F#%king Strawberries

So in the past few weeks while I have been slack with the blogging and not even living up to my promise to post about reaching the half way point I have still managed to conquer one of life’s ultimate goals. I have attacked (see: furiously picked) one ton of ruby red, juicy, organic strawberries. I am living on a farm, strawberry farm I call it. It’s a bit of a joke of a place. Over-run with frogs and ruled with an iron fist by ‘the Don’, a cold-blooded Danish Viking.

The mornings, signified by my tent being shook to pieces, start at 4.30am. Luckily in this part of the world summer means the sun barely disappears overnight, still fairly light at midnight and again light by the ungodly hour in which I have to rise. However the days take an early end, by midday we are back at base camp eating, drinking or sleeping. The work is menial backbreaking labour fully exposed to the elements. Treated like true minorities having to work our asses off to make minimum wage on a piece-rate system. Fortunately however, minimum wage in Danmark is far in excess of what is available in other western countries.

The social aspect of attacking strawberries is surprising attractive. At first glimpse my island (Samso) seems unable and unwilling to open itself for parties. However the scummy pickers have circumvented this unease by taking over the loitering grounds outside the local supermarket. Each afternoon the chant “Let’s go, Netto” echo’s, Netto being the name of the supermarket and ends with drunken stories being shared in the kitchen and even the occasional Medieval Horn* is taken up to announce ones dissatisfaction with any situation. One night we took over a local café / bar, managed to get my crowd surf on with less than 10 people on the dance floor, made it home that night with one hour to spare before work. The supreme quality of the night was denoted by fact that the police came to strawberry farm looking for us the following day.

In other news, my camera has recently gone man-down, I hope to replace it soon so no drunken escapades go undocumented. On that fateful night the last photo was of me pretending to smoke a massive log over a fire like it was a joint, the details are hazy but all that matters is that I’m OK.

Story ends…

*def: Medieval Horn: noun. An instrument, can be actual or imaginary, used by a person (preferably drunk) to get their hola on in the act of venting frustration.

PS. The reason that I have not blogged about reaching half-time is that I wrote an extremely intelligent, insightful and witty account of my travels thus far on my computer and had it ready to post when ‘a serious error occurred’. I have since not been able to turn it on and feel too aggrieved to re-write. The gist of it was that I am having a good time, will come home when the money runs out and that I look forward to sharing a keg or two with you all when I do.