La Cite des Insectes

for those of you who do not speak french, that means, the city of insects. for those of you who are still curious, i am at a place that has an insect museum. Unfortunately, it is closed for the season, until spring, when the tourists come back. But there is still a family living here, Jim and Regine, and they still have work to do during the off-season, so i am here to help. So far, i've planted a lot of flower bulbs, and am working on cleaning out the theater, where they show short informational videos about insects. The whole point of the place is to show how important insects are, for biodiversity, the health of the earth, and our gardens, so there is a lot of information about the relationships between insects and plants. The museum is really great, and the gardens are beautiful.










i found this place through an organization called WWOOF, willing workers on organic farms. you can check out the website, www.wwoof.com --- as you can see, i probably couldn't do anything without the internet. if you don't know about it, you should. you can find people all around the world who will host you (feed you and shelter you) in exchange for work. Each place is different, so you can find pretty much any kind of experience you want. Anyway, i think it's really cool, and that's what i'm doing out here in europe, with practically no money, and lots of time.
Here, i am staying in the house with Jim and Regine, and 5 cats, 3 of which are little kittens. awwwwww. i love it. luckily it is okay that i don't speak french because Jim is from the UK and Regine is from France, but she speaks very good english. we eat really good food, including, since it is france, good bread and cheese all the time, and sometimes some good wine. one day, the three of us went for a walk, and picked mushrooms and gathered chestnuts, which we ate later that day and the next day. We are right near the center of france, in the region of Limousin, which is in the middle of nowhere (kinda, the nearest town, is only about 1o minutes away, and a big city, Limoges, is about an hour away). But i'm glad we are in the middle of nowhere because it is so so so beautiful: rolling hills with fields, trees, cows, the sky, clouds, and a house here and there, nothing else. It is quite nice to be out of the big cities, and in the countryside.

i met another wwoofer already, when i arrived here, keiran, who is from santa fe. but he left a few days after i got here. i know i will meet a lot of travellers as my journey goes on. i do wish i had a travelling companion, and hopefully i will find one. there are positive aspects of travelling alone as well as travelling with someone, so i am having a great time, but if any y'all homebodies wanna come over here and get your hands dirty, learn another language, meet some cool people, learn some stuff, you're welcome. i'll probably be here for a while, y'know.

so i am here at la cite des insectes for another week and a half, and am then off to another wwoof farm about an hour or two away. halloween is coming soon, and there is talk of a halloween party, but i don't know if it will happen. I said it would be cool if we turned the museum into a haunted house. The french don't really celebrate Halloween, but of course they know about it.
anywho.... life is good and kitty cats are cute. i love you all.

Berlin to Paris, in 3 days
please read disclaimer before reading if you haven't already :)






some people are into the architecture of churches and other buildings. i'm into the architecture of playgrounds. a playground i found in berlin....


....right down the street from this apartment building. i saw the pirate flag, the tibetan flag, some cool graffiti, and thought i would probably like these people that live here. too bad i don't speak german.


























some pictures of the East Side Gallery, i think the largest section of the Berlin Wall still standing, but don't quote me on that


after 3 days of getting used to being on my own, having to carry my own bags, figure out what i want to do with my day and where i want to eat all by myself, and e-mailing farms to see if i could come and work, i left the Sunflower Hostel in Berlin to follow the directions i had gotten from a girl in Berlin.
If you do not know about couchsurfing, you should really check it out, whether you are travelling yourself, or want to meet people that are travelling. www.couchsurfing.com . it hasn't actually worked for me yet, but i think the more people that do it, the better it will work. anyway, a girl from this website gave me very specific directions on how to get to the best place to hitchhike from berlin.
I almost took the train, but realized that would have been out of laziness, no other reason. I had also looked at this other website: www.digihitch.com , where people discuss hitchhiking experiences, and found that a lot of people said that it had worked for them. So with this support and the directions, i stuck out my thumb at this gas station/restaurant/rest stop.
After about 15 minutes, i got a ride from a nice German trucker. Unfortunately i speak no German, and he spoke no English, but we were able to communicate the basics. So he dropped me off a couple hours down the road at another rest stop like the last. A lot of nice people were stopping, but not going where i was going, towards france. I ended up sitting up all night in the 24-hour restaurant, which was really nice actually. Except that i had no bed, and could not speak the language of anyone there, it was fine. I read Mrs. Dalloway, ate when i was hungry, and was safe and warm the whole night.
Once it got light, i went out again, and stuck my thumb out. This time a really helpful Greek trucker picked me up, and he took me about 3 or 4 hours in the direction i was heading. We stopped at the trucker stop and had free coffee, and he dropped me off at another perfect place to get a ride.

This time, after about 45 minutes, a young Italian businessman in his speedy Mercedes picked me up and took me to Stuttgart. He dropped me off right outside the hostel, and told me where the best place was to get ice cream, as well as a general orientation of the city. a lot like the bus tour. only this time i got to experience the lack of speed limit on the autobahn. we were going

about 200 km/h when there was no speed limit. it was awesome!
once in stuttgart, i decided to stay the night in the hostel, and then take the train to Paris the next day. By the way, if you're ever in Germany, don't go to Stuttgart. But if you have to go to Stuttgart don't go to the DJH hostel on the hill. It was so institutional, with lights going off when there is no movement, and long hallways that i kept getting lost in. And if you find yourself having to go to that hostel, don't go there after no sleep the night before.




The train ride was really nice, but boring, compared to the last couple days. I got to Paris and found a great hostel, the Aloha hostel, where i met people from Australia, Greece, Italy, Canada, and Uruguay.




yay! i made it to Paris! i know, i know, of all things to take a picture of, why the eiffel tower? well, i was only there for one day, and thought i should at least go there.

So:
a bus tour through Germany. a very nice way to begin my journey.
who? : me, my mom, my grandparents, 3 aunts, 3 uncles, and 2 cousins. oh and about 30 other people.
where? : Weisbaden to Baden-Baden to Munich to Weimar to Rothenburg to Dresden to Berlin. In 14 days.
Highlights:
in weisbaden, some of us went to the circus, and not just any circus. This was Flic-Flac. Not that i've ever been to a circus before, but this is not what i usually imagine. You could go to the website and look at the pictures to see what i mean. www.flicflac.de (don't be thrown off by the german, go to aktuelles program).

in Munich, my cousins... who, by the way, are the coolest cousins ever, Stephen and Erin, and i couldn't have done this bus tour without them... so we went out to learn about nightlife in Germany. We walked a long time, almost gave up, until we found this place where all the clubs were. They are not mixed in with other stores and restaurants, but all in these certain areas, like a food court, only it's a club court. well, we were there around 10 at night and some of the clubs were not even open. We did not party all night, but we could have.

of all the cities, dresden was my favorite. it was not too big, and we didn't look like slobs compared to the rest of the people. i felt like i could have lived there pretty easily, if i knew german, which i don't.

berlin...
was cool. we tried some absinthe. i was expecting something a little more. and i spent a lot of time riding the underground and surface trains around the city.

I drank a lot of beer, ate a lot of food (although it is a little hard being vegetarian in germany), stayed in really nice hotels, and had a good time with the family. thanks mom for bringin me along.

(pictures coming soon)

Note: obviously this is just a little taste. maybe if you e-mail me, i will give you more details. i like to get e-mails.

DISCLAIMER:
if unconvential modes of travel make you uncomfortable or upset, and you do not want to think about it, then i should advise you that you may not want to read this. i contemplated not including these pieces of my adventure, for the sake of some people's peace of mind, but part of the reason i do it this way is because i know i can and i know i can do it safely, and also to show other people that it can be done and done safely. if i wanted to travel in a different way, i could have, but i chose to do it this way.

inspiration

here is a quote from a book i just read that pretty much sums up why i am travelling, and especially why i am travelling the way i am, a little bit differently than most people do:

"this is what it means to be an adventurer in our day: to give up creature comforts of the mind, to realize possibilities of imagination. Because everything around us says no you cannot do this, you cannot live without that, nothing is useful unless it's in service to money, to gain, to stability.

the adventurer gives in to tides of chaos, trusts the world to support her -- and in doing so turns her back on the fear and obedience she has been taught. she rejects the indoctrination of impossibility.

my adventure is a struggle for freedom."