more questions
Berlin, Germany
For once our family makes up fewer than half the residents of the house we’re staying in. People are constantly coming and going. Copious quantities of food are constantly being prepared and consumed. It’s a hive of activity. Surprisingly, there’s rarely a queue for the bathroom.
At random moments choice questions are posed.
Was there a point at which you thought you had too many children?
I heard you’re homeschooling, how do you do it?
What do your children think of how you’re bringing them up?
Did you PLAN to have eight kids?
I truly am interested in cloth nappies, please tell me more.
How much does it cost you to travel around like this?
What cleaning products do you use?
Are you having any more kids?
And what about maths? How can children learn maths without school?
Do you think your kids are missing out on childhood?
The conversations swirl and eddy around. We discuss education, travel, ecology, freedom, group dynamics, environmentally-friendly life practices, language, cultural norms, entertainment, community.
It’s stimulating to talk with people in their early twenties. They’re idealistic, trying to live philosophically, growing up, making choices. Some of them even use the toilet without using toilet paper – and gave the rest of us a tutorial on How To Do So.
When sharing such personal details, maybe it’s no wonder they have no qualms about asking a virtual stranger personal questions!
And while we’re on the subject of questions, a reader asked how we’ve found internet connections whilst travelling. In Asia it was dead simple. Most hostels had wifi, and if they didn’t there were usually a number of unsecured wifi networks that could be tapped into. Luang Prabang was the only place we experienced any difficulty in Asia – and if one network was down, the whole town was down, often for days at a time. Even if we had been travelling without a laptop, there are internet cafes on every street corner – or so it seemed. In Europe it’s been quite a different story. The list of wireless networks that shows on the computer is most impressive, but without exception, they are ALL secure. Which, of course, means we cannot use them. We thought there would be internet cafes as in Asia, but I suspect because more people own their own computer, there are far fewer of them here. After weeks of searching for a connection and then having to race to upload blogposts and reply to emails, we ended up buying a mobile USB internet stick (for non-technos, it’s a sticky-thingy that you plug in to the pooter and somehow miraculously it finds the internet for you wherever you are). These wee gadgets are a bit pricey, so we only bought them in places we would be staying at least a month. Ironically, we saw an internet cafe in every village we stayed in Italy – and we’d bought a stick there so we didn’t need the cafes. However, we consoled ourselves with the thought that the convenience was worth the cost.
Tags: 2008/09, postcard: Germany
rayres
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