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.

Greek frappe coffee

There is a drink which the Greeks call 'frappe'. If you ask them what's that, they discribe it as cold coffe. Actually, it's made of 4-5 spoons of Nescafe with sugar and coserved milk. They add some water to this mixture and put it into the blender to make a rich thick foam. Then some cubes of ice are added. I think, there's no need to explain why I don't recommend to drink it? If you want to have a claasic americano coffee, ask for 'filtro cofe'. The name for the turkish coffee is 'ellinikos' and it means 'Greek'. They make it with sugar and milk.
This is frappe, for me looks like shampoo in a glass.

Tsoumerka mountain

This is Tsoumerka, the mountain which I fell in love with... Actually, it's a a mountain range located in Greece, near the town of Arta. We stayed there for a week at the shelter near the city Pramanda, which hosted the meeting of the motoclub Horizons Unlimited. And in this post will be a lot of mountains ...

It was a rainy day and everybody went to driving master-class so I decided to go hiking and climb that steep cliff

Actually, I tried to find a waterfall but I only heard it's sound.

I heard many other sounds from far away: birds, people, bikes, wind, goats... It was amazing.

Without any equipment I climbed as high as I could but it still was far to the peak

Our refuge is so small...It's over there, under the red roof

Pine trees feel great here but not me. I was scared a bit=)

Finally I reached a stony step which looked more like old ruined castle

These pine trees are laughing at me cause I couldn't find a path to go down

The last sun ray before a very stong rain

Here in between two cliff I found a way down. It was a "stony river" and when I steped on it, the mountain almost made me express delivery tour to refuge. It was raining when I finally came back,  and in the refuge I found a rescue team drinking greek vodka and thinking how to find me in this rain.

Next day we made another attemp with Alex and Dennis 'Old Grumpy'. They lokked very inspired in the beginning.

It's Dennis climbing the cliff

We sitting on the top of the cliff

The walk took us 2 hour. But it was not the end! On the next day I made one more attempt. First of all, I went to the well to grab some water but forgot to take a bottle. Plastic bag worked great! I wraped it twice, fastened it inside my backpack and started hiking.

Sunny day, beatiful place...

Lunch: bread, almonds, cheese

4 meters to the top. I couldn't make it because of flat rocky wall which was there

A picture from the top. That path is where my hiking started from.

On the way back. Good bue, Tsoumerka!

A week in Amaliada

After 2 days of awful biking experience I was luckly invited to live and work on a farm in Amaliada.
Welcome!

I received the invitation from the workaway site, where people search for workers and volunteers who agree to work for accomodation, food and cultural exchange. My hosts have good feedback and I decided to go there.
They have had a lot of workawayers and have built straw cottages for them. Here is the cottage built of staw inside and plastered by clay outside.

This id Jennifer with a goat named Mary.

 So, the farm is small and there are not many people there. Jen and George have nice 2 children and they are very hospitable. Also there are several animals: the big pergnant dog with a very complicated name which I forgot, puppy Ticka (cause he has ticks=), goat Mary, three wild cats, chicken family and few very social turkeys. One turkey had 2 smal babies right in the time when I was there.
My job was watering this tomato field.

I watered tomatoes every morning and cleaned ditches with a digger. Then it was breakfast time, we had plently of goat milk and figues.

Then we usually went to Kouruta beach to use free wi-fi and these nice seats

These are characters of national Greek theatre

Dinner after another watering

There were a lot of animals and insects on tthe farm

cicadas sre everywhere

Grasshoppers were of  a teaspoon size

We found this turtle in a field, fed it and brought back.


And the neighbors have an ostrich ...

... and huge cactuses

Then The Family has gone for several days and the farm was on Dana and me. We went hitch-hiking to the beach with the farmers in these great cars.

And this is Dana from New Zealand

Everybody play this game, a kind of badminton, on the beach. I'm working, the laptop is also here.

Amaliada is a small town, but there is something to see. For example, the cars.

...some more

Fish!

Awful drink called 'coffee frappe' made of nescafe with conserved milk and ice mixed in blender. If you want normal coffe, ask for 'greek coffee', 'ellinikos' or 'filter coffee'

The great Saturday market

Cheap fruits, melons for 50 cents each

Oregano and mountain tea

Local people

and some more from the market...

In a word, Amaliada is a very nice town with relaxed atmosphere, good for laid-back living. I spent there a week, then started missing the road and the motion and we left to Sparta.
To be continued!