Workaway in Vassara

We spent almost 4 week by Workaway in a village named Vassara near Sparta. Workaway means that you work 3-4 hours a day for food and accommodation.The village is very old,  it's surrounded by mountains and the houses look like castles. We lived at Phil Day's house but then we had to move to the school yard and live in a tent. It's a story with nice beginning and very unhappy end.

This is the rural bar, very small, nice and expencive because of crisis. 

It looks like a paradise: palm trees, blue sky..

My job was to paint on the walls. Phil has three houses, one for themselves, one for workaway people and one stays empty because it needs some makeup. This is the bedroom.

The kitchen

A bit of arabian style

The wall in the living room painted with spanch

Alex repaired the traktor. It was difficult to find parts for it, they have them only in the workshops but not for sale

Meanwhile, we've got a new suspension for the bike!

I saw the naked bike first time...

We also have been to Mistras, ancient Byzantium city

Ok, let's go back to Vassara. This is the family's house.

One day we cooked 'pelmeni'

Everybody said that it's a very filling food...Ha! They have never been to Russian New Year celebration, that's where the filling food is=))

Those are great dogs Meli (means 'honey') and Lola

In old times the Greeks buried the vessels with olive oil in the walls to hide it from the Tuks. Nowadays those vessels are found in every house.

The gates

First two weeks the family was very friendly and we were happy to be there. Then strange things started happening. Before we came there Phil said he had some additional work for Alex for which he would pay him. It 's always very important for us to earn some money and we were very disappointed to find out that Phil doesn't want to give us additional work. He didn't explain why and we still can't understand the reason of such behavior. But he asked the neighbours and found some small jobs with welding. Alex made rails at the post office building.

Of course, the payment was very small but it's better than nothing. Then another strange thing happened: 'suddenly' several friends of the family decided to visit them in Vassara and we had to leave the house and camp in the school yard. We were told on Wednesday that we have to leave the house on Friday. It was not very nice and hospitable. By that time Alex ordered some packages from Germany to Phil's adress. So we had to stay in the village longer and wait for them. I started painting this pictures in the main house. 

We had to stay in the school yard in our tent without Internet and take summer shower outside.

So, the family went to the airport to meet their friends.Although we had to live the house, another girl from Workaway named vanessa stayed there. It was the 4th time she came to this family and they highly trusted her (and didn't trust us). I still had to finish my painting on the wall so I had a right to eat 3 meals a day and stay at the house during the daytime at least. We decided to have breakfast for two people instead, thinking that it's quiet fair. But this 'highly trusted' person told us that we have no permission to eat and even to show up in the house. What could we do? I didn't finish my painting because she didn't let me!

And when Phill came home he just didn't take care about what happened between us. Vanessa made us guilty for everything: I didn't finish the painting cause I didn't want to, Alex took a wrong hose from the garden for our summer shower so the poor girl couldn't water the plants and so on. They believed her and even didn't ask us what happened. When we met each other in the village, they smiled and didn't say anything.

We spent a week waiting for the packages. Several times we went to Sparta by hitch-hiking because the bike needed a new battery.

We had great hitches. This is Mohammad Ali from Pakistan, he runs a barber shop in Thiva

A sign of crisis: less cream in the cookies

Finally we received 3 packages, one came after we left to Athens and one didn't find us and was sent back to Germany because it didn't have a PHONE NUMBER  on it.

So, I made some conclusions. 1) Woraway is not for me, I feel like a worker and cant be free with the hosts like I do on couchsurfing. From the point of the hosts it's even worse, they get used to people crowding their house and forget even their names. Phil once said 'This jam wasmade by somebody from New Zeland'. No exchange, just using people. 2) I can't trust the people who always smile. Our hosts were smiling all the time, but treated us like dirt.

Anyway, we'll remember this lesson and go on travelling.