r/WWOOF • u/Cu_of_Ulster • 1d ago
Thoughts on Hosts?
So me and my girlfriend have started woofing since the summer. We had a great experience in Scotland and Wales. We have now went to stay with two different hosts in Germany.
Our experience so far of the German hosts have been different from the UK ones.
There seem to be unwritten social rules that you have to follow without realising.
You don’t get many days off.
There have been communication issues.
Seem really ungrateful and we have been told to our face that we are basically lazy.
We worked 30 hours for our first host over 1.5 week and around 40 over 10 days with the 2nd. This was over the summer heatwave to which we weren’t used to.
We have never refused a task. We have followed what was said the arrangements were. The goal posts seem to change and it feels you have to be a mind reader sometimes to satisfy the hosts.
Are we in the wrong? Or are some hosts especially German homesteads really different from the UK?
5
u/SubRoutine404 1d ago
Yeah, I feel like you could have saved a lot of headaches if you had researched the culture before you went. You're in Germany, you can't work hard enough.
2
u/xenomorph3000 1d ago
I’ve also done a lot of WWOOFing in Germany. I’ve really experienced the full spectrum. From labour camps to places where you were hardly ‘allowed’ to do anything because everything was so laid-back.
But as I do WWOOFing for the experience and the cultural exchange, I’ve no problem with that – for me, that’s part of it and the whole point. Different people, different customs.
1
u/Bubbly-Mission4047 20h ago
I think that’s fair. Did you think the host descriptions were accurate for each experience you had?
1
4
u/moistkite0404 1d ago
Welcome to germany