Hani Madeleine ghört??

We have been traveling in France for almost a month now and have practically driven through the entire south. We both really like southern France, there are many beautiful nature parks, the sea, many castles, old-fashioned villages, good food, and people are very friendly. The only thing that is really expensive here are the prices, Sarah already mentioned that last time. For example, today we drove 90 minutes on the highway and paid a whopping 20 euros in toll fees. But still, October has been our 'cheapest' month so far because we were able to stay with relatives and friends a lot and were free to camp. But right now we are staying in an AirBnB in Amélie-les-Bains, in the middle of the Catalan Pyrenees. It has been raining for days and it looks like it will continue like this for a while, it is getting quite uncomfortable in the camper. For 25 euros a night, we now have a 2.5 room apartment with a terrace, washing machine, and all the bells and whistles. We feel like we're in seventh heaven!

So, let's rewind to Vaison-la-Romaine, where we visited my godmother. Sarah already reported on it! 😉

Overall, we spent 10 super nice days with my godmother. It's just nice to be with family for a while and in the evening, when it gets cold and dark outside, to sit in the warm living room with a glass of rosé. And I finally found the time to finish my first module in my journalism course, and... there are really great news in this context... I recently wrote a report about hiking with my pack goats a few years ago and sent it to the editorial office of Globetrotter on a whim... and... they are going to publish it! In the Globetrotter magazine! Amazing!!!

From Vaison la Romaine we continued to Saint-Laurent de Carnols and visited Seba, a teacher colleague of Sarah's, who in turn was visiting his parents, who have been living in a beautiful little house there since their early retirement. We were invited for a delicious dinner and had a very nice evening with Seba and his girlfriend. We were allowed to spend the night in the camper in front of the house.

We continued south to Montpellier. On the way, we spent the night in the free parking lot of a small community. I don't know if it's only in the south or all over France, but many communities provide free parking spaces (mostly with fresh water and disposal stations) to boost tourism in their communities. The parking lot where we were was quite full, we got one of the last spots. Our little camper looked pretty old between the 20 other shiny, huge motorhomes around us. The owners of these modern all-rounders were old. Typical off-season. For weeks now, we have practically only met retired campers on the road. They have folding e-bikes in their garages and satellite dishes on the roofs. Nothing against the elderly – but we miss randomly meeting people our age on the road, like Justine and Guillaume or Jamie and Wolfgang.

But we really shouldn't complain because last week two friends from Lucerne visited us - Miranda and Pascale. For the first three nights, we rented an AirBnB outside of Montpellier and explored Montpellier and the surrounding area. On the fourth day, we continued to the Haut Languedoc Nature Park. In pouring rain and dense fog, we drove somewhere at an altitude of 1000 meters into a forest and set up camp next to a pond. It was freezing cold, but we turned up the music on our speakers to the max and warmed up by dancing in the darkness. It was a very fun evening! The next day, we wanted to make mobiles out of seashells that we had collected on the beach in Montpellier a few days earlier. Peacefully, we sat there drilling holes in the shells, threading strings through them, and decorating small branches with pyrography - until I slipped with the drill bit in my hand. I looked at my thumb in disbelief, where the drill bit went in on the left and came out on the right. I actually had a hole in my thumb! Reflexively, I pulled the thing out again and was surprised once again because I hardly felt any pain. Sarah lovingly took care of the wound with disinfectant and a band-aid, and now, three days later, it's already healed.

In the late afternoon, we left our little spot in the woods and drove to Carcassonne. Maybe the name sounds familiar to you, because Carcassonne is also the name of a well-known board game. We stayed in a super nice and super cheap AirBnB with really bad beds in the middle of the city and visited the fortress La Cité the next day, which was actually the inspiration for the board game Carcassonne. La Cité is part of the UNESCO World Heritage and is really beautiful. The fortress with its 3-kilometer long city wall houses an old town with many restaurants, souvenir shops, and small studios, and everything seems to be more or less preserved in its original state as it was 2,000 years ago.

In the evening, after a total of 6 wonderful days, Miranda and Pascale continued to Toulouse. We stayed one more night in a parking lot in Carcassonne and tested our parking heater for the first time. Actually, it has been very cold at night for weeks, but somehow I always tried to delay the moment when we really couldn't do without the heater anymore. That's because of my fear of explosions. I'm scared of everything that can explode. I don't blow up balloons, I'm afraid of gas stoves, and I'm especially afraid that our diesel heater will blow up the whole camper. So while Sarah pressed the button for the heater, I stood thirty meters away from the camper and waited for fifteen minutes in pouring rain until I was absolutely sure that our camper wouldn't explode. Inside, it was already very warm and now I also dare to leave the heater on in the morning. And yes, having a heater is really awesome and greatly enriches a vagabond life. But no matter the heater, in this cold and especially when it's raining, moisture accumulates in our van at night despite the insulation. Especially on the windows, but also under the mattress and in some places on the wall. The past few weeks have shown us that we are not really winter campers. We prefer it warm and dry.

Today we actually had booked an AirBnB near Molitg-les-Bains. Fortunately, I called the landlord before we left to give the arrival time because it turned out that she knew nothing about a reservation and the apartment was already occupied. She actually hadn't checked her emails. Understandably, we were pretty pissed, but fortunately Airbnb itself helped us immediately and a few hours later we checked into another AirBnB here in Amélie-les-Baines and are really happy here. Just a few days of cozy chilling again. I think we really have to enjoy it now because from November 1st it will be tough. We will help with the olive harvest in Spain near Tarragona for two weeks. Phew, a bit of work every now and then is good for us too!

After that, we will go to Valencia and Granada and spend the last week of November with Sarah's sister in Malaga. People who want to visit us in Valencia or Granada in mid-November can contact us 😊

After that, we will continue to Portugal. We will work as volunteers for a few days or maybe a whole week in the animal shelter where we adopted Filou. An animal shelter with 400 dogs. We are really curious to see what it will be like... to see all those poor dogs and cats - some of them have been stuck there for years because nobody wants them - some of them have been abused or rescued from kill shelters, just like our Filou back then. We will try to document our work there and will start a fundraising campaign in time for Christmas, because the animal shelter does not receive any state aid and is financed solely by donations and the work of volunteers. If you want to donate now - or even better, adopt a pet - this is the animal shelter: http://www.bianca.pt/. The animal welfare organization is called casa-animales (http://www.casa-animales.de/).

My parents will come to Portugal for Christmas. But everything else is still open.

As you can see, we are quite busy. We already have a few exciting adventures waiting for us in the new year, but that's for another time.

So, now we come to a completely different topic. Sarah hinted in the last blog post that something really embarrassing happened to me... well, I have now come to terms with it enough to confess it to you. So here's what happened:

I wanted to top up the motor oil and poured it into the wrong opening. Specifically, where the dipstick goes in. Yes, you read that right, instead of checking the operating instructions first, I simply assumed it belonged there. Fortunately, I noticed when I had only poured in a little bit, but in that first moment, of course, I thought I had ruined the car. I then contacted our Swiss garage and they said that fortunately, it wasn't a big deal. Phew, what a relief! Because: the oil still flows from there into the oil container, just much slower. It would have been really stupid if I had put in a lot of oil, because then there would have been a backflow and it would probably have flooded the entire engine compartment. So, what did I learn from this story? I'm a silly child. In the future, always read the manual first or even better, have such things done in a garage, then you're on the safe side. Bhuuuu, well, we really lucked out!

Author: Stephanie Köllinger