Despite still feeling quite weak today we decided to leave the house for the weekend. We spent all week mostly inside the house in various shades of gastroenteritis, and both kids and parents were getting restless being cooped up like that. Our home on wheels is a nice place to escape this feeling. Here we usually sleep well, spend a lot of time outside, and are happier for it. I figured that being outside in fresh air wouldn’t hurt our health either. Soak up some vitamin d, and boost our happiness by being around nature.
I’m not sure where we ended up this week. I doubt I will be able to upload this post when I finish it (2 July at 8pm), because internet is nowhere to be found. We’re on some organic dairy farm about 20 km from Oberammergau (not that that will ring a bell to most – if anyone – but you can Google it). It’s not a bad place. The landscape is hilly with beautiful Ammergauer Alps in the near distance. The farmers have a small self-service farm shop with ice cream and local products that are quite nice. We enjoyed the ice cream! In general, the environment is also very nice. For instance, there’s quite some wildflower (red clover) hay meadows around, and because of this, there’s plenty of insect diversity around. We’ve seen many beautiful butterflies today, as well as many hoverflies and beetles.
There’s only one problem here.
The pile of manure right next to where we were supposed to park the car also attracts a lot of unwanted insect friends.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many flies together in one place in my life. I’m not even exaggerating when I say there were hundreds sitting on us during dinner. I can even see about 25 right now on the ceiling of our van. Now, most insects can somehow make me enthusiastic, but there’s quite little about these goddamn shit flies that makes my heart beat faster.
I’m not sure if and how we will get rid of all the flies tonight. I hope they will not terrorize us in the night.
Robin Heinen 