotional feelings until, unfortunately (but luckily for me), the daughter of the family broke her toe and had to be taken to first aid. "I think I'll come with you, I might be needing a doctor myself", I told the mother, trying to avoid giving out details and/or bursting into tears. At last, I got to see a doctor. Have you ever tried explaining a weird medical situation in a foreign language? Not the easiest thing in the world but frankly, at that point, I didn't care whether the doctor spoke Italian or Swahili - he was the savior, he had the medicine, he could help me.

Days became better as my health improved. I spent loads of time in the professional kitchen, cooking and baking. Israeli? Make us Hummus, and Falafel, Pita bread would be nice too. I got used to it and am glad about how much my Hummus-making skills had improved, ironically, during my month in Italy. Wow, you're a pastry-chef as well?? Make us an endless ammound of cakes, cookies and desserts! And make I did. Even though the family only consists of four people, the teenage boy eats cakes by the pound and the others aren't that far behind, so I got used to baking family-sized goods every day.

What seemed to be missing, then? I believe that the company of people my age. After my first farm, in which I lived with only the 57 y.o. farm owner for two weeks (who is an amazing woman, by the way) in a place that was a 45 minutes walk from the nearest town that miraculously seemed to have lost all its inhabitants between ages 20 to 30, Florence was a breath of fresh air. But was it a long enough break between one secluded farm to another? When I found myself sharing my thoughts with horses, chickens and even the annoyingly-early rooster, I understood something must be wrong. I can't be talking to these animals - they only speak Italian! Wait a second...

Questions started echoing in my head: Did I make the right choice? Is this really the life for me? Maybe I should change my plans completely? Then more questions: I love having fun, visiting cities and partying but when have I done that for more than 5 days and not gotten sick of it? Also, realizing that with my current lifestyle I've been spending about 1/4 of what I used to spend back home, and since I hadn't won the lottery yet in Italy, perhaps it makes most sense to give all this another shot?

"Ciao people of Verona! I'm currently working on a farm close to the city and though it's beautiful, I am in lack of some young, fun company. If anyone would like to meet in the city center during the weekend, hit me up!"
That's the somewhat desperate post I wrote on the Verona wall on Couchsurfing. Anxiously waiting for any reply whatsoever (except for creepy guys with no references), I finally received the perfect message from a really nice girl inviting me to a party with her friends. Of course I immideately accepted and got into my (only set of) nice clothes. The party was everything I expected it to be and more, having a bonfire in the hills, then mojitos in a villa in the city, finally crashing on a very-comfortable couch and getting a ride back to the farm on a motorcycle the next morning. I felt rejuvenated, ready for another dose of farmlife, and then I realized - there's no right and wrong. The key to everything is finding balance and being brave enough to face the situation when you (temporarily) lose it.

See y'all next time, or - a presto!

When in Rome

"When in Rome, do as the Romans do" - said someone, sometime in the past. During the days before my departure, my mom and I would laugh about this phrase; Whenever I'd bring up a serious concern her answer would be "It's easy, just do as the Romans do", after which I would say "Remind me again of what it is exactly that the Romans do?!". And so on and so forth until the trip began and I actually got on a plane to FCO airport in Rome (will the flight be overbooked?? Have I forgotten my passport? Etc. etc., * 1000).

When I'd finally collected my luggage (did it get lost on the way????) at FCO airport, after a too-long connection in Istanbul, I still didn't have an answer to the question regarding the typical "Roman" behavior. I was sure of one thing, though - I was nowhere close to resembling a local in anyway. You know how before you travel to a fancy place you imagine yourself sitting there in some avenue, sipping a Cappucino, dressed to the latest style, having tourists asking you for directions because they mistook you for a local? Spoiler alert: none of the above ended up happening.
Hints that suggested I was in fact an utterly lost tourist (that's right, I know we all prefer the cooler word "traveler", but when lost in Rome, call yourself as the Romans call you):
1. A 17kg backpack on my back and a 8kg daypack on my front
2. Jeans, a flannel shirt and work boots
3. The huge map constantly blocking my face
4. The endless muttering of "non parlo Italiano" whenever approached by an English-refusing Italian

And so I miraculously got to the meeting point with my Couchsurfing host on that first afternoon, sweaty, exhausted and with a broken back. "Ciao!!!!", I embarrassingly yelled when I first noticed him - thank god, a somewhat familiar face. I was even happier when I got into his air-conditioned Audi, and again later when I entered his top-notch apartment, and again later when he opened a fine bottle of red wine and offered me a glass - si, grazie!

I spent my days in Rome, accepting the fact that I'm just like any other tourist (except for you, rude American with Hawaii shirt who cut me in the line to the Vatican - you know who you are!). I never ended up entering the Vatican church, by the way, as my spirit eventually broke by the infinite line. Generally, I didn't follow a guide-book and simply wandered around, searching for nice places. I never had to search for too long because 99% of Rome is stunningly beautiful. Every "Piazza" you accidentally find yourself sitting at, every ruin of something ancient (I never took the time to actually read the info), every tree and brick of the floor. It almost seems unreal and surely is unfair that some people actually get to live their daily lives there.

I walked, and walked and walked, until I got tired and/or hungry, which are two great dangers for the budget traveler. In Tel Aviv, one of my favorite pastime activities was sitting in a cafe, listening to my ipod and reading a book for a few hours on one cup of coffee. I brought lots of books to Rome and carried them around with me every day, expecting to find that gem of a cafe/bar where it would be legitimate to order one thing and just sit for a while. But big was my disappointment - I could find no such places (here that guide-book might have come in handy). Even when wandering around the smallest and farthest of allies, a cup of Capuccino at a cafe usually cost around 5 Euros and I had exactly 15 minutes to sit down and drink it before that family of 20 Japanese tourists replaced me at my table. I was a very unprofitable client everywhere I went, so the waiters would simply stare at me angrily until I gave up, paid my tiny bill and left.

Hence, I found myself alternative ways to rest - brought a sheet along with me and laid down in parks and piazzas (depending on weather's mercy), made sandwiches in the morning at my host's place and had them for lunch (allowing dinner to be the one real fancy meal a day), hung out in bookstores, music stores and public libraries. All in all, after 5 days of exploring one of the most expensive European cities, my budget remained somewhat balanced, which I was very happy about. And even while being a cheapskate, I'd managed to have lots of fun, see cool places and make new friends - success!

See you at the next post, where I will tell a little bit about my first impressions of farm life.
Till then - ciao and thanks for reading!

Decisions, anxiety and Murphy's Law

When I told my friends I've decided to quit my job, leave my apartment in the middle of the lease term and buy a one-way ticket to Rome, Italy, most of their responses were "Coooool". No doubt, self-fulfillment is very popular these days. So popular that it almost seems like people study computer science and work in high-tech just so later the Huffington Post title would say "After ten years in front of the screen, Wilma finally left everything and became a farmer".

Most my family members'/older acquaintances' responses were "Really? Why?". And really, why leave a perfectly good, well-payed job, a nice, comfortable apartment, a (wreck of a) car and most importantly, the hip Tel Aviv scene to go work on organic farms in Italy and France? Sometimes, I have no answer to that question myself. Sometimes I just shrug and say "Because.", while my insides twist and shout 'What the f*** do you think you're doing?". But more often than not, I find myself being able to answer that working with my hands has always felt most right to me (no, beloved colleagues – hands on keyboard doesn't count) and that nature has always had a therapeutic effect on my body and soul. Urban life, interesting and full of action as it may be, is also extremely hectic and stressful; every step you take, you're required to pay someone money for something; the air is polluted and hence not ideal for my asthmatic lungs (mom, I promise living in nature will reduce my smoking! I mean, I hope…).

A previous attempt of mine to do something different

And so my trip started to take shape. 5 months, 2 countries, 7-8 farms in total. Yesterday I even bought my return ticket, so there is a deadline. There is only so much adventure my anxious self can stand. Signing up for agriculture studies next year is just another one of those decisions I question every other day, but it's currently still part of the "master-plan" to become… seriously, I don't know what one becomes after studying agriculture, though something inside tells me it might just make me a happier person.

Yet another attempt.

Until the trip starts, I'm spending my days at the office and my nights worrying, or drinking my worries away in one of the bars I'll miss after I leave the neighborhood, city and country. Before I fall asleep my brain involuntarily makes lists of the things that could go wrong between now and the moment I first land in Rome; between now and the moment I land back in Tel Aviv; between now and the moment my life ends. The lists are longer than I can bear because they're endless. Murphy's Law states "Whatever can go wrong – will go wrong" (trivia fact - all the other "Murphy laws" are actually just people's variations on that one) and I couldn't agree with him more. Not in the manner of "if I move to the other line it will surely become longer than the previous one and so on, and then I'll check-in last so will be on stand-by on my flight and my Couchsurfing host will have to wait for me at the meeting point and get angry and leave after not getting a message from me that I'll be running late, while I desperately try to save my phone from dying after it fell on the airport floor and someone stepped on it". So not like that. But in the sense that there is actually no "right" and "wrong" and when something gets "messed-up" there is no parallel universe in which it didn't get messed up. When things get complicated or unexpected all we can do is smile about it because that's the only course of life we have (said by the girl who's often not able to breathe when she misses a bus. I try, though).

Gonna miss you, balcony

So, spiritual talk aside – I'll miss you, Tel Aviv. And hopefully the next post will be written from Rome with a cone of Gelato in my hand.