 |
| chilling on some hay |
During Leah’s hours of
research before we left Australia, she came across Help X. It’s a volunteering
website where host families put you up and feed you in exchange for your help around
their home for around 6 hours a day. You can do a wide variety of jobs;
gardening, wood chopping, fruit picking, teaching English. We found a great
place to try out in the Czech countryside. We both got excited at the prospect
of working 10 days on a goat farm where the host family makes bread and cheese.
Our journey to the tiny town of Lozice was beautiful with cute little towns,
rolling hills and some forests. The bus driver who drove us into the town was
quite funny. He was waiting for his last run of the day and Leah and I were his
only passengers so he pumped up the radio and found some English pop music
along with some Czech tunes for our journey.
 |
| our bus ride to Lozice |
Vladimir, Denisa and their 4 kids welcomed us, fed us and made us feel at home.
They live on a small farm in a big old stone house that used to be used for
grain milling and bread making, complete with a huge built in old school bread
oven. It’s a charming farm with big barn full of hay, a full vegetable patch
that’s like a supermarket, a sweat lodge frame for sweat lodge parties, a
couple of plum trees (of which we ate lots of), an old, nearly blind dog called
Sistra (meaning sister in Czech), a couple of cats with kittens and about a
dozen goats that supply the milk for cheese making. Along with selling their goat
cheese and bread, they also hire out a huge room on the top floor to yoga and
ti-chi groups or for weekend conferences. We stayed on this top floor, which sleeps
18 people has its own kitchen and bathroom. The meals that Denisa cooked us
were so tasty and healthy. Denisa likes to cook organically with her own
produce with a strong Indian influence (from their time travelling India). As
you can probably guess, it’s not a meat-heavy diet but we did eat one of their
old goats in burger form, and it actually tasted good!
 |
| about 12 plums a day plus some amazing plum slice Denisa made |
 |
| 34 loafs off to market |
 |
| the house |
 |
| the kittens |
 |
| 'hey sheep how did you get in here?' |
They have been doing
Help X maybe twice a year for a couple of years and love having people from all
walks of life stay with them. We joined two Taiwanese girls who had already done
Help X in France and Italy. The girls only lasted 4 days (we think they left
early because the work was too hard for them). The first few days Vladimir had
us helping with stocking up wood for the winter. It was good, hard, hands on
work. We were moving, stacking, chopping and I hopped on the chainsaw too.
Every evening we were very stiff and sore, even more so the next morning. Leah
went a bit to hard with the axe splitting wood the first day and couldn’t back
up her first day heroics the next day (and had the blisters to prove it).
 |
| chopping |
 |
| our wood stacking |
 |
| and the hard work result |
The next task that
Leah and I were given was in an old stone house probably used as a barn or tool
shed long ago. I say long ago because it is meant to be over 150 years old and
the floor that we were working on was over 300 years old!
Our job was to clean and re-grout the floor. This involved lots of hard work
picking, flicking and cleaning old dirt that had been imbedded in between the
stones making up the floor. Then we’d fill the gaps with cement to try and
level off the floor to make it easy to sweep clean. Just like tiling. Well,
sort of. It took a long time, around 5 days to complete but we were all happy
with the end effect. Vladimir and
Denisa run bread and cheese-making workshops for school children and the room
that we were fixing is for the kids to mill the grain and learn how bread is
made.
 |
| the 'before' floor |
 |
| look how fast Leah is working! |
 |
| finishing touches |
On our day off
Vladimir recommended some nearby towns and offered us some bikes to ride. We
got about 1km down the road when the wheel of my bike buckled and came off. Luckily
it was an old bike (their grandmothers) and we were able to borrow another one instead. All up it
was a 30km round trip, visiting some castles, palaces, a town fair and enjoying a
well-deserved beer. My highlight of the trip was by far the ride through the countryside,
along country roads, through little towns and forest hiking trails. I just loved
going fast down the occasional hill.
Leah’s highlight was seeing some deer. Behind
the palace in Nove Hrady, in the surrounding grounds are a few little museums, a maze and a big paddock with a heard of deer. We were able to walk through the
paddock and got really close to some big stags rubbing their antlers in between
the trees.
 |
| 3km away in Luže there is a palace on the hill. |
 |
| through some forest |
 |
| we thought about buying this palace in Nove Hrady |
 |
| enjoying a raspberry slushy in the palace gardens |
 |
| then I got lost in a maze |
 |
| Leah stalking the deer |
 |
| close up shot for Ian |
 |
| Leah was excited and nervous |
We czech’d out a few
places the locals go on the weekend, stopping for a beer at a biker pub where
lots of families have a day out and bikers take a pit stop to refuel (by fuel I
mean beer and by bikers I mean cyclists). We dropped in at the Luže town fair
where we caught a traditional Czech band and a local rock band performing. The
traditional band must have been playing all the hits because all the oldies
around us were singing and foot tapping along. It was quite funny to see the
older crowd disperse when the rock band replaced them, playing a very different
genre of music. Leah was impressed because they played a cover of ‘Zombie’ by
The Cranberries.
 |
| beers at the country pub, on the hill because there was no free tables. |
 |
| traditional Czech tunes |
Our first experience with
Help X was a great one and it was great to have a base for 10 days, without
having to worry about meals, accommodation and travelling. We would definitely
do it again down the track and recommend it to anyone travelling for an
extended period of time.
 |
| sunrise on our last morning run (well Leah ran I cruised on the bike) |
arvi
