We seem to inherit – no not monetary wealth BUT nice people. Jeff and Elaine had a German couple Steffen & Karin house sitting. Long story short, it turned out they both are travelling on a sabbatical (year) and Steffen had to go back to Germany for 10 days to attend urgent business. Just in time our holiday apartment (Casa de las Flores) became available and we said, well Karin if you help a bit you are welcome to stay and await the return of Steffen.
Steffen did return ! and as we got along quite well they stayed a bit on to help and organize their further travel plans.
The weather wasn’t great but we could show them a bit of Galicia and galician live as well – One memorable evening/night was spend with our neighbors at a typical galician dinner and Karin, solo at that time, was invited as well. Nothing to it, except Karin is VEGAN, a very alien concept to Galicians. Some salad leaves where found, we could just prevent lacing these with tuna and Karin indulged in a huge helping of local potatoes. An extra Filoa baked in sunflower oil rather than the usual fat and the typical loud and happy congregation will have made a lasting impression.
I had the unmissable experience of two cooks preparing a huge selection of evening dishes vegan and non vegan – EACH night.
Steffen, who organises tours for punk groups across Europe, came back happy, tiered and deaf but recovered sufficient to help with some chores.
Among these was the unloading and locating of the famous “Bauwagen”. This arrived on a low loader in driving rain and there was no way this lorry could get across our wet field. As the usual ever so optimistic guy I am, I said “it doesn’t weigh that much its just a bit of steel and sheet metal”. One tug at the towbar and the concerned face of the lorry driver had me scampering away to round up the smallest tractor and an experienced driver.
Our neighbors are just wonderful and seem to tolerate our weird ideas. Juan arrived, took one look and went off to get the old green mechanised mule of the village.
Whilst this was going on more neighbors congregated and together we manged to hitch the casa on wheels and drive it across the field to its designated place – all in driving rain.
My wife Barbara got elevated blood pressure and accelerated heart beat when she found out that the tractor had to negotiate the garden to get the “Bauwagen” in and itself out again. But Juan, with encouragement of us all, managed serene and without any destruction to highly prized plants to “plant” the “Bauwagen” and get the tractor out again.
She did think about an offer to buy the tractor and inter it in situ, but now she can and does spend that money on even more plants, some of which are necessary to obscure our newest acquisition.
Today Otero delivered more sand & gravel to finalize the stand, insulation material for the interior and some tiles for yet another project. I am happy to report that divorce proceeding could be avoided when discussing the color scheme by simply agreeing that two or more coats of paint simply add to the insulation factor therefore are not wasted.
Here are so called “artists” impressions – done by cheap software rather than expensive artists – and we apologise in advance for any damage done to animals nearby that maybe the result of our color trials.
Sadly Karin & Steffen are moving on – but they left us the legacy of being properly schooled in all things vegetarian & vegan – not converted – but capable of guaranteeing the survival of future visitors that are vegetarian or vegan.
