I'm Still Alive!

I'm sure some of you have been wondering what I've been up to, maybe thinking I'm lying in a ditch somewhere on the side of a road. It's been 3 weeks since my last update and I'm happy to say that I'm doing just fine. I made my way through France, saw the Tour de France twice, hitchhiked with quite a few different people (most interesting was a charter bus full of French boy and girl scouts), found out how great Girona, Spain is for a day, and finally arrived here in Tutzing, Germany!

For those of you wondering about France, I've got plenty to tell and it was great but I'll try to fit it in some other time to keep this short.....so on to Germany!

I arrived in Tutzing, Germany on July 27th and when I got here I was absolutely amazed. Tutzing is a small town with about 10,000 people and it sits on Starnberger See (Starnberg Lake) about 30 minutes south of Munich. Looking at the lake from the train and the farm is just an amazing view with the blue water and the mountains in the background. The farm isn't on the lake itself, but driving up a road with lots of normal looking houses you come up to this huge farm on top of a hill that can see everything looking down, it's great!



I'm staying with the Greinwald family, Martin is a fisherman and Marlene takes care of the horses on the farm. They have two daughters about my age, Kati and Sophie, and Xaver is their 11 year-old son. So far everyone here has been really welcoming to me and has made me feel like a part of the family. It's hard to think that I've been here a week already, the time has really flown by! Anyway, there are about 30 horses here on the farm and the land they live on seems to stretch forever. Martin's family has lived here on in Tutzing for the past 500 years or so (not exaggerating) and everyone in Tutzing and around knows the family.

There were two other helpers here, a couple from England, but they left on Saturday. It's never lonely here though, people are always coming and going on the farm....from horse trainers to the kids' friends to all of the kids that ride to the owners of the bigger horses. Very busy here. My daily routine is pretty simple....we have breakfast around 8:00 and then bring in the ponies from the fields (They are really big ponies actually). We then have to muck out the stables of the ponies and if the big horses have been in the stables then we clean those as well. After that just make sure they have food and water and do whatever small jobs there are until about noon. Then in the evening we bring the ponies back to the fields (horses are always in the fields) and clean up their area. Pretty simple and not as bad as it sounds with the cleaning up shit part.

Wednesday the 29th I got up early to go fishing with Martin. He only has one net and usually puts it out the night before. Woke up about 5:30 and left the house for the boat. Oh, and they also have a boat house on the lake! Could it get any better? It's a really simple operation though...Martin has a small boat and one net about 300-400 yards long. What's funny though is that he barely speaks a word of English and lots of times you try to talk to him and end up using hand gestures and making sentences with one word, he's great. Our day fishing caught us about 120 fish, which is a great catch! Afterwards we brought them back and scaled, gutted, and cleaned the fish to bring to the shops and restaurants around the lake to sell. Crazy to think that a fish I caught in the morning is going to be eaten by someone for lunch or dinner! It was a ton of fun though and I'm sure I'll be back fishing a couple more times this week!














Almost time for breakfast now, so I'll make another post this afternoon.....I promise.