I'm thinking I'll blog every 3 days from now on, it seems to work well. Otherwise I have nothing to say lol.

Soo I guess I'm up to last Sunday. We pretty much did nothing but relax on Sunday because it's traditionally the day of rest and everyone's happy to deal with that:) Everyone got up late and had breakfast together. The table was a bit fuller than usual because the girls were babysitting their horse riding instructor's children. It was like being in Colac with all my cousins - they were so energetic! Apparently they woke Maree up at 4:30 because they wanted to play lol. For some reason I found it weird to see little kids speaking german probably as well as I can haha. I lounged around on the couch and started reading James Lovelock's 'The ages of Gaia' (in english, another WWOOFer had given it to the family), which is extremely interesting but also sometimes frustrating. Martin gave me a few options for what I might want to do if I got sick of the kids, including going for a bike ride, so wanting the exercise, I went for a quick ride around the countryside. He lent me a road bike, which was good at first, up to the point where I wound up on a highway because there were no other paved roads to ride on. I got shouted at a few times by overzealous german motorists:P When I got back, I quickly fed the ducks and then hopped into the car with Martin and Sigfried to go visit Martin's mother.

I was a bit sceptical about this. Martin had seemed really positive about inviting me to come, telling me that his mother was really interesting, and I said 'Why not?'. But then later, Sigfried seemed a bit surprised that I was coming, and I remembered that this was the woman who wasn't in the best of health as of late. And indeed after buying some milk from Sigfried's brother, when we rocked up to his mother's house, the first hour was spent discussing her ailments, whether she should move into a retirement home, how to write a will and these sort of things and again I had the feeling that I shouldn't be listening in (even though I couldn't understand much due to the dialect and the fact that they were talking about kind of complicated medical and legal issues:P), but no-one seemed to mind. Sigfried had brought her knitting gear and proceeded to finish off a pair of socks that she said had taken her 2 years to make (she only knits when she's at other people's houses so she has something to do with her hands), and then would occasionally drop something in to the conversation, which never ceased to surprise me:P After about an hour, Sigfried noticed my gaze wandering around the room and my non-listening expression and announced loudly 'This must be very boring for you, huh Jeremy?' (I think it was a bit for her too:P) and after that we had a more interesting conversation and Martin's mother brought out a photo album, which had everything from overseas trips to the construction of the pond in their backyard. So in the end I was glad that I had come:)

On Monday, my tasks were cleaning out one of the stalls, where the sheep were, so that the foals could be kept away from the wet weather that's forecasted (two of them have lung infections and cough incessantly, poor things); picking up horse apples; cooking (I made cowboy hotpot); vacuuming and then I was free. My foot was feeling a lot better, so I went for a run. I had to be careful about not running on slippery or unstable surfaces, but apart from that my ankle felt fine the whole time and I logged an easy 65 minutes.

When I got back, Martin was home, but everyone else was elsewhere. This was a problem because I was extremely hungry, but we couldn't have dinner until everyone was there! So I ate a banana and read for a while. Sigfried showed up after a while, but Maree had phoned to say that her train had been delayed. Poor thing had to wait 2 hours at the train station because of a fault with the tracks in the cold with a cold. In the end we started without her and I finally got to sate my appetite:)

Today I was to work with Opa. I woke up late because I'd stayed up late (which for me is now 11pm:P) surfing the net, so I rushed outside, locking myself out in the process to find out when he wanted to leave for the forest. He helped me back inside and told me to chill out for a while because he had woken up late too and in any case it was raining a bit and it's not much fun working in the forest when it's wet. So I had a relaxed breakfast and got everything ready and then because it was still raining, we went to his workshop and set about filing and planing a piece of wood so it would serve as a handle for a shovel blade. We were about halfway through when it stopped raining, so we set down the tools, grabbed our things and hopped on the tractor and headed out to the Black Forest. When we got to the road he normally takes, we discovered a red and white caution tape stretched across the road, so we hopped out with the tools to find out what was up. First we had to stop to divert a stream fed by the recent rains that was eroding away the path. Building dams is such fun:) A forester came walking along and chatted with us while helping us with our diverting manoueveres. After we'd taken care of that, we walked down and decided the big log blocking the road was probably the reason for the caution tape.

The purpose for our visit was to salvage bits of wood from the trees that had been felled by the professional foresters (they're the only people who are allowed to actually chop down trees on public land), which were surplus to their needs, for use in the wood fired heating oven back home. There was plenty of wood we could use, but first Opa wanted to give me a bit of a history lesson. First he showed me this stone lean-to, where a wandering violinist was rumoured to have lived during summer a long time ago. Then there was a rock, where a gallows was once erected to execute crims. And finally the piece de resistance, an almost fully intact castle! It was really cool:) You walk through the forest into a clearing and suddenly there's this castle in front of you. It was built in the 1100s for this Robber Baron, who extorted the local people by threatening to kidnap their daughters unless they paid him a ransome in advance. Then when the holy roman empire arose in Germany, the Kaiser had the castle dismantled and the Robber Baron executed (maybe even on the rock I saw).

So history lesson finished, we set to work. I had a small axe, with which I stripped logs of their branches and threw them onto a pile. We did that for 5 hours solid, stopping every now and then to talk. Opa's amazingly fit for his age. When we were walking to the castle, I had to struggle to keep up with him, and when we were working, he'd heft these massive logs on his own over to the side of the road. At about 5, we stopped for the day, which pleased me greatly. Not because I was tired, the work wasn't that tough, but my hands and feet were freezing! Mental note: don't wear business socks in gumboots:P After the tractor ride home, I quickly fed the ducks and then pulled on my running gear and went for a run. Again, no problems, though it wasn't that pleasant a run because it was dark by 10 minutes in and I had to run on asphalt next to the road. AltBulach is nowhere near as good as Baiersbronn for running even during the day. Oh well, I'm really enjoying being here:) It's so good having people to talk to. My german's getting more fluent every day, and I'm even picking up a bit of schwäbisch:P (which Opa told me today contains quite a few french words - no wonder I find it hard to understand!).

This evening Opa came around after dinner with a few photo albums. He'd been telling me about his travels and I said I'd love to see some pictures, so for about 3 hours, we relived his adventures in Hungary, Denmark, Norway, Mallorca, Madeira, Germany and many other countries I've neglected to remember. It was good, but after a while I developed album fatigue and was willing the pages to turn faster:P

Only 9 more days as a WWOOFer now:( I'd like to spend more time here, but I also really want to get back to Baiersbronn and go skiing. Wish I could do both at the same time!