In this post, Lcawte, founder of the BrickPost writes about his extended trip to the Netherlands. You can read the first day of the entry here.
Wednesday[]
Date: 7th April 2010
Early start, being awake early because of my headache and a new stomach pain was not fun. Leaders came in and woke up the rest of the boys, kicking our feet.. get dressed, always a struggle in the bottom of a sleeping bag.. crawl out into our pens (small seating area for 6 of us, with a fold down table), and wait for the leaders to stumble out and give us instructions. Breakfast! Cereal, coco pops, thank god there was some food I remember! Back into the sleeping area to grab hiking boots, thick socks, rucksack, and tidy up our beds. We all knew we were heading to the Cheesary, but not that it would be a rather long walk. Along the walk we went under a busy main road, past another scout hut, watched some one break a nice letter box and saw some trees!
A Cheese Wheel!
When we finally arrived at the Cheesary, we saw some kind of running event going on, while we sat outside and had a lecture on how to tie our shoe laces. This was rather boring, as I kinda failed at it.. and I had to do it.. 3 or 4 times, then someone, a good friend I had made, called Tim, helped me by doing them for me :P Then we went inside, the shop stank of cheese, as there was shelves and shelves full of the stuff. We went upstairs where we met the the man in charge, who explained some of the history, and some of the not so simple process' of making Cheese. He explained about all the bacterial's as he called them, and how certain cheeses are made. He then got us dressed up in hair nets and plastic aprons, and we went downstairs in to the room where he would be taking to workshop. There were metal benchs set out and each had a large bucket of milk on, and some strange utensils. He explained that he had already heated the milk and preformed some of the other steps for us.
- We took a big slice like knife, and cut through what was like solid milk.. at first we had to cut it slowly and in certain directions, then as it got smaller, we could speed up and cut in more figure of 8 like shapes. We did this for at least 10 minutes, until it was cut up in to small floating pieces. He then made us put our hands in and feel it, it felt really... wrong.. it was squidgy and disgusting.
- Then we added some warm water to it up, so the bacterials and whatever could work.. I dont know.. something complicated-ish unless you make Cheese for a living..
- Then we had to cup out must of the water-like stuff through a sheet over a colander, into a bucket, until basicly all was left in the bucket of once milk, was this squidgy cheese like substance. We then had to feel it and poke it, which, wasnt nice, because our fingers just, basicly bounced off it..
- Then we put it into these shaped plastic contains and had to squash it so it was tightly packed in. Then we took them over to a big pressing machine. We didn't do anything else with our cheese after this, until we got home. The owner took us into his store room where he explained the importance of heat etc when Cheese is aging. He also showed us a variety of different sized cheese wheels and estimated their values. Some were over 100 euros!
Then we went back outside, and were split into 2 groups, one group who'd be walking the short way, the other who went the longer route we had come on for the walk there. I was split into the group with the longest walk :( We found out that we'd be going the longer route, and that we didn't have a map, as soon as the other group had run off. I thought this was a bit unfair, and we got lectured alot on making our own decisions, and not being a "flock of sheep".
When we got back, we had to clean up a bit because we were meeting the dutch scouts for the first time! We played some very strange team building games... Including one where we had to do an activity, and spot a spy from the other team, then we'd get some things from that country, like cheese :| That night I finally decided to go and take some paracetamol for my headache and stomach pain. And strangely enough, I slept through the whole night! Wow they must have knocked me out!
Thursday[]
Date: 8th April 2010
Coming Soon! (In July - Rest of the Report <promise />)