Howdy folks. Chris here. A small story about how we arrived at our current WWOOF destination, a bit north of Prague.

The date is September the 15th. Wednesday.

Spent about an hour on a bus to a rural area 60km north of Prague.

We got off the bus to be greeted by light rain and no real idea where to go from there. (I guess you could say we skipped a couple steps in the commincation and planning of our arrival to our WWOOF desination.) Upon asking a girl across the street waiting for a bus to help orient us (she couldn’t), we were offered the use of her phone. We contacted our WWOOF host. He said that he was in Prague, but that he’d try to get a hold of a ride: Michael, who was at the place we were to sleep, work and enjoy for the next 10 days. He also said, “Michael lives in the basement,” to our detriment, since, “he might not be able to hear the call, so might not come to pick you up.” It’s 4:30 pm.

Where might we be picked up, might you ask?

“Your best bet might be to hitch hike,” said our WWOOF host. The Czech girl agreed, since the bus might only come in two hours or so. We got off the bus about 4 stops early (thanks, Google maps + Czech bus site). “It’s about 4km down the road.”

We hit the pavement, each of us with 25kg+ or so of crap—I mean, necessary stuff (right?). I covered my accordion (which I was holding in a small cloth grocery bag) with the large-ish shawl I often use as a scarf.

We’re walking down a two lane highway with an occasional car passing every 5 minutes or so. We stick out our thumbs when we hear one coming, and this brings a variety of results, none of which ended with us being picked up. One lady shook her head “no!” (was this a bad spot? cars can’t stop anywhere on this two lane road—there aren’t many spots to turn off).

“Does a thumb in the air mean fuck you in the Czech Republic?” we ask ourselves? So we try an open palm. One man sticks his palm as if to gesture, “hello!” back at us. Back to thumbs, walking when possible, and darting off the road into the grassy ditch beside us when larger cars or huge trucks pass.

2 kilometers go by.. We took some pictures to document our efforts.. 3 km.. 4 go by.. “Damn!” we think. We’ve seen two large buses go by, wondering if they’re charter or municipal. Keep walking.

Small blue car stops in the road! He’s playing what sounds like Czech bluegrass. Awesome. John Lennon glasses. We realize we would have had to walk about another 8 or 10km to be picked up by Michael (which would have never happened, we found out).

Here we are at Medonosy. We’re told it means “Bring the honey!” Filip, our ride, explained that he was a political scientist specializing in Balkan international relations, working for some sort of scientific institute, from what I gathered. Awesome. Says he’s got the only horse in Medonosy. Awesome. We got his number and bid him adieu.

Since Filip had no mobile phone, we see there’s one across the way we can use to contact Vladimir, our host. The thing only takes cards. And whatever kind of card that is, it’s not ours. I’m too chicken to enter anybody’s property to say hello (large houses abound with fences and no buzzers). Laurel goes for it. Gets through.

“We’ll have to walk 500 meters that way then 4km up a hill.” It’s 6:30 pm. We get to the hill. Jesus. For the sake of a shorter story, let’s just say it was an effing arduous journey to the top.

When we finally found some directional signs, none pointed to our destination town. Well, sort of one did: it pointed to “Nové Osinalice” which I gathered to mean NEW Osinalice. But we want to get to Osinalice. The other sign, pointing the other direction at this fork in the road, didn’t have our town labeled. Atop the two signs, pointing nowhere, was labeled, “Osinalicke.” That’s right. Our town, but spelled differently, with a k in it. Great.

After a 500 meter trek one way, then us doubting that way, trekking back, and treking another 50 meters, we decide to put our shit down, and that I would wander in the direction which I thought would be the right direction. After some more trials and tribulations, I find our WWOOF house. It’s around 8 pm. It’s getting dark. Nobody answers at our WWOOF destination (hello? Michael? hello! hello? knock knock), but, as it is getting dark and I’m 98% sure it’s the spot, I go back for Laurel, we strap on our stuff and hit it. “Ignore these ferocious sounding dogs Lau, just another 500 meters and we’re there.” Jesus, you’d think this was the middle of some tough urban hood by the sounds and quantity of these dogs. Thank the almighty for reliable fences. And so we finally arrived at our destination. Hoorah!

We meet Michael and his girlfriend, Lucy. They’re a friendly couple who speak very little English. They’re Czech. “Do you know French?” they ask, to find some linguistic common ground. Je ne comprend pas. Actually, they’re English was much better than they seemed willing to acknowledge.

We get settled. “Here’s your room, there’s the wood for your fire.” Fire? We’ll have to learn. We accidentally ate some spaghetti which we thought was leftovers but was really in a compost bucket (a pretty fresh one, at least.. and the spaghetti was fresh.. but. ew. come on.) There were, however, some good faux chicken nuggets left over which we were delighted to munch on. We get ahold of Vladimir, who says he won’t make it until the weekend. It’s Wednesday night. “Ask Michael to give you some work to do,” which we oblige. Gathering twigs and sticks from the forest and dealing with fire wood it is! “They’re bread eaters,” Vladimir says on the phone, “there may not be any bread. Renata may bring some tomorrow.” So we’ll see.. Oh yeah, and there are 4 cats!

Next episode(s): “Chris’s vain solo efforts to find edible mushrooms in the Czech forest”; “Chris & Lau’s adventures pumping & then bucket scooping sludge out of a large stagnant pool of muck 8ft deep”; and also, “Learning how to mow the lawn. With a scythe.”