Monat: Juni 2023

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25.06.23 – The Last Night Together

Today we drove towards the german border again and looked for our last spot to sleep that night. We found a parking lot 30 mintues from Arnhem sourrounded by fields and water. We set up the chairs and table and sat around in the grass for a while and listened to Walter Moers „Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher“ again. But this time as an audiobook. We just hung around enjoying the nature and that we had nothing planned.After a while we cooked ourselves some dinner, good old pasta with ratatouille sauce. Apart from some cars coming and going and some bikes driving at the nearby street, a really calm place. After finishing dinner we used the golden hour to take some photos of us with our new clothes and I flew around with the drone a bit to get some aerial shots of the surroundings. After the sun set, we packed our stuff together and moved into the camper as mosquitos and other blood drinkers came out of their holes. Unfortunately it were a good 30 degrees outside which made sitting in the van very unconfortable so we McGyver’d us a mosquito shield in front of the camper door so at least some fresh air could get in. We listened to more of the audiobook and slowly fell asleep, accompanied by the pretty loud ribbiting of the frogs at the nearby pond. It was kind of annoying and beautiful at the same time. But after a while you just fall asleep, so all good. Eventhoug waking up a few times, I at least, feel relatively refreshed now. Today is the day where we will drive to Hannover where Lukas will hop on an ICE to Hamburg and Lazaro and I will drive to Hümme to sleep one night at Marius‘ place (like on the last roadtrip). Mainly because driving 8 hours home on one day is too much.

This was our second roadtrip through France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. It was a cool adventure again and the next one will come :).

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24.06.23 – Den Haag Shopping Day

While we visited Brugge we also looked for some vintage clothing stores. However we weren’t really successful. So we continued our search in Den Haag, our next stop. After an annoying paperchase for a parking spot, we finally found one where we could leave the camper at. We walked into the city and got us some lunch at a burger restaurant. After finishing we continued our search for cool stores and went to „Kilo Kilo“, a store where you pay 30 bucks for each kilogram of clothing you found. Pretty awesome actually. And they had some nice pieces! While Lazaro bought trousers and a sweater, I found 2 trousers, 2 sweaters and an awesome leather jacket with cool cotton sweater inserts! Probably means I have to give away one of my old jackets… Lukas didn’t find anything in that store and so we moved to the next one which was more expensive but had a really awesome selection of shirts, jackets, shoes and other stuff! I can really recommend to visit that one when visiting Den Haag! It’s called Vintage Island. Here we all found something. Lukas bought a nice shirt, Lazaro also a cool short-sleeved shirt and a super awesome jacket and I also found a shirt. And as I had bought enough already at Kilo Kilo, I had to hold myself back..All in all a successful shopping tour in Den Haag. After that, we drove a little bit out into the country side where we stayed over night. Nothing special so I won’t go into much detail here :). Oh and I actually did not take any pictures while being in Den Haag. However it isn’t the most beautiful city, at least where we walked around, so you didn’t miss anything.

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23.06.23 – In Bruges

Driving to Brugge luckily did not take that long from Dunkerque. We parked at a parking lot for campers that was pretty close to the city core and after that went for some groceries. After bringing those back to the camper, we walked into the city. Brugge is a really beautiful place with an incredible amount of old buildings. Some featuring a gothic design and then some looking like soneone just took them from some place in england and put them here. The big plaza in front of the Belfort of Brugge actually in parts reminded me of the Römerplatz in Frankfurt. After walking around the city and finding some nice fries and of course a belgian waffle to eat, we visited an exhibition by Dalí which was currently happening. Every time its so amazing to look at his pictures, from scribbles over etchings to sculptures, his style amazes me. After getting our dose of Dalí we searchee for a place to drink. We went to a pool/sports bar and got us some beer. Lazaro and I tried the „Red Delirium“ which was some weird cherry-flavoured 8% beer. A normal beer drinker would probably say, that that is not a proper beer, but it was delicious. After getting another one, we got us dinner (which sadly was way too expensive for being not really good) and then walked to another bar. A metalbar called Valhalla, very nice. The bartender there was super nice, looking like your typical metalhead: 2 meters tall a big beard and tattoos and piercings everywhere. And he gave us each different beers to try as we all aren’t very experienced beer drinkers. He gave us a little introduction into some belgian beers which was really cool! All while listening to some live shows of powermetal bands.After finishing our beers we decided to walk back to our camper and get ready to sleep. Brugge was really a cool experience!

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22.06.23 – Dunkerque

Today we drove to Dunkerque where we had booked a spot at a campingsite, mainly because we wanted to shower.After doing so we walked along the coast towards the city and looked at the many very different houses next to each other on the boulevard. It were about 4km to the city core but we decided not to walk that far as we wanted to eat dinner , so we turned and walked back after about two-thirds. As we were pretty tired, we did not check out too much of the city.Back at the campingsite we set up our table, chair and stuff for cooking and made some simple pasta with tomato sauce. After eating up and washing dices, we moved inside the camper as it got pretty cold in the evening so close to the ocean. We did not really know what to do so Lazaro read to us out of his book „Die Stadt der Träumenden Bücher“ by Walter Moers. That was very nice – maybe I have to buy that book. We then listened a bit to anothee audio book but relatively quickly decided to get ready for sleeping as we wanted to get up a little earlier the next morning to drive to Bruges and to get a spot at one of the parking lots relatively close to the city core. So it was around 24:00 as we said good night already (pretty early compared to the other days).

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21.06.23 – Discovering Fort-Mahon-Plage

After getting up and eating some breakfast we packed our stuff to go to the beach. After a 10 minute walk we found a nice spot and after a bit of laying around we went for a little swim. The water was very refreshing, relatively cold but not too cold. Very nice to go swimming in the ocean again. After more laying around and almost falling asleep in the sand we decided to walk back to the camper again to leave our stuff there and walk back to the main road. We walked up the road, away from the beach, and towards a small bakery where we got some delicious pastries and bread. The baguette actually was so delicious that only one half of it survived the way back to the camperAfter our little snack we hung around in the shadow of the car to hide from the heat a bit and then started looking for a place to eat. Again finding something vegan or at least vegetarian was a real challenge, but luckily there was a burger place that actually had a vegan pattie option! The burgers were delicious and the amount of fries was huge. Later that evening we went for another walk into the nature reserve right behind the camping place. It was very calm and I took the drone for a little fly to take some videos and pictures. As we got back to the camper, we watched „In Bruges“, a tragic-comedy movie set in Bruges to get everyone ready for our visit there in two days.

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20.06.23 – Towards the Sea

Today we woke up to an incredibly humid heat in the morning in Verdun which led to the decision to drive to the coast where it’s cooler. We started driving at around 12 and had a long way ahead of us. During our trip we passed through many small french villages some of which looked like out of a cowboy movie. But also many empty and rundown. We arrived at the sea at around 20:30 after a day of driving and then started searching for a spot to stay over night. In the end we chose a camping spot 200 meters from the beach where we could stay. And with 10€ per day, it isn’t really expensive. After parking we made some Ravioli again for dinner. As it began to rain again, we couldn’t really do much. We wanted to explore the small town a bit though so we got our rain jackets and made a little walk in the rain which was fun!Shortly after we went to bed and got a good amount of sleep as the temperatures were much nicer here at the sea.

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19.06.23 – Trip to Verdun

As our sleep wasn’t particularly good last night, we stayed in bed for a little longer the next morning. After finally getting up, we decided to get tickets to go for a little swim in the nearby lake which also had shower rooms. The humid weather made it impossible to not sweat so every possibility to shower was welcome. After showering we left our parking spot and started our trip to Verdun which was only around 1½ to 2 hours. When arrived in Verdun we had a quick look at Park4Night to find a place for the night. But before we drove there, we bought some groceries for the next days. After leaving the Aldi, we drove to a little meadow next to a little river where other campers and mobile homes already found their spot. We parked a little further up the road and, a little later, decided to walk into the city to find a place to eat. We arrived about 25 minutes later and found most of the restaurants closed. It seemed like monday was closing day for most of the restaurants, so we ended up at a kebab place – which also meant fries and salat for Lazaro as this was the only vegan „option“ on the menu. As only 2% of the population is vegan, most places probably save themselves the „trouble“ of offering vegan options.While we were eating it started to rain. And it did not stop. I looked at my weather app and found out that it would not stop anytime soon and would get even stronger so we decided to walk back to the camper as fast as possible. Accompanied by lighting and thunder we got back pretty much soaked but right in time before the rain got even stronger.The rest of the evening consisted of listening to music, playing cards and drinking some wine and whiskey which was fun. Especially towards the end.We went to bed at around 3 in the morning.

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18.06.23 – Roadtrip 2.0!

Today marked the start of our Roadtrip 2.0! Again with Lukas, Lazaro and myself, the usual suspects. The first stop was a parking lot in Luxembourg, directly after crossing the border.
Here we stopped and took a little walk around a nature reserve located between Wintringen und Remerschen. Due to the considerable amount of mosquitos we always had to keep a steady pace to not get stung. That made us extra hungry so after getting back to the camper we cooked some nice Ravioli as dinner. Always accompanied by some nice music.
After eating up and cleaning the dishes, we took another little walk around which was abruptly ended by rain and thunder which made us run back to the camper just in time to not get completely soaked. We then build our sleeping spots and then tried to sleep. However it was hot and very humid which made it pretty hard. But well, a hour here and there was possible.

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Monthly Hindsight

May 2023

This month it’s easy to choose. From the 18th till the 21st of May my friends from uni and us (Liz and me) went hiking in the southern parts of the black forest! As we learned from our last hiking adventure we now decided to take it a little bit more easy and rented 3 tiny house-like huts at Camping Schwarzwaldhorn. That was a much more pleasant experience as we were able to sleep more than three hours each night and also sleep in a proper bed.

The first day of hiking we hiked as one big group and the day after we split into 3 groups with the first being the „hardcore hikers“, the second the „yesterday was too much so let’s only walk half as far today“ and the third group which was the „chill at the camping site“ group.

The second group, which was mine, went geocaching which was quite fun but in the end also pretty intense.

All in all again a nice hiking adventure! I am already excited for the next one 🙂

~ See you soon 🤙🏼