I left David and Viola's farm with some regret a few days ago. Since Monday I find myself a few dozens of kilometers more north, nearby Grossenhain.
I am not sure why, but sometimes I think that until now this entire german section of my trip has a very surreal quality. The people, the places, the conversations. Everything feels too strange to be true. Could it be because, as apparently similar to mine as the german culture can be, it is in fact, deeper inside, totally different?
My two days in Bremen, before my arrival at David and Viola's farm... where I stay at someone's place from couch surfing, I was interested to meet this indonesian doctotal student in “political ecology”, he lives in a one-room flat on top of a building, for a long time, standing in the kitchen against the afternoon sun, he tells me with passion about his interests and his life, and he has also two indonesian friends staying with him, as they just arrived in Germany for a few months of study and are looking for an appartment, and my host tells me that we can just all sleep in this small room, and I prefer to sleep in the staircase, which is large like a room and where I can keep the window open, and the same evening another couch surfer also comes, he has a dutch name and is totally blond and he comes from South Africa and he studied architecture and he works on sailing boats of rich people, now he travels around on a vespa from 1950, together with an incredible leather bag that he made himself, as well as other useful leather items, in the evening the indonesian host takes us for a tour in old Bremen, the South African comments on amazing architectural features of the city, the city is incredibly lively and sweet, I have a terrible headache although I never have one, later on we go into a pub which our host says is his favorite, lots of young people are watching a football game on a big screen and cheering, we meet his friends from the university and it seems like they just stepped out of a book, or that they lived in a glass cage their whole life, the South African and I are from another planet, anyway I most of the time feel like I am from another planet, and then I wonder perhaps lots of other people also do, but perhaps they don't dare to express or to acknowledge it...
And now, here, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by industrial farms of all sorts, this little house, little farm, out of a fairy tale, with sheep of incredible hair of all sorts of colors, which gabble apples like would a beast in a video game, and which noone eats or kill anymore, and the incredibly beautiful house where everything is so simply nice, either very old or new, with an old man sweet like candy and who back in the days has transformed this traditional barn/stable/house into a full house, and his wife, always cheerful, talkative, who plays irish music in a band, she loves english and seems more american than german actually, anyway is there really a difference between germany and america, that's the question, we spend morning collecting apples and making apple juice, before having for lunch the most delicious food I ever had, the afternoons spent taking tea and talking about education and religion, the old man says in his quiet, slow voice, that for a real democracy people must be educated and informed enough to think by themselves, so the school must teach people to think, and religion and school were meant to prevent people from thinking and expressing themselves, as societies grew and became industrialized, the other helpx guy from England, breathtakingly meditative and quiet and silent, he writes a four-page letter by hand to a man with whom he has worked on an ice-cream parlor, because the man had asked him to keep in touch, and my room, or rather should I say, my appartment, which perhaps would be the appartment of my dreams had I ever had such a dream, sort of loft under the v-shaped roof, both ends are full glass between the wooden beams, on one end is my bedroom where the glass is covered with vine, and on the other is the entrance door and a balcony on which hangs actual wine grapes, which I can pick and eat each time I pass by and they are just the most delicious grapes I ever had...
