(One man, One depression)
28/08/13

...and then the depression set in.

With the mix of my family leaving, and myself leaving the beautiful city of Coburg, Lisa and her family, every bit of fun I've had in Germany so far vanished. It might just be a new place, new people I don't know and actually having to do some degree of work, but I suddenly feel down. Cut off and alone, despite having internet and a family. Luckily for me, I know myself and I have done this 4 times before; So hopefully this time will follow suit and after the first 5-7 days I'll start to get used to it, perk up and the time will fly. In all fairness, the first 2 days have gone by really quickly. So, I guess I should say what has happened! I arrived at Neukirchen and thankfully Georg was waiting to meet me. And a bloody good job too! I would not have found their place and I would have been in this tiny village with no idea where he is. We got in his car and made our way to a hamlet on the outskirts of Neukirchen, would have been a good 20 minute walk, and I had no idea it would have been that way! I met the family; Ute und Andreas, a girl, 16 and a boy, 13. Very briefly; We ate dinner and we played a board game. This board game was called 'Seidler' and I sucked at it, the first time. Obviously, it was my first time playing it! I'll just ahead to just write that we played it again the next night and I kicked ass. Anyway, the next day I got up at about 8:30 and after breakfast, it was time for work. The first day and I had to move a s*** load of wood from one place to another. There is a f***ton of wood which has been gathered from the forest and chopped up into triangular shaped logs for the winter. The wood I had to move was where a stack of this wood, probably about 3m x 1.5m of wood on the floor, needing to be restacked. Lunch was soup and dinner was bread, meat and cheese. After dinner we played the second game.

Today has been much the same, I built a fence, stacked some wood, played a game, soup for lunch, bread, meat and cheese for lunch, and lots of down time. I mean that in both senses of the phrase, I had nothing to do and I felt down. I don't know, maybe things will improve, maybe I will just feel really depressed for the next 4 weeks, or maybe I just need a beer with a friend. Or just a beer, I have a beer.

29/08/13

I didn't drink either of the 2 beers I have. Last night was okay, the kids were in my room chilling out, playing table football. Sorry, getting beat at table football. I felt better, and right now, I do feel better. Feeling more like one of the family, but it is still difficult to converse which does leave me feeling a bit isolated.

30/08/13

Things are getting better and better, I worked hard today. Well, I worked hard yesterday too! Yesterday I dug a 1m deep hole around a concrete lump in the ground and pulled it out with the winch on the Quad. It was probably around 60kg and went down an extra 20cm from the hole. It was hard work and with blisters on my hand, I know I'm not used to manual labour. But that doesn't matter, as today I was digging another hole in the front garden to be filled with water for a karp pond. That wasn't all, I then had to make the foundations, and stack at a later date, another wood pile. I think I figured out another thing too, I get depressed at the start of a helpx because I have no connection with these people and I'm being made to do their work. I don't mind helping a friend or family, but someone I don't know and not getting paid? No. It may sound a bit selfish, but the more and more I get to know the family and the people, the more I am willing to do and help. Ande gets annoyed with my poor German, but doesn't really speak to me in English, and he talks A LOT, so that will be helping my German. I had a conversation with Georg about the snow today, in German too, so that was a win! Hell, things are looking up!

31/08/13

I can't believe it's September tomorrow, really I can't. Today is Saturday and we helped Georg's girlfriend move flats. All her stuff was already in the garage downstairs, so taking up to her flat wasn't too bad. I don't mind helping people move, it's a rewarding job. Sitting down at the end with a satisfying cup of coffee, an empty place transformed into a home. However, one particular job I had was to put up a set of blinds in the bathroom, which would have been a simple job if I didn't have Andreas 'helping' me. I don't normally talk s*** about people on here, but that little brat is really getting on my t***. I'm all for letting him take the reins, but when he started to go wrong and I tried to help, he insisted. Yet, when he really b*****ed it up, he f***ed off, leaving me to sort it out. Which I eventually did, but not without turmoil. So yes, I can fit a blind, but so help me God, if there's a 13 year old wanting to help me, I'm out. It took about 8-9 hours out of the day and I don't want to be counting, because helpx is meant to be more than just working a set amount of hours for food and accommodation, but coupled with yesterday's 6 hour day, surely I've built up TOIL? I'll see. I genuinely think I'm into the swing of it now. Got a little routine which, unlike the other places, does not involve fitness. It involves getting things done in my own time. Sitting in my room, planning my future. It's a horrible thing that I won't write a lot about on here, but I'm starting to think of what will happen when I get home. 'The real world' as I've called it over the last 15 months. *shudder*

01/09/13

What a lovely surprise! Sunday is the day of rest. I know what I said yesterday about deserving it, but I wasn't expecting it. This means I have a day to do what I want right? Wrong, we're going to Rosenberg. But still, I don't mind that. See the area a bit.

Well that didn't happen, but I did have the day off. I used Georg's ticket to get to Nuremberg, and, well, I did nothing. It was pretty dull. By myself, not talking to anyone and not doing anything. But I did get a free beer, there were some people handing out the new flavour of desperados, so I took one and drank it in the square. I didn't look like a hobo though, my beautiful coat that my parent's brought me over, and my 'real' ray ban sunglasses made me look more like a cool young business man on a lunch break. That was all I did though, I then went back to the train station and back to Neukirchen. Massively depressing.

03/09/13

Yesterday Georg was out all day, so I took it upon myself to do some work he mentioned early last week. I could have spent the whole day stacking the wood which is more of an ongoing job, but I decided to split the day, half flattening some land which involved a lot of digging and wheel barrow pushing, the other half stacking the wood. It's a mammoth task and hopefully I'm doing it with a degree of intelligence, unlike the previous helper! I don't think I mentioned that actually, that's why I need to stack all this wood, because the previous helper did it badly and that's why it all fell down. But analysing the rubble and what's left of the stack that he built, you can see why! All the sticks/circular logs and wood which is soft is at the bottom. My stack has a strong foundation and struts.

05/09/13

You can see the dates of my entries are getting further apart. This is exactly how I feel, time is going faster the longer I stay here. Things are a lot better from when I first arrived. Yesterday we went into the woods and chopped up a load of trees with a chainsaw. The trees were already cut down, so we were just clearing them, but I tell you what, these logs were absolutely huge, and I had to carry them to the quad. I must explain as well, it's not a quad bike, it's like a cross between a jeep and a quad bike. After doing that for 2 and a half hours, I was pleasantly surprised when Georg says 'That's enough work for today'. I packed my bag and headed back into the woods. I don't think the man walking through expected to see an English guy playing a ukulele on a hammock though. It was a warm summer day and I could only wish I had friends with me, but it's only another 4 weeks until I see them! When I got bored of my setup in the woods, I walked into the village to see what beer they had on offer, picked up 5 different beers for €3.50 and intend on having one every couple of days. I had one last night whilst watching star wars though.

Today, I finished my stack. The rubble of my predecessor's stack removed and ready to be replaced over the next week, I don't mind this kind of work, I have something to be proud of. My stack is sturdy as f*** too. The new stack will be made out of the wood we collected yesterday, I'll be chopping it up, so hopefully I'll be able to make the shapes and sizes I want! This evening, despite usual routine, I didn't spend it watching a film or doing some form of online-socialising! We made a fire in the back garden, and boy do I like fires! We burnt enough wood to give us a hot white ash to cook on, had a BBQ, and then burnt some more wood whilst playing the ukulele drinking radler and chatting. Well, I tried.

07/09/13

I have 2 days to write about, pretty much 2 full days to catch up on and it's just clocked 00:00 on the 08/09/13. I've just cracked a beer to see me though this mammoth task. Yesterday started as every other day; getting up, having breakfast and getting to work. We could have started chopping the huge logs and splitting them for the new stack around the chickens, but I said I'd rather get the foundations done first. This was satisfying productive work that I managed to get done before Ute got back from work and thus gave me the travel card. This was the equivalent of Dobby getting a sock in Harry Potter, it meant I was free (for the day). I got changed and headed for the station, destine for Bamberg to meet Lisa. This took a lot longer than I was expecting, leaving the house at 13:30 and not meeting Lisa until 16:05. It was a pretty long journey, and my ipod ran out of juice about 20 minutes in. Great. Luckily, I had brought my book with me! Yes, I am still reading 'A Life Sold' by Ian Usher, it's a casual book that you can pick up and put down just as easily, not get hooked on and forget it's even there. But there are some gems in it. In the book, he is on his own travelling, list fulfilling journey and although his budget is a lot higher than mine, it's good to read that he experiences a lot of the same emotional turmoil that I have to endure! The first that I read yesterday was this: "I had underestimated how far the walk would take. I had to run as much as I could... I arrived at the bus station just in time to see the bus leave. The next one, I had asked? Four hours later, long after my flight would have departed... I was so disappointed in myself. It was the first flight or bus connection that I had missed... It was just so annoying -I had plenty of time to set off earlier!" That was nuts, the same feeling that I endured in Hanoi airport. The next passage I want to quote is more generic about travelling, but was only on the next page: " 'You're living the dream!' was a phrase I would often hear, and I would smile and agree that it was certainly fun to live the life I was living. However, I think many people could only imagine the good side of such an adventure. It rarely occurred to people to consider the endless planning, the self-imposed regime of blogging, the fatigue of non-stop travel, the pressure of always having to be alert and aware, or the terrible ache ofloneliness that could come creeping in uninvited." Amazing. Eventually, I arrived in Bamberg and first on the agenda was a beer! It became apparent that my lack of beer drinking in the past 2 weeks has lead me to feeling the effect of 2 beers (verbal dioreha) after only 1. That faded and we had a catchup walking through the streets of Bamberg, getting ice cream, walking along the canal, having another beer, walking up to a Biergarten for dinner with a beautiful view and the sunset, finally walking back down to the canal and accidently finding a beautiful spot with a lovely view, on the way back to the train station, we stopped in at a wine bar. All in all, it would have been a perfect date! And yes, I had Schäufele again. It really was great, not only to see Lisa again, but to socialise again. I got the train back, and this time, the 2 hour journey didn't seem as long. Maybe that's because I was expecting it, or maybe I was so tired it just kind of blended in. I walked back from the train station, 1.5km in pitch blackness along the road. I figured it would be better than trying to navigate my way through the woods!

Today! Today was a strange day. It started out as usual, breakfast, starting work and then it got different. Ande wanted me to teach him some guitar (lolwut?) I put him on a website and tuned his guitar for him, then me and Georg cut all the wood into smaller logs. This was thankfully using a chainsaw and when it was done, he left me with all the wood to split. Now, I thought I'd be using an axe. Chopping the wood like a lumberjack, but apparently there's a machine which has a V shaped wedge and opposite a plate which pushes the wood into it, splitting the logs. It's an incredible machine and now I'm able to make decent wood for the foundations and flat planks for the columns. I'm getting too into this, I know. We had lunch and I met Johanas, Georg's Spanish/German/English speaking nephew from Peru. Really decent guy, and it helps that his English is pretty good too! It wasn't 3 hours later before I found myself on a train bound for Nuremberg once again. We were heading to 'Volksfest', a generic German festival which had plenty of rides, biergartens and stalls selling all kinds of stuff. Our first stop was naturally a biergarten, but I don't understand why, if none of them were driving, everybody opted for Radler (shandy)?! Everyone except for me and Johanas, that is. It's the same price and frankly, not as good! There was a full rollercoaster there too, and I couldn't resist getting on it for one round. 2 loops and an almost vertical drop gave me the adrenaline fix I've been craving since being in Germany. There aren't any tigers to hang out with, tuktuks to hang out of, or aeroplanes to jump out of around here, so a rollercoaster will have to do! We ended up getting the same train that I got last night, getting us back at 23:30 and home for 23:50. As tomorrow is the day of rest, and it's now 00:57, I think it's safe to say; I'm turning all alarms off and having a decent lie in!