Last post before coming home! - Kumlinge, Finland

Howdy. Here are some pictures and a video from the month I've spent in Kumlinge, Finland. I come home in three days! If you followed this blog at all, I hope you enjoyed it at least a little.

What you are watching here is indeed a Swedish version of "Go the Distance" from Hercules. I went to the local middle school's musical, which they had written themselves about life on Kumlinge, and it freaking rocked. They speak Swedish on Åland because it's historically been a part of Sweden, if you were wondering. I couldn't understand anything they were saying, but a big chunk of the songs were reworked American songs, so I could catch up with the plot when they started singing. They also did Leavin' on a Jet Plane and a Bruno Mars song called Grenade. Absolutely amazing. And there were only 10 kids in the whole production, so actors had to double as musicians! Every time a song would start, half the kids would run to the side of the stage and pick up their instruments to start the song.

On the ferry from Sweden to Åland.

Count it! I only read Through the Looking Glass.

These are some of the wonderful, and, yes, fairly old people from Kumlige. My farmer works with the Red Cross's chapter here and this was a fundrasier lunch.

And part of that fundraiser lunch was a raffle of a bunch of stuff, and I won this rhubarb jam!

Kora launching a boat for the first time that she built. She is named Paerlan, which means The Pearl.

Afloat!

If you want, you could say that I'm awesome, and most people probably wouldn't disagree.

See above.

A "hugelbed!" This is a permaculture project where you dig out a little area, then fill the hole with sticks up to the previous ground level, and then pile your soil on top of those sticks. The sticks break down and eventually make great fertilizer, and you can plant in them. I built three of these while I was here.

A shot of the garden. The field you see belongs to the neighbor, who is the principal of the local school.

Buckets of pee. Really. Good compost should never be wasted.

The bike trip lives on. Kora on the left and Thorsten on the right

A wonderful little spot.

The three of us took this little bike ride to that little wonderful spot to hide this geocache. Geocaching is a kind of international treasure hunting thing. You post the gps coordinates of where you hide your stuff online, and then anyone can come find it. Someone already came and found this!

Hiding.

Thorsten and me.

A fun read.

Gave "A People's History" a run for it's money as the best book I read on this trip. I got this book from our farmers in Croatia, and when I opened it I found that it's part of a little traveler book exchange. A previous WWOOFer had left it in Croatia and signed her name, so I did the same and passed it on to a guy who came here from Switzerland.

The local school. They asked me to come and talk to the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades (a total of 9 kids) about California and my trip and stuff, and I ran an improv workshop for them. They were a little shy about all of it, but it was still rad.

Dandelions are blooming here like crazy. Big fields like this will be green one day and then literally overnight turn into this yellow explosion.

The local shop. This is also a good shot of the roads in Kumlinge. They're all this dark red dirt, and none of the streets are named. There are a few signs that point to farms and the school and stuff, but no street names on the whole island.

One of the neighbor's horses. I've been collecting horse manure for the past couple days for fertilizer for our potatoes.

The bike they've lent me.

THE WALL. The summers here are really warm, but also can be windy. The wind that blows through is really cold, too, which is no good for the plants. So I built this wall of sticks and brush and sugar and spice and lions and tigers and bears as a wind breaker. Teacher, leave those kids alone.

More of the wall.

Finished hugelbed.

Another hugel.

Their lovely hen.

This is the chicken tractor. The farmers keep the chickens in there for periods of time as a kind of organic grass trimming effort. The chickens pick and nib at everything, and eventually the grass is gone and they can plant.

A bed of almost 80 strawberries that I organized. It looks a little haphhazard at the moment, but that's because they were all just uprooted from their previous spot. Hopefully they'll be back tov looking nice soon.

Kumlinge Update 2

Here are a few pictures from my travels from the farm in Hungary to the farm in Finland. The giant traverse across Europe included more the 24 hours spent on trains (I had to run to make every one of my connections, so I literally spent about 30 minutes outside of trains that day). Check the post below this for pictures from our Hungary farm!

The traveling was: Zalaegerzeg, Hungary (6:30 am on Friday) --> Budapest, Hungary --> Prague, Czech Republic --> Berlin, Germany --> Copenhagen, Denmark (10:00 am on Saturday, couchsurfed a night there and reunited with a Bustory/bike trip friend from Ash Fork, Arionza) --> Lund, Sweden (10:00 pm on Sunday) --> Stockholm, Sweden (6:030 am on Monday) --> Kapellskar, Sweden --> Mariehamn, Finland (by ferry!) --> Kumlinge, Finland.

If you made it through that list, I'm impressed. Pictures:

Movin through Bratislava on the train.

Finished it!

Copenhagen's bike lines were awesome.

A big, big snail.

Givin some love to the big, big snail.

I hope my mom smiles when she sees this.

The Baltic Sea.

This is an entrance to Christiania, a little neighborhood in Copenhagen where there is no government. I think that's how it is, anyway. I don't know much about it. But it was filled with crazy hippie guys and all kinds of whacky stuff. Very cool.

The backside of that Christiania sign.

A brooks saddle!

Another Christiania sign.

Finished in only 4 days! Books finished on this trip: River's Edge: The Weezer Story, A People's History of the United States, Envisioning Real Utopias, and now Cat's Cradle.

The ferry that took me from Kapellskar to Mariehamn.

There was band on the ferry playin cheesy 50s dancehall stuff, and tons of old people dancing.

May 3, 2012 - Kumlinge, Finland

Hello, world!

I am writing at 7:08 pm, and the sun is completely and totally still up. And will be for another 3 and a half more hours. I'm up north, and in a couple of weeks we're going to get a few "white nights," where it's bright for 24 straight hours. Life is crazy.

Here's a very, very big pictures-only update that will catch you all up from our experiences in Hungary. The next post will be some experiences traveling from Zaleagerzeg, Hungary to Budapest, Hungary to Prague, Czech Republic to Berlin, Germany to Copenhagen, Denmark all in one massive day of train riding, after Max had gone home. Hope you enjoy, and if you're reading this there's a very good chance I miss you and hope to see you soon.

Love,
Roger Clemens

Hungary (before and after Max left):

These pictures were from our first big project on the farm, which was building a big fence for their sheep.

Tree sap!

Inexperienced hammer-ers

That's right.

The quatro.

Post-Max, a Hungarian WWOOFer couple named Eniko and Laslzo (i definitely spelled those wrong) came to the farm, and they are the ones responsible for ruining the hair of that little boy that Jennifer and Jonathan sent off to Europe. (unfortuneately the dreadlocks didn't stay in, and I'm back to normal buckethead style.)

Eniko (in front) doing some weeding and Laszlo sporting his overalls.

Mike and Nadine's grooviest tool.

The compost pile gets a little bigger.

Laszlo and Eniko again. Some of the coolest people I've ever met.

Workin man.

Nadine and a puppy.

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Eniko and puppies

The caravan where we ate meals before switching to the summer kitchen when it got warm enough.

A cd of native american spiritual songs that Mike, our farmer, taught to Max and I. We returned the the favor by singing back to him the Siyum song, which is a song we sing at camp every night before going to bed.

The toilet!

The outdoor bathtub! That chimney-looking thing heats up your water.

This was taken inside a little temporary greenhouse/tent thing (like the above picture). We were cutting the straw from the picture above with this crazy shredder machine, and the machine was pumping the shredded straw into this tent. It was really hot and stuffy and the air was full of straw. The guy is Mike, one of the farm owners.

Thomas (Mike and Nadine's neighbor) standing next to the hole he was helping them build for a ntural, dirt-and-clay-only swimming pool.

Nadine relaxing in the grass.

Me, Freidalina (mother of the puppies!), and Laszlo. These four pictures were taken by Eniko!

I built this fire and I know I'm a badass so you don't even have to tell me.

The picture's a little fuzzy, but I think that's Mike talking.

Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.