Rosenhill (The Grand Finale)

So here I am, in the final week of my long summer abroad. I'm now at my third WWOOFing location. I mentioned in my last post how I was starting to long for home, but keep getting reminders about how much there is to still enjoy. Rosenhill is the perfect remedy to keep my mind from counting days, hours and minutes until I am home again. Of course this summer has been amazing, but I sure am looking forward to spending some quality time in my own space in the place I call home. 

As you might already know I've had two other experiences WWOOFing this summer. The first farm wasn't at all what I was hoping for, so looking for something more I found another farm near by. That was a lovely experience on a family farm and I ended up returning to them for a visit before my summer ended. Rosenhill is a whole other experience. For me it is the ideal WWOOFing experience. I'd say it's what I imagined WWOOFing to be like from the begining. 

Rosenhill is a Cafe and Musteri run by the lovely owners, Emilia and Lars. Must is a swedish word for juice directly from the fruit. The Musteri is where customers bring their apples to have them pressed into must. In stockholm I'd say it's one of the things Rosenhill is most well known for. 

Here's some fresh bread baked for the busy Sunday. The weekend are usually the most busy time of the week. Saturdays usually a party is held in the evening, either a private event or they host some sort of musician and have a dinner. Sundays they hold a flee market in the parking lot, and if the weather is good there are usually 20 to 30 people set up with knick knacks for sale.  

Here I am at my sleeping quarters. I have a roommate as well, Sophia, from Germany. Recently we had two others move in with us, Lena and Franzie, also from Germany. There usually 6 to 10 WWOOFers here at anytime. While I was here there were people from Germany, Spain, England, U.S.A. and Australia. People flock here from all over the world. Emilia and Lars always are sure to remind us that without the helpful hands and clever minds of all of us Rosenhill would not be what it is today. 

Meals here are always wonderful. There is so much fresh food from the gardens to use, so it always makes for a great meal. 

Something good looking and great tasting garnished with edible floral. 

Sooo fresh

Here we have the give and take shop, started by two WWOOFers. Here things are left and whoever can feel free to take what they need or want, leaving behind something they no longer need. It seems to work out well and makes for some great fun for us living and working. All sorts of fascinating things are left behind. 

Great seat on the rooftop.

Franzie and I, with our matching shirts. 

A view from the rafters of the Veranda. 

Today I leave Rosenhill and return to Stockholm to spend my last two days in Sweden with my sweet love, Clara. This summer has gone by so quickly. It feels like last week I was feeling so nervous to leave for the whole summer. Four months seemed like such a long time to be home and here I am at the end of the summer, wishing I could stay longer. But all good things must come to an end, I guess. Friday my flight departs from Stockholm at 11:15 and plan to arrive in Boston at 5:45 with a layover in London. See you all soon!

Getting close to the end

Back from the Family Farm. It was so lovely to get to spent time with Lotta's family before I left for USA. (Speaking of, I'm starting to really look forward to coming home. It's been a wonderful long summer.) We spent 4 days on Öland at the summer house. They have an old farm house 1.5 kilometers from the beach. We spent our days hanging around, going to the beach and Blueberry picking. What else are summer houses for??

Elvira, Ofelia and I headed down to the beach for a morning swim. 

Blueberry picking!

Some of the family, after our successful picking. From left to right is Lotta, Sabe (Felicia's husband), Felicia (Lotta's oldest daughter), Ofelia and Elvira

The summer house.

Nice sunset. 

When we got back to the farm we went out picking Kantarells. I've never been mushroom picking before this, but I had great success. I was actually assigned to pick blueberries while the children searched for mushrooms. As I was picking I came accross a goldmine! Found all these in one spot under a tree! It really is like finding gold.  

We even found some growing out of Ofelia!

I spent a majority of my time hanging out with the kiddo's while the parents kept busy. One day Ofelia, Elvira and I made some tiny cupcakes and had a great time decorating them with our fresh blueberries.

Yum!

Two of their chickens had some chicks hatch while I was there. So sweet! They also had somewhere around 10 lamb!

On Saturday I attended a summer Garden party with Lotta and the girls at one of Lotta's friends summer house near Uppsala. It was the sweetest little summer cabin out in the woods along with some neighbors, who also invited guest and combined parties. Everyone brought food and cooked over the fire. I made some Dandelion Wine from my Grandmother's recipe (Thanks Grandma Joan!) at the beginning of the summer at Lotta's house and brought some to share. Some others brought their homemade ciders and beer so it was a great time taste testing each others brews. Mikel, Lotta's friend, had a kick wheel for pottery outside his summer cabin So I got a chance to throw some clay! We all had a great time late into the evening, dancing, eating and enjoying each other around the fire. I felt so at home.  It really reminded me of a night back in Vermont. 

I've been starting to long for the familiarity of home. Not that I am homesick. I'm still fully enjoying my time here. It's just that being in a new country for so long where the lifestyle and language is new can be exciting, but it also can wear on a person. I think that party was just what I needed to remind me that home is right around the corner and there is still so much here for me to enjoy while I can. 

Today I'm off to the third and final farm of my visit. Rosenhills is an organic farm and Cafe. I've heard many good things about it from people who have been, but I'm trying to leave my ideas and expectations behind today so I don't feel disappointed in anyway. I am excited though to be in a more social environment and also at a working farm with a business. We'll see how it goes! 

Back in Sweden

We made it! We're now back in Sweden after our three week journey around Europe. Before we got back to Stockholm for good we headed out to an Island off the coast, Gotland, where Clara's family has their small summer house. While there we celebrated Clara's mother, Gabriella's 50th Birthday on the 22 of July as well as Clara's 20th Birthday on the 29th. 

Since it's been so long since I've posted anything I want to do a little bit of catch-up, so let me start with some photos and highlights from our Inter-rail traveling. 

Our trip started in Copenhagen where we met our dear friend Joy. She was kind enough to pick us up at the train station and host us at her appartment in Helsingor (about 40 minute outside of Copenhagen) for two nights. We arrived late in the evening so we took it easy at Joy's. In the morning we headed to Copenhagen on the bus and took the day to tour the city. 

Here is a view of Nyhavn, a harbor built in 1673 as a gateway from the old city to the sea. 

The Colorful buildings now serve as cafe's, bars, restaurants, etc. We ended our first evening of our journey having a nice pasta dinner back at Joy's place. 

In the morning Clara and I headed back into Copenhagen to Meet my long time friend, Matt, who happened to also be in Copenhagen Visiting his girlfriend, Chelsea. We decided to speed our day visiting Freetown Christiania.

 

Above is the Mural upon entering. Here's the part of the description from Copenhagen.com-

"The famous Danish freetown Christiania was founded in 1971 when a group of hippies took over abandoned military barracks and their surrounding along the Christianshavn canals, and developed it to an alternative society with own set of rules, independent of the government. This social experiment that included collective ownership has over the years developed and established its semi-legal status. Today the enclave's user rights have been terminated by Danish state."

Here's a group shot of us with Matt and Chelsea before Clara and I headed off to catch the night Train to Amsterdam. 

I loved the architecture in Amsterdam.

Clara and I found a great bagel shop down the street from our hostel where we could put a deposit on a picnic basket and place our order or what we would like for our picnic. We went by later, picked it up and had a lovely picnic in Vondel park. 

On our last day in Amsterdam we stopped by the Van Gogh Museum. 

Here's some roses, and most doorways around the city were framed by flowers in a similar manor. So beautiful!

My belongings strewn across the floor. I decided I need to pack my bag a little better so things were easier to access. (and I somehow I seemed to make myself quite comfortable at the first hostel)

Clara, on the train to Prague. The night trains were not very pleasant trying to sleep on them, especially when we ended up in a full cart. With our inter-rail we couldn't book a sleeping cart useless we wanted to pay. The way the inter-rail pass worked, it was good for 22 days, unlimited travel. We paid one time to buy the pass and from there we can hop on whatever train to whichever city we plan on headed to next. We did have some what of a plan and had a date that we had to be back in sweden by, but if we had the time and money we could have been quite the travelers. 

This is the Astronomical Clock in Prague. It displays the time of day along with the location of the sun and moon in the sky, the phase of the moon and the current zodiac sign. It also has four characters that are set in motion at each hour and one of the twelve Apostles is also presented in a doorway at each hour. 

We took a free tour of the city which was great. Our guide was from New Mexico, but was quite a traveler. He worked the summer as a city tour guide in Prague and is an english teacher during the school year. He really gave us a thurough history of the city. We were honored to be apart of his last tour group of the summer. I suggest to any of you visiting cities, if there is a Free tour offered, do it!

 

Some Czech money, otherwise refered to as Koruna.

Here we are in front of the John Lennon Wall. After we took a walk across the St. Charles Bridge we made our way to the Petrin Tower and made this one of our stops on the way. Lots of inspiring quotes, drawings, etc. and I can only image the layers upon layers. It's been a graffiti wall since the 1980's and is always being added to. 

Here's the Petrin Tower. Standing 60 Meters tall on the top of a hill, it offers an amazing view of the city. 

 

View of Prague from the top of the tower. 

 

And Now here we are in Berlin! There was so much street art. We planned to go to Berlin on the way back from Croatia, but while on our trip we changed plans. Clara had some friends of hers that were in Berlin for two weeks renting an appartment so we decided we would go stay with them. Even though we always met many travelers on the train, at the hostels, etc. it was nice to enjoy cities with some friends. 

 

We spent a day at the Berlin Botanical Gardens. It's ranked the 3rd best in the world, and I don't doubt that one bit. 

Clara making friends with the fish.

Germany is well known for good beer. We spent our nights enjoying quality beverages along with good company.

 The nightlife in Berlin is great. Unfortunatly for me, one night at a Dance club I managed to loose my Wallet. Everything worked out in the end, I only lost 10 Euro, my drivers license and my debit card. It could have been worse. So for the rest of the trip Clara and I had sort of a shared economy. So now I'm awaiting for my New Debit card to arrive in the mail. 

During the trip I was reading I left my Tent in San Fransico by Emma Kennedy. It's a story about Emma and her friend, Dee, traveling to America in the 80's after graduating from College to have a final Hoorah before starting their lives after studying. The book follows them to America where they hope to get jobs in San Fran then make their way back to New York at the end of the summer after loading their wallets. Things don't work out as they hope and they end up in all the worst situations. I really enjoyed the book, Kennedy is so whitty in her story, and when things seemed like they were looking down for Clara and I, Emma and Dee made our trip look like a piece of cake. 

Here's a shot from the train on our way down to Croatia.

Here we are After our Night train from Berlin to Zagreb, the Capital of Croatia. We had a relaxed day walking around the city then spent the evening in our air conditioned hostel having dinner and doing some planning. Something we didn't realize before we started our journey was how much of our time we would be spending planning our next moves. We tried to take each day as it came, but in order to make sure we enjoyed the short stay in each location we wanted to make sure we knew what we wanted to do and see. 

It was so warm in Croatia (35-40 degrees celcius) it was hard to enjoy the city, so we decided it was time to get near some water so the next day we got a bus early in the morning to Plitvice Lakes National Park. It is the Oldest National Park in Southeast Europe. It was incredible. Many trails to walk all around the waters to different cascading waterfalls.

A view of Split, on the coast of Croatia

from the bell Tower during our self guided city tour day

Clara, taking siesta.

Sunset on Hvar

Bay in Hvar

Arriving at the Budapest Station

Some of our Roommates for the weekend from Germany, Estonia, Australia, Sweden and USA!

We spent one of the very hot days at the Zoo.

Hero's Square in Budapest

Thermal Baths

At central Market

Having lunch waiting for our train in Copenhagen back to Stockholm at the end of our long journey

And we made it!

 

As soon as we got home we had to leave again to go out to Gotland, and Island off the coast of Sweden, to met clara's Parents and stay for the week. There we celebrated Gabriella's 50th Birthday and Clara's 20th. It was very lovely to be able to enjoy the island and not have to be a tourist, and I really enjoyed spending time in nature. The beaches were lovely and we spent lots of time picnicing and biking around the island. 

Now I'm headed off to another Island to Join Lotta and her Family at their summer house. Remember them? The Family farm I stayed at in may. I'll be there for a week with them then come back to join Clara for four days, then head off to another farm.

The last three days Our friend Louise has been here visiting with Clara and I. She was on exchange at during the same year as Clara in Randolph. It's been great to be able to meet up with so many old friend in New places. 

P.S. This post will be reviewed and changed again, but I don't have time because I have to leave the catch the bus to the Summer house in ten minutes. !!!!!