16th of March to 29 of June, 2020.
SHUT DOWN. LOCK DOWN. As many other people and travelers around the world, I am now stuck in a foreigner country. I am stuck in Czech Republic. And the ironic thing is: for many years I wanted to visit this country (well, mainly Prague, but still…) so much but I would never think to be fed up with it. Maybe I would be fed up with any other country, who knows…
After have to leave Prague, I was accepted in a farm house in the countryside, near a city called Benešov. The village where I am staying for the last 2 months is called Stranný and it is located about 1h30 South of Prague.
I never thought I would be alive to witness something like this. At the beginning, restaurants, pubs, coffee shops and any food wise / entertaining kind of place were shut down, only supermarkets remained opened; people were not allowed to leave their homes without a mask or in any group of people; eventually, something that we only thought to happen in movies and tv shows happened: stores and supermarkets had empty shelves because people went nuts and started to storage food. Different rules and laws were applied for different countries. Some of them did not follow any precautions at all (until it was too late). Followed by China, Italy was the most infected country. The next ones were France, Spain and Germany. The U.K. waited also too much to take any precautions so when the Prime Minister got the virus and they finally started to do something, the number of infected people was already huge. Nothing worse than U.S.A. though. Thanks to Donald Trump and his already known absence of intelligence (stupidity), the number of cases just in New York exceeded the ones in the whole China. Also in the U.S.A. they hid for a while the original number of deaths, which lately was told by a journalist who, infiltrating himself in one of the hospitals, discovered piles of corpses stocked around. Now, over two months of the majority of lock downs, the situation appears to start going back to normal. Next week, a few countries will start to open their land borders, Italy being one of them. Of course we can never know for sure.
I never knew what to think of all of this in the beginning. Every time I heard about Coronavirus before I came to Czech Republic, I thought that people were over reacting. When every thing went crazy and all the lock downs were in order, I still did not know what to think. So many different information and controversial statements, that makes you think: in whom should we believe. As you probably know, most of the victims were people in elderly. But the virus also took the lives of several younger people. So should we be really extremely concern if we got the virus or just calm down and treat it as a normal flu? People were saying that at some point everybody in the planet would get it. And the vaccine? Well, as any other virus, the fact that it mutates really quick it makes more difficult to get one. At least this is always the excuse given by the scientists. I will never understand this human being lack of intelligence when it comes to medical and scientific purposes. In de end, at any times we really need them, they show themselves useless, always taking ages to find a solution.
And what about the age of most victims? Some one could simply say that, being a strong and deadly virus, it would obviously make more deaths in between the weakest. Some one else would say it is a society strategy. And some politicians said that it was a good thing for the economy of their countries. You see, apparently for some governments, elderly people are like disposable cups: after they served their countries for most of their lives, they can just be discarded, for the best of the rest.
So this is a quick report about the general situation. Now talking about the place where I ended up… F. is a British / Scottish man who got married with a Czech woman called P. They have one child, A. They live in a one hundred years old stone house and have a few rental rooms at Airbnb. That is the main help they need right now: finishing the construction of one of the rooms. But they also have a huge garden which needs care also here and then. Apart of the vegetable garden, of course, which basically I was digging and preparing the soil for the new plants.
When I arrived, there were two volunteers here: a girl, Daphne, from the U.S.A., and a boy, M., from Argentina. I got along pretty well with Daph since the beginning but with M, since the first contact I had with him, I knew things would not work out pretty well between us. For many times he was rude to me, saying mean and completely unnecessary things. Most of the times I was letting pass without saying anything, you know me, but at certain point I could not handle anymore.
Our jobs were different almost everyday. But in the opposite of other unpleasant places where I had basically to arrange myself what to do, here F. is very specific about what should we do everyday. What I enjoyed the most were the scenarios we could completely change (like this abandoned area which we managed to transform in what is about to become a beautiful garden and the vegetable garden which I, by myself, DIG out of the bushes) and the pictures of dried flowers I’ve made and F. hanged in the Airbnb rooms.
The food is amazing thanks to F.. He cooks excellent and diverse meals. We cook ourselves too. I succeed sometimes (like in the Vegetarian Cannelloni and Chickpeas and Spinach rice) and not so much in others. Now that Daphne left (over a month ago actually, when together with her father and her Embassy, she managed to catch a flight back to U.S.A.), I am the responsible for making cakes time to time. F. also prepares the Brittish Crumble time to time. It was the first time I tried and of course I loved. We also had this traditional Czech dessert, which consist in dumplings full filled with plum jam and poppy seeds on top. Actually we had quite a few traditional Czech dishes as well, including the goulash with the dumplings, the lentils soup, the Czech Ginocchi version, called Halusky, and many Czech soups.
Thanks to Daph I learnt how to prepare walnut butter. They have two walnuts trees here and plenty of walnuts to be broken free of the shells. So since I am the only one in love with the walnut butter now that Daph left, what I do is, every Saturday morning, I break enough walnuts to prepare my week set of walnut butter and an extra portion for F. and P. to do what ever they like.
My relationship with A. grew better with the time. At the beginning she was quite rude to me too some times. But it is been a long time since that happen, now we have pleasant conversations from time to time and she even listen to me when we are talking about something more serious.
By the apposite of that, my relationship with M. went downhill. I mean, mainly after Daph left (do not ask me why) he was treating me better but, out of sudden, he says something really stupid and offensive, mainly when he is mistaken about something and get aggressive. For me the worst part is how he expects that next day I simply forget and treat him nicely. I am done with that. Since his last crazy and aggressive behavior, I cut down relations with him, barely talk to him during work. Of course after a week or so things would be a bit better but never again like before. I will not talk with him again about any deep subject or engage into a long conversation. He still try, of course, and start to talk about stuff that I have not asked or something like that, but I think it is more because he is a compulsive talker than anything else. I just cannot encourage this behavior anymore. It is his problem, not mine.
At least he got someone to talk now: Gustavo. This new volunteer from Chile arrived a few days ago. They have a lot in common (mainly the passion for talking unnecessary things all the time) and are super close right now. I just wish to know what Gustavo would think if he knew about all the bad jokes M. was always doing about Chilean people before his arrival.
Anyway, about Gustavo I feel a bit bad to say but I do not like him very much. He is as rude as M., he sounds super silly and childish, he is selfish and disorganized, but the worst is that he smells. And he eats far away too much! Besides, he is so no sense most of the times, as he has no idea of how to behave under a Workaway experience, or better saying, how to behave with people at all.
Last week, they both behaved horribly towards me when F. did a super obvious joke about the cake I had just baked. I was super cold with them the whole week but, of course, my stupid big heart starts to get smooth little by little, although I still cannot stand them.
Gustavo had a big argument with P. out of nowhere. At least I was there so I can tell. She asked him to dry the sink properly after he finished the dishes and he freaked out! He said he was simply a workawayer and not a servant. Laugh. Anyway, a few minutes after he left the kitchen, he came back and tried to apologize with F. but in response F. asked him to leave among the next few days. I think I can tell for everybody in the house that we were relived.
More land borders started to open up but there was still to much confusion about who could enter / leave the country. And of course that apart of what was written in the official websites, travelers crossing some of those countries would tell different things.
Because of all of that, and because Renata had asked me to come back to Croatia and help her around with the dogs for a while, I decided to spend about 2 months again in Habitat until things would get better. I was almost running out of money, so at least there I could make a plan.
I decided to stay one more week in Stranný because it was A.’s birthday and I wanted to help with the party. It was a lot of work! Plus I spent a lot of time making her one of my dry flowers pictures as a birthday present because she had said before she really liked them.
So two days after the party, me and M. got a train and a bus to Croatia.
