Back in 1971 I travelled Europe with hubby (though he wasn't at that time). We spent a few months in West Germany and really enjoyed ourselves, literally working for food, beer and ciggies, we were young, and carefree and it was certainly a character building experience. I'm not sayng we didn't have some difficult times but all in all it taught us a lot about life and how to appreciate stuff. We decided to go through from Germany to Turkey and managed to get a lift through Austria, (the then) Yugoslavia, Bulgaria to Turkey. We stayed in the magical city of Istanbul with all it's hustle and bustle of life, a true 24 hour city. We met up with many friends along the way and thought about going on to Israel to work on a Kibbutz for a while. Instead we headed off from Turkey to Cyprus on a ferry (it's only 40 miles away), we got married there and spent 3 months working. I packed grapes biound for the UK and hubby dug holes for telegraph poles. The hours were long the pay minimal but we could even afford to go into town on a Saturday night.
In all of our times of hardship, neither of us did anything illegal nor claimed any benefits, it just didn't enter our heads to.
I often wonder what would have happened if we had decided to go to the Kibbutz instead and I must say the thought of communal living has always appealed to me, not so to hubby though. But I would love to live on a large farm or such where all friends and family that were like-minded could live and work and be totally self-sufficient.
How good it must be to prepare meals for so many with home produced veg etc and sit at a massive table (or tables) sharing the meals. To be able to bring children up in a safe environment with trustworthy people - of course it's only a dream to me now. Maybe in my next life................
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