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Backpacking in Hindsight

July - December 2015
A 164-day adventure by Lisa's adventures Read more
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  • TravelerBackpacking in Hindsight
    Day 1

    A Blog In Reverse

    July 18, 2015 in Austria ⋅ ☀️ 25 °C

    After 3 weeks in Eastern Europe road-tripping with the family, it was time to say farewell.
    Their way of saying goodbye was ideal for me, as it will leave a lasting reminder of how lame and hilarious we can be.
    On our last night in the Morty campervan, Lisa and I were the sole audience to a Cat Stevens parody song. The lyrics had been cheekily switched to fit the current situation 'If you want to stay - take good care'. It was a good moment.

    AUSTRIA
    So suddenly, we were backpacking on our own! We were to stay in Innsbruck for a further 3 days.  Hence I will bring you a mashup of our Innsbruck experience with many sentences that MS Word would suggest revising. Bought eurail passes from a grumpy lady who wanted to go home. Ended up with 1st class tickets, though we discovered that much later. Steph, Lisa's long time exchange friend came to pick us up, and to celebrate, we went to a burrito-only place for lunch where you can name your food. I named mine G'Tag as I am confident this will still catch on as a greeting. Though the phrase wasn't so popular in Germany. We went to have our 3rd coffee for the day and were greeted by several large, self-proclaimed "top city lawyers" who were drinking beer at 2pm on a Friday. They decided to hit on me (and the two girls) and bought us all drinks, which I was asked to help finish. We went to Steph's SECRET BEACH and broke into a construction site. Swam in freezing water. I got back into my dry clothes on an offshore rock, unaware of the rapidly rising tide. I was almost stranded, but managed to climb my way out. The massive storm hit hard on our way home. Alternated between dancing in the rain and taking cover! Went out to a popular bar, an irish pub suprise suprise! Told some "short version" stories. Carefully planned sleep-in for operation "all-night".

    Steph took us on an expert city tour. Included some great adages such as "I was once told something interesting about this statue... hmmm..." and "This building has some historical significance which I cannot recall". Carefully planned midday nap to progress operation "all-night". Made some epic sandwiches which were described as "very strange" and later "really good". We were on our way to Nordkette for the mountain festival. Stuffed our sleeping bags and tent full of beers, but didn't smuggle so many in to the festival (we got thirsty en route). Sat up on the ridge above our campsite to soak up the atmosphere, and then a brief burst of rain (the last for the night). Two big bonfires and two stages kept us busy for many hours. We had an amazing midnight cheese strudel mit sauerkraut. Lisa finally crashed around 2am, a heroic effort. The rest of us danced and partied on in remembrance. We had decided to climb the mountain for the sunrise around 4am, a "tough but achievable 40mins" walk. Steph commanded Lisa to join us, her sense of adventure easing the waking process. As we were on the south side of the mountain we began to traverse the track that slowly circled the mountain. Really slowly. We saw the eastern ridge rise above us, and climbed vigorously to see that it was not "eastern" enough. And again. And again. By the time we had walked for two hours we were still not anywhere near the elusive ridge. We parked ourselves and looked down over the town of Innsbruck. The view almost identical to that at the festival grounds we had walked from. Stephanie complained of having to walk back in the dark after the sunrise. We watched the not-sunrise over the town. A not-sunrise is like a sunrise, but instead of seeing the sun rising, you observe your surroundings becoming gradually lighter. We all stumbled home and crashed. Minutes later we crawled out of our tent-ovens in search of food and water. We were served a monstrous amount of cheese gnocci and packed our tent away for the first time and went home to rest some more.

    We went to an amazing nepali restaurant after a non-existant pub quiz. The obligatory "day-after beer" was consumed at a moustache themed bar, which had a great portrait of the one and only Tom Selleck. Our multiple but uncertain car share options meant that we were to rise at 7am to check Stephs phone and then return to sleep until 10. Then we were to be suddenly awoken at 8:30 to "Guys get up you are leaving in 15mins". Turns out the earlier ride share was a go.

    SWITZERLAND
    We hopped in to the large van with the driver now on his way to pick up a package "of any size" to deliver from Austria to Switzerland. It was soon made apparent that a small hatchback would have suited just fine. The driver did not frequently look out the windscreen, instead spending more time searching youtube to show us documentaries about Istanbul. I regret asking where he was from. Once we arrived in Bern I was ready to try hitchiking for the first time! A post - festival dude with an old school BMW drove us to the town of Frieburg. We had requested a fuel-station, but instead were dropped at a roundabout on the on-ramp towards Lusernne. It did not turn out as such a problem even in the sweltering heat as many cars were passing by. Our handwritten request "Aussies vers Geneva S.V.P" was speedily accepted, and thankfully by a car that did have air conditioning! We chatted with the man most of the way, even though he apologised: "English is not my cup of tea!" This time we were dropped at a fuel station 25km from Geneva. Now at 4pm we were halfway to our ambitious one-day destination of Rosieres (in France!). Now our sign was to say "LYON S.V.P" It was not to be so simple - We saw another couple also hitching, holding a sign for Lyon. Not to be too competitive we introduced ourselves. Fortunately they offered us to stand with the other lane of traffic (in essence allowing us to hitch with half the cars) this was much better than waiting for them to get picked up first. 2 hours went by. And with those hours went our hopes of reaching Lyon that night. Fortunately, Lisa has middle-aged or elderly friends in nearly every corner of the globe. And our current location was no exception, just 15mins to the south was Nyon - the homely home of Freddy! Lisa made touch with them over skype for the first time in 2 years, and 1 hour later we were welcomed into their apartment. Their family was just about the politest and friendliest I can remember meeting. The town of Nyon was the host of a very large festival "Paleo". Not the spanish horse race, a large week long music festival with 80,000 tickets sold. I wandered down with Freddy to have a look. There was a large ticket-free aread with dozens of stalls, vegan food, bars, shops and a few stages. Within an hour we had covered everything between AI and geopolitics, the universe and the social zeitgeist.

    Our ride share the next morning required us to be up at 6:30am to travel to the Franco-Swiss border. I told him we would be holding a red towel. It was a good system as he only just spotted us, we were on different sides of the border! The balding french driver did not trust his Philippino wife. Every few minutes he would grab her phone and see who she was talking to on facebook. The air conditioning was of the "windows-down" variety. As part of our arrangement we were paying for three seats to be driven to the door of the farm. After another five hours in the car, on our second day driving, we were at our WWOOFING destination - Domaine de Mercoire!

    Im doing my best to break the conventions here. A typical blog might post up-to-date updates, live stories and the rest. Hope you enjoyed the time capsule update, from 7 weeks in the past.

    Joel    Read more

  • TravelerBackpacking in Hindsight
    Day 12

    Blast From The Past

    July 29, 2015 in France ⋅ ⛅ 29 °C

    I leave you with the next chapter in my retrospective recollections of our backpacking tour!
    In the arid mountains of Ardeche, nestled among the many tiny towns there is Rosieres. Although there are supermarkets around, many of the local community source all of their fruit, veg and wine from local farmers. Mael and his family are organic farmers. They have been living on their farm for the last 5 years, and Lisa has been visiting them since the beginning. Since then, Mael has expanded from a few organic vegetables, now bringing a large array to the market; tomato, cucumber, capsicum, eggplant, red and brown potatoes, red and brown onions, garlic, and a pile of chillis - customers can take one for free.
    After resting, we were straight to work on the first day. Mael’s father Guy showed us how to prepare onions. This involved removing the excess stalk and the dirty and loose outer layers. When we started we faced two large wooden pallets piled with dirty onions. An hour later, we could hardly see a dent in the pile. But we had prepared about 30L each of onions that looked ready for a supermarket shelf.
    The next day we got to work around the greenhouses. He has three of them standing, with rows of tomato, eggplant and cucumber throughout. We were collecting tomatoes, dodging the ones that had been cast aside for being rotten or not properly formed. Another common chore is organic pest control! Obviously they cannot use pesticides, so unfavourable insects are dealt with the old fashioned way – search and squish. The most pervasive invasive pesky pest was the ‘dorifor’. It is a ladybug-looking insect which we sometimes found on roughly every third eggplant bush. They are prolific breeders, a leaf covered in eggs or newly hatched babies are often seen. A good way to stay on top of these pests is to spend 15 minutes once or twice a day checking for them. If they were left uncontrolled, a large proportion of the crop would be destroyed by the end of the growing season.
    Guy is an excellent chef. The produce that is unsellable at the markets (for cosmetic reasons) is enough for large feasts for the family and guests. Our favourite of his dishes was tart au corguette (zucchini tart). A staple of their meals is a large cheese platter with bread, present at all lunches and dinners!
    A benefit of such a large house means they have ample room for visitors, as well as an extra wing which can be used by private stayers. It was now a few days into our visit, and a family came to stay for the BNB experience in the private wing. The night of the family’s arrival, Mael’s mother and friend came, as well as Jehan and his fiancé (Andrea). This was the makings of a party at the farm. We finished our work for the day in the afternoon and were told to be ready for Petanque and Apertif (drinks, finger food and ball games!) The open gravel driveway serves an additional purpose as a grand arena for the much loved sport of Petanque. I can best describe this game as an alterntive to Boule/Bocce/Bowls with some essential differences. First: it is much much more serious than the alternatives. Don’t even attempt to eyeball or estimate which ball is closer, you must measure precisely. Second: the game is played, as mentioned, on gravel. There is a real learning curve, its unpredictable and unforgiving terrain. Third: there are two distinct kinds of shots. In boule you may attempt to get close to the ‘jack’ and hit an opponents ball out of the way. In petanque, they are more distinct. You may, as normal, go for a good positioning of your ball on the field. If, however, you are attempting to disrupt an opponent’s position, your shot resembles more of a kamikaze-style bombardment. Watching established life-long players ‘shoot’ your ball out of the way is both impressive and brutal. It doesn’t serve you to get too arrogant early in the play.
    Alas the next day was an early rise. Lisa and I worked alongside Mael and three of his proteges. We were tasked with harvesting rows of red onions, thus giving us an insight into another stage of the process for this vegetable. You wouldn’t have guessed that there was anything of value in this large field. Visibly over-run with weeds, it had only been 6 months since this land had been completely turned over and planted with the young onion bulbs. Moreover, the weeds had been intensively trimmed back just 3 months ago. This still didn’t seem enough to hold back the knee-high jungle through which we foraged for the red onion stalks, some of which were only 10cm tall, and others were still mostly buried. They were, however, quite evenly spaced in defined rows and distinctive enough for it to be manageable.
    After three hours of harvesting, marked by the bell reminders from the nearby clock tower, we were worked out. The others continued on, but Lisa and I being WWOOFers rather than employees, didn’t feel guilty jumping into the ice-cold pool. Yes, even Lisa was straight in! It was that hot. It had only been an hour on the first day of arriving before Lisa mumbled subtly “I don’t think I’ll come back again during summer times...”
    On the next morning it was time again to go to the market. This time, it was the local moderately sized, Aubenas market. Regardless of the market’s size, it is a common strategy to overstock. It has been known (at least anecdotally) to dramatically increase sales in fresh produce when customers can see an abundance of fresh looking vegetables. As many supermarket chains in Australia do the same thing, I would expect it has some research behind it. It’s also intuitive - nobody wants to buy the last tomato, surely it wasn’t the best of the bunch, and how degrading would that be? So this being our third and final market, we had the packing and unpacking process down to a fine art. Mael’s van had comfortable space for 3000L of fruit/veg crates and had a dedicated spot for the large fold-out tables and shade umbrella. On top of everything we stacked the empty plywood mini-boxes on which the vegetables were presented. Sure it would be more efficient to sell them straight out of the plastic storage tubs, but the presentation of the produce is very important. The store really does have a nice aesthetic when it is fully presented.
    So after waking before 6am, driving home at 3pm we were well overdue for our daily lunch then siesta. Lisa didn’t waste the 10-minute’s worth of car travel, she was straight to sleep. After adequately feeding ourselves we were all thoroughly exhausted. Mael was determined to get 5 minute’s sleep. Lisa was already out like a light, and I was ready to follow. However, I felt bad for Mael who had a great deal of solo work to do before sunset. We set out for what would be my last afternoon of work. We collected many litres of zucchinis – I practiced my French counting out loud, there was about 105 of them I recall. Following that we also collected a similar amount of tomato and watermelon. Finally we were done! Needless to say it was a quiet and relaxing final night for us. The next morning we were up bright and early, en route for Barcelona, Spain!    Read more

  • TravelerBackpacking in Hindsight
    1
    Day 164

    The Myth...

    December 28, 2015 in Latvia ⋅ 🌙 -9 °C

    The Myth of the Common Myth of Common Colds in the Cold

    Those old wives sure can spread some pervasive rumours. Don't go swimming 20 minutes after eating and eat carrots for night vision. No smartass who knows its just a rumour can resist letting loose as soon as it crosses the conversation. For further laughs there is also the siren in the quiz show QI... you know the one. In particular I went beyond thinking about the old wives warning to "wear a jumper, else you will catch a cold!"

    So now we all accept it as a myth, cold weather does not give you a cold! "Its just a name darling"... the new-age wives would chuckle. Its always wise to rug up in the winter, of course. But apparently this is merely to stave off the risks of the much worse hypothermia and pneumonia. Funnily, its not often you hear of someone getting pneumonia because they left their jacket on the bus.

    So it goes more directly: "physically being cold does not make it more likely for you to catch the cold." I have always been skeptical of this common wisdom. But with sticklers like this, I find I just never quite get around to googling them. But today was the day, owing to a combination of being on holidays, and the tendency to have inane debates of curiosity with my partner. I daresay its also relevant that I am going through my first European winter. Hence, here I am in Latvia where the city streets are snow-lined and I have a slight tickle in my throat.

    Thus arises the perfect conditions for a literature review, through the lens of New Scientist and Science Daily. Its hard to get real facts from Yahoo! Answers after all.

    Ten years ago we didn't have much knowledge, or scientific funding apparently, concerning the reason for winter seasonality of Rhinovirus (common cold) and Influenza. We all know it of course - we are hardly surprised when we see pharmacies installing three extra-tall shelving units of paracetamol every winter.

    The mystery was somewhat settled by Lowen et. al. (2007) in their paper. They found that the flu virus is transmitted more effectively in dry air. Their tests (using guinea pigs; quite novel for their field) also suggested that colder noses take longer to shed the virus.

    So its no coincidence that colds spread in cold weather. Smoking gun? Almost.

    Indeed, the real smackdown wasn't delivered until very recently, by Foxman et. al. (2014). Researchers established that when your nose is cold, your immune defenses are reduced. This makes you more likely to catch the common cold. ZING! As someone who used to battle with well-above-the-average number of colds per winter, it feels sweet to say I was right. Sorry to everyone for being so demanding as to ask for an extra blanket when I stayed the night, but I was on to something!

    Lets get all full-circle. This is where the meta magic happens between the blogger and blogee. Stay with me to reflect on my journey. I went forward, beyond the conventional wisdom, skipped past Fox News and Yahoo!Answers and stopped at the last accessible frontier before Google Scholar. This is the realm of the Smithsonians, Scientific Americans and the New Scientists. But it turns out it was by far the long road to the answer. I could have gotten there quicker if I went backwards from the conventional wisdom and just stuck with the old wives tale.

    To perpetuate the mildly interesting dinnertime discussion of myths, I'm going to create one here. I heard it from an old wife, I swear. After all, I've been spending more time in their knitting circles recently. As the tale goes:
    You are far more likely to google your long-lived curiosities while on holiday.

    Sources I actually read
    1. Smithsonian Magazine (2015) "...Cold Weather Could Cause Colds" http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/there-…

    2. New Scientist (2008). "Cold Weather Really Does Spread The Flu" https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12808-co… [Accessed Dec 2015]

    Scientific Research Appropriated by Above Sources
    3. Lowen et. al. (2007) "Influenza Virus Transmission Is Dependent on Relative Humidity and Temperature"
    4. Foxman et. al. (2014) "Temperature-dependent innate defense against the common cold virus limits viral replication at warm temperature in mouse airway cells"    Read more

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