Hullo all.
I finished WWOOFing a few days ago. It was a bit sad to leave, I had a really good time there. The family were all so nice and I couldn't have felt more at home (except maybe at home:P). I won't bore you with a day by day account (and I can't remember it well enough to do so in any case:P), but I will recount a few of the memorable moments:

A physics experiment:
Martin was home one of the days, so instead of going out to the horses, I helped him out. He wanted to move some timber from behind the barn, because at some stage, he was going to get rid of the sheep, knock down the wall and rebuild it as a stall for the horses. So together we moved the planks one by one (which was bloody hard work - some of the planks must've weighed over 100kg) and piled them up in the tray of his truck. We needed a break to recover from this, so we went inside and had a bit of lunch. While munching on peanut butter and rye bread, I asked Martin what was going to happen with the timber.
'Oh I'll drive the truck round to the other side of the barn and we'll stack it under the roof.'
'How do we get it from the truck up there?'
'I've got a pulley and rope in the attic, we'll get Opa to help us pull it up.'
He went silent for a few moments and then said abruptly 'It won't work.'
'How come?'
'Opa only weighs 80kg. If he tries to pull those really heavy planks up, he'll be lifted into the air!'

We both laughed as we tried to imagine the scene. I wasn't convinced by his reasoning though.
'Aren't you forgetting that Opa can use his muscles to exert force? Won't the work that he performs mean that he really weighs more than 80kg?'
'I don't think that would matter.'
'Hmmph, I guess we'll have to get Opa to take part in an experiment and see who's right.'

So we did the experiment and the results were quite surprising. Can you guess the outcome? Did Opa rise into the air, or was he able to lift the 100kg plank into the loft?

German recycling plant:
Another day (possibly the day after), Martin asked me if I'd be interested in coming to the recycling plant to drop off a few things. Of course I was interested! We put everything in the jeep (which incidentally, along with all of their other vehicles, is powered by salad oil, which means it smells fantastic when you get out!) and drove to the plant, which was close to the town Martin inherited: Martinsmoos (just kidding, he doesn't really own it:P). The germans have a very intricate recycling system. Pretty much everything is recycled in some way. It wasn't always like this. In the old days, everything would go to landfill, but some time ago, all the land that could be filled was filled and so now they have no choice but to recycle everything. As a result, they have about 6 different bins.

This is pretty confusing for someone not accustomed to it. Sigrid (I only realised 2 days before I left that I'd been saying her name wrong the whole time! It's Sigrid, not Sigfried:P) told me at some stage that when the vacuum cleaner was full, I should empty the contents into the black bin. So after dropping the vacuum cleaner and spilling the nearly full container on the stairs, I sucked it up again and then took the container to what I thought was the black bin. Martin had just pulled up in his car as I went to pour the contents into the bin and beeped at me. I thought he was just saying hello, so I waved at him while I finished what I'd started. What followed was like one of those 'Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!' slow motion clips from cheesy movies (but he didn't make it in time to knock the container out of my hands:P). Turns out that this bin, which had a black body, but a yellow lid, was for plastic not for 'Sperrmull' (anything that can't be recycled). So we had to fish the dust out of the bin (which thankfully wasn't at all yucky) and take it to the _real_ black bin next to the barn.

So back to the recycling plant. It was basically the german equivalent of a tip. Which means that it was highly organised and very efficient:P If you thought 6 different bins was bad, the recycling plant would send you screaming into the night. There was a shipping container for every conceivable category of objects. Paper, hard plastic, soft plastic, polstyrene, scrap iron, electronics, electronics with screens, mattresses, used fats, big trees, small trees, food scraps, and many more. And even though this plant was massive (at least 2 square km), it was tiny compared to the real recycling plants. The aforementioned containers are trucked to the large recycling plants, where they're further processed. Most of the stuff that can't really be usefully recycled gets burnt. I was a bit shocked when I first heard this because it's not just paper and banana skins that we're talking about here, pretty much all the plastic refuse goes to the same place. Plastic and burning spells black acrid smoke to me, which then in the confused neural network of my brain, leads to sulfur dioxide and acid rain and the death of the black forest! But the truth is a lot more attractive. The burning plants are very clean, they have very fine filters so that not much gets out of there besides Carbon Dioxide (oh well, you can't have it all) and it's not just like they burn it and that's it. The heat from the burning as well as the methane from the decomposing organic matter is used to generate electricity, which is quite an amazing concept to me. I recently read an article in an Australian science magazine, which had a letter to the editor, saying something like 'It's amazing that humans haven't come up with the idea of burning our rubbish to generate electricity. Most of the things we throw out are extremely flammable and would generate a large amount of heat and therefore electricity. Our ancestors will come across our huge landfill sites and wonder where our brains were that we didn't utilise this rather obvious resource.' Haha it's not just our ancestors that will be thinking that, our coeval european cousins must have the same thoughts when they make the journey over the pond.

Who let the (horses) out?
Fast forward to the day of my departure. I was sitting on the computer, not doing very much, while Sigrid was busy on the phone taking care of some kind of business. She asked me (yelling through the door, while I was on the toilet, so I didn't take as much attention as I should have) to go out to the foals (who were being housed in the barn because it had snowed the previous night!) and give them hay and clean up the under surface and provided some additional advice, which I promptly forgot. So I went out to their stall and started chucking the horse apples out the little door that leads to the compost heap. They were being very nosy and kept trying to grab the pitchfork off me. At this point I should've realised that Sigrid had probably said that I should give them something to eat first so that I could get on with the my work without them interrupting me. But I didn't realise, or maybe she hadn't said that at all. So they stayed at my side peskily nudging me. I was in the process of chucking a load of apples out through the door, when they nudged me aside and went through the door into the compost heap. At first it was slightly amusing because they kept trying to eat the sheep poop infested straw, but then they started walking on a plank and slipping and I started to worry that they might hurt themselves. I called for Opa, but he didn't hear me. I called again and while my attention was diverted, they went past me into the yard. As soon as they sniffed freedom, they went wild and galloped down the cobblestones down to the grass at the end of the yard. Really worried, I yelled at the top of my lungs for Opa and he finally came out. He appraised the situation and told me to try and round them up while he erected a fence so they couldn't go past the barn on to the road. I grabbed one of them by the mane and tried to lead it up to the barn, but it wasn't going to happen. They'd struck the jackpot with the fresh grass they were munching on and weren't going to leave it without some serious convincing. Opa came down and tried to help me but all we succeeded in doing was scaring them enough that they galloped up through the garden beds and into the grape vines, damaging the fence quite badly in the process. Opa cringed and I felt terrible because Oma was going to be quite angry if she found out. At this point (actually as soon as we had the fence erected), I should have gone to fetch Sigrid, but for some reason my brain decided that the phone calls she was waiting on were more important than this situation. Opa found some rope and tied a harness (or whatever the bit that goes around their head is called) onto one of them, and I tried to lead it up to the stall. Another stampede through the garden beds. Opa was looking really upset and for the first time in my stay, his age started to show. Finally I thought rationally enough to decide that Sigrid was needed, and went inside to fetch her. 'The horses got out!' and so was she, leaving the ringing phone behind her. She had the situation under control in no time, all she had to do was stand up at the barn and calmly say 'Come here' and they did.

I felt decidedly sheepish and began to wonder whether there was a leaving curse that meant some misfortune would befall me on the morning of the day of departure (precedents: ski shop in Frankfurt, twisted ankle in Baiersbronn):P They weren't at all angry at me, because, well how could they be? That afternoon one of the foals got out while Marie was cleaning out the stall, so I felt quite a bit better about it after that:P

Back in Baiersbronn:
I got to Baiersbronn without incident and after a quick run, soon had myself nicely snuggled up in front of the TV. At about 8.00, Ben (from the hostel) called and told me he was about to leave Frankfurt and drive down to Baiersbronn, so we could catch up (he was working in the area that weekend). 'Yeah awesome, let's go and celebrate Fasching!' I said, hung up, and promptly fell asleep. At about 10 he called again and told me he was going to be even longer because all the snow on the road was slowing things down. 'What snow on the road?'
'Look outside man, it's snowing like anything!'
And indeed it was. It was pretty much a whiteout outside:) I looked out through the window, hugely pleased and snug in my nicely heated room.

He called me at about 11:30 while driving past my place (it was snowing too much to see the street numbers lol) in his rented merc (he'd reserved a golf, but they ran out, so they gave him a MB for the same price lol). I dashed out, grabbing every item of warm clothing I had, hoping I hadn't forgotten the front door key and jumped in. We drove round Baiersbronn, trying to find a place that was still open, but ended up going to Freudenstadt because Baiersbronn was completely dead at 11.30 on a Friday night during Fasching: It was snowing even harder in Freudenstadt, it looked so cool! We stopped at the Market place to interrogate a 'victim', who cheerily informed us that Martinique was the best place to go at this time of night. A quick trip to McDonalds (where Ben mercilessly teased an employee who was wearing what Ben termed a 'titty twister headset':P) later and we drove to Martinique's carpark and sat in the car for a while munching fries. The place turned out to be a bit of a non event. They were asking for a 4- euro cover charge, and it really didn't seem worth it, so we went to a petrol station instead. In Germany, every petrol station is a 24 hour Bottleo. I grabbed two bottles of Klosterbrau (best beer ever), and while I was blocking the attendant's view (not on purpose!), Ben pulled out two bottles of tequila laced beer and stuck them down his pants (he'd spent the last of his money at Maccers). Then he had the nerve to clumsily walk (the bottles made it hard going) up to the counter and ask for a discount on the filled bread rolls, seeing as they'd been out for so long. The guy ended up giving him one for free lol.

We drove off and while we were in motion, Ben grabbed one of my beers and started opening it. I snatched it back, 'Drive the car you idiot!' lol. We ended up pulling into an alley and talked for about half an hour before Ben fell asleep. I was quite content watching the snow fall and the plough trucks go about their work. At about 3, I tried waking him up. 'Oh sorry, did I fall asleep?' 'Yes'
'Oops'
And then he fell asleep again haha.
I spent the next hour trying to open the other bottle using the other bottle, a key, and my hands. Eventually I succeeded, but not before cutting my fingers in several places lol. I drank the beer (which I didn't really want, but I had nothing else to do) and fell asleep.

At 5am, I was awakened by the sound of a truck load of snow plough workers starting to clear the snow away from the car. 'Ben!' He woke up properly this time and we drove off after telling the guys they were 'geil' (cool) and that they were doing a good job:P Ben ended up sleeping on the floor in my room (I think the merc would've been more comfortable). I woke up at 9, still feeling tired.

It was so beautiful outside. Baiersbronn is a pretty little town whatever the weather, but with a blanket of snow over it and a lovely sunrise, the vista was breathtaking:) I spent the next three hours watching TV, while I waited for Ben to wake up. I was desperate to get up to the slopes, but didn't end up leaving til 3 because he went for a smoke and talked to Tina (who presumably told Peter Keck - the owner of the guesthouse - because he told me off for letting Ben in the next time I saw him) and showered and talked to his girlfriend on the phone and that kind of stuff. Ah well, I enjoyed his company. He gave me a lift to the bus stop in Freudenstadt and went off to another town, where he was serving at a Faschings feast.

So eventually at 4:30ish I got to the loop and started skiing. I did 20km without stocks, feeling pretty sluggish because of the lack of sleep and possibly the alcohol. Blisters didn't take long to form, but I pushed on, enjoying it a lot more after stocks came into the equation. The loop is flood lit, so even though it got dark about 90 minutes after I started, I could still keep going. It was kind of surreal, a monochrome world composed only of the white snow and the pitch black night. Each lap felt a bit harder, and I was tempted to stop, but I had told Ben I was going to do 45km, and for some reason I felt bound to fulfil that quasi-promise. I take back my comment about it being a nice loop. It's horrible!:P There's no chance to get into a rhythm because the terrain constantly changes. I don't mind the first 1km or so because it's a gentle uphill followed by a prolonged downhill, but at the bottom there's a really nasty hill. It's about 400m long and the last 100m is roughly 40% grade. You really have to power up it or else you can't maintain proper skating form, so as you get more tired, you become less efficient and waste more energy and get even more tired. It's a vicious cycle. After 40km, I was starving and feeling a bit glycogen depleted, so I stopped and ate two Laugenbrötchen (yummy bread rolls). It was probably a 2 minute break, but I became incredibly cold even in that short time. It was about -10°c and I was only wearing two layers (I hadn't noticed the cold until that time, even though my top was covered in ice from frozen sweat and artificial snow from the snow cannons). I quickly put on my jacket and managed to squeeze out my 17th and 18th lap.

I'm gonna go now, I reaaaally need to go to the toilet. Will finish it off at some point. Ciao