Abeille des Alpages - Fish with Wings

01 Aug Abeille des Alpages

Posted at 10:40h in Blog, Personal by Mallory 1 Comment

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The Journey

I had a miserably long bus ride from Berlin to Besançon, France. The first bus came over an hour late. The second bus was even later, and I was worried about making my connection in Strasbourg, but the drivers spoke only Czech and had no help to offer me. He tapped his watch and pointed to the Eurolines office. I popped in and asked for some reassurance – that if we arrived late for the bus I could change my ticket or something. The guy assured me that if I’m on the roster, the next bus will wait for me. Then the bus driver switched me to a different bus for an unintelligible reason and we finally got going.

I did arrive about 20 minutes late for my last bus, but I saw it sitting as we pulled up. I rushed out and grabbed my bag, and as I’m walking up to the door the driver starts pulling away! I yell and wave my hands and knock on the door, and the man throws up his hands and starts yelling at me in French, saying I’m late and why didn’t I call and so on. Well, I didn’t know what to say, so I tossed my luggage in the storage area and sat in the seat he pointed at. From there it was uneventful and I arrived at my stop around 1AM. I made the best of it and attempted to get a little shut eye until daylight when I could walk to the train station.

As the sun was rising, I walked through the narrow streets of Besançon past cow farms and white washed homes with wooden shutters and garden boxes. I arrived at the train station and bought a bus ticket to Morteau for 10 euro, just barely reaching the bus as it was pulling away. An hour later, I walked into a bakery for a pain au chocolate (croissant with chocolate inside, fresh from the oven!), searching for WiFi so I could call my Workaway host, Nico.

Emotion Splurge

Ah, yes…Workaway! I had attempted using this website once for volunteering in Asia. I ended up teaching English to children in Cambodia, where I had mixed feelings about the work. I was now trying it again in France, since I liked the country so much. Nico has a small farm with young fruit trees, bee hives, and a recently built treehouse near the border of France and Switzerland, so I was looking forward to enjoying the countryside and learning a few things.

Why do Workaway instead of going back to my cousin’s place? Good question. This entire year of travel has been incredible, but I have also struggled with it. I’ve learned and practiced relaxing, going with the flow, and taking it easy, but there is really only so much ‘laying back’ I can take. I’m a ‘do-er’. I like action. I like purpose. I like to learn and accomplish things. I feel I have found a good balance of traveling simply, not worrying about doing touristy things, taking lots of days off, and still having fun. However, traveling with no goal in mind has left me feeling bad, as if I lack purpose or any sense of accomplishment. Several months ago I slipped into a deep depression, feeling homesick and unhappy. It has ebbed and flowed, but when I realized what was making me feel this way I finally made some decisions to remedy it. Or at least try to. One of these decisions involved using Workaway to give me some purpose and structure while I am still in Europe. With Workaway I have work, some structure, and I am potentially learning something. I could use it as a guide for my energies and to have a bit of routine to reset myself.

The Journey (2)

Ok, explanation finished. My host, Nico, was unable to pick me up until the afternoon, so I decided to hitchhike to the farm. I started walking, and finally got a ride from a French woman. We exchanged pleasantries, as that is all I could manage in French and she spoke no English, and we headed down the road. Now, I had the map to Nico’s farm up on my phone. I figured she would drop me off in the closest town and I would walk or hitch again the rest of the way. Instead, she stopped and asked some hikers if they knew where the farm was. They didn’t, but she gave them a ride also into the countryside (ignoring my mentioning that we were now going the wrong way and that I could walk from here), and dropped them off in front of another farm.

Again, they talked about where Nico’s place was, bringing the farmer into the conversation. They asked me his full name and the name of the farm, and I told them and pointed to the map, trying my best to communicate that it was only 2 km away and I could make it on my own. This was continually ignored, and I threw up my hands. The farmer made some calls and determined where Nico’s place was (aka, exactly where it showed on my map), and the woman took me back to town and the rest of the way to my destination.

When we arrived, another volunteer from Switzerland was there to greet us. Thankfully, he spoke French and the woman chatted with him for a while, asking for a tour of the farm. She was incredibly nice, and apparently concerned for my well-being, but spoke a mile a minute and was very confusing – even to a French speaker! She finally left, and Nicola (the volunteer – I’ll refer to him as Nicola instead of Nico) gave me a brief tour and showed me to the room we would be sharing. I pulled down the spare mattress and unpacked for my stay, then went out to play some football with Nicola, Kat (another volunteer from Poland), and Nico’s two kids, Mael and Eliot.

The Farm

Nico arrived in the afternoon in a tornado of energy. He had boxes of fruit and vegetables in his arms, and exclaimed loudly about my arrival, dropping the boxes to give me the traditional French cheek kisses in welcome and proceeded to give me a more in-depth tour of the house. Upstairs is the spare bedroom, where Nicola and I were staying, Mael’s room, which Kat was occupying at the moment, and Eliot’s room where the boys stayed. Nico had a small room within that bedroom, then there was a shower room and a flush toilet. Down the stairs was the large open living area, with several chalkboards full of notes and lists, and wall sized windows. The kitchen was open and there were a few hive frames full of honey hanging on the counter covered with towels. Fly tape was draped across the ceiling like decoration. A hammock hung across the living area, and there was a small pantry, sink, and compost toilet in the back corner of the room. There was no refrigerator, but downstairs was storage and ‘the cave’, where all food needing to stay cool was stored.

The basement attached to a garage at the front of the house, so we walked around, passing the larger compost bins and the tree house to the small fruit trees on the left and right sides, the large groseille bushes bursting with bright red currants, and finally the line of hives in the back. We settled on the back porch outside of the kitchen and chatted for a while, then I helped Kat in the kitchen to make dinner for everyone. It was a laid back first day.

The next morning after a large breakfast of fromage blanc and fruit, we got to work making frames for the bee hives. We started by setting small grommets in holes that had already been drilled, then stapling two longer wood pieces to either side, making a rectangle. I taught Kat how to use the staple gun, and she took over while I learned to thread the wires through the finished frames. It was hard work to get the wires taut, and my hands were aching quickly. Nico swept me up after lunch to help him in town. We stopped by a friend of his to pick up some beehives to move back to his home. I dutifully put on the white suit and face net, while he went to work in shorts and bare feet. I smoked the bees to calm them while he explained some bee basics and checked the hives. Then we loaded them into the trailer and set them back up at the house.

That’s how it went for the next two weeks. One of us would go with him to town almost every day, which was always fun. We would go to about 10 different shops for fruits, vegetables, sausages, cheese, locally made syrups, and hardware. He would pick up big crates of fruits and vegetables that were on sale for the expiration date, and we would then make big batches of fresh compote to have with our meals. We would go out with him to check the bee hives and look for the queen or check for eggs and honey production. We removed and replaced wax on old and new frames, and watched Nico tag new queens. We weeded the orchard and shaped the young trees. I often helped in the kitchen, and a few mornings I went to the cow farm next door to get fresh milk. I also got a lot better at wiring the frames and handling the bees.

Yep…that’s me…

There were other volunteers coming and going. Irina came from Germany. Christine was also from Germany, and came with her own mobile trailer and her son for a few days. Nico left, and Marion came from another part of France. Then Antony also from France. In the evenings we would have dinners very late, and exchange jokes or listen to Nico’s stories. He loves to tell jokes, and gets very animated. It’s all the funnier when he is translating them into English as he goes, and then his sons try to repeat the jokes on their own, but can’t remember everything. Some nights we would have drinks, or some of Nico’s friends would come to visit. A few times a group of us went hiking through the woods into Switzerland, where you could visit a small lake and a cheese shop that had spectacular gruyère.

We went on a couple of other side trips. On a Sunday we packed into a couple of cars and headed to the Doubs National Park in Switzerland and hiked to see a waterfall and went swimming in the river, picking wild strawberries and raspberries along the path. Another day we went into the woods across from the farm and searched for wild mushrooms, moving slowly through the forest, poking at the ground. The kids were always finding something to do. At times they drove me nuts, like when they thought blowing a flute really hard into your ear was a great idea, but mostly they were awesome. Eliot is the clown and is always trying to get someone to laugh, while Mael makes up games (like treasure hunts!) and loves to play football. Together, Nico and his kids kept the place full of energy and fun.

I stayed a total of two weeks, but despite how much I enjoyed it I felt restless. I think it was just what I needed, but when my friend Sophie invited me to visit her in Bavaria I decided it was time to go. Antony and I were both leaving, and another volunteer had just arrived, so a bottle of rum was passed around, jokes were told and retold, and in the morning I packed my bag. Antony made pain perdu (French toast), then Nico dropped me off in Switzerland where I could begin hitchhiking my way back to Germany!