After a very cold night and great hot shower we crossed the first border. The weather was grey, rainy and cold, so were our feet. OMG! So so cold in the car, the heater isn’t working – never did I think, but now we wished we had a heater installed. Well, we can’t really complain though, it was fun to cross the border and finally get the Volkswagen back onto German roads. I don’t think we’ve ever taken her to Germany, so she’s back home for now.
It’s quite funny because all the way from The Hague to where we are heading now – Kasbach-Ohlenberg – it’s kind of one road. From the A12 in The Netherlands to the 3 in Germany, all the way to Bonn. Not the most beautiful scenery yet but we have just started our trip. Actually after Bonn it starts to get nice with those typical beautiful German villages, mountains with castles and rivers winding through the landscape.
Alexine is doing great. She’s enjoying the trip already. After 5 years of mostly standing still she is now fired up for a big trip. She sounds like birds waking you up in the morning, even though she hasn’t been this heavily loaded by us before. She is around 1300 kilo’s without interior and stuff inside her. I’m sure she’s up to 1500 kilo’s now, which means she’ll have a lot more difficulty with climbing mountains and the Alps are waiting for us. Luckily we are in no rush so she can take however long she needs to climb. But that’s for later. Let’s go back to our second leg.
So, we left The Netherlands behind and drove into Germany without any problems. I absolutely love open borders and wish it was this easy to cross all the borders of the world for everyone. How wonderful travelling is with open borders and not the annoying visa’s and all that. With a bit of traffic jams and work on the roads we arrived in Kasbach-Ohlenberg about half past three.
Dominik welcomed us with a delicious cup of coffee and a warm fire in his wonderful home. We met Dominik in Svalbard about two years ago on the Rembrandt van Rijn while sailing alongside the magnificent Northern island. Dominik told us he makes the best burgers in the world so of course we had to try those. Last time we came here by train and tasted these delicious burgers! This time we arrived with the van and will taste home made pizza from his newly handmade pizza oven in the garden. Dominik and Nicky live in this amazing house, previously owned by a pastor. It has this huge garden and wonderful kitchen. We love being here, drink wine together, eat and have stories about food & travelling mostly. Nicky & Dominik are such nice and hospitable people, they make the start of our long journey amazing and I’m sure when we feel cold or have a glass of nice wine we will think back of our start here.
We still have to figure out some things and finish a bit of work which is nice to do here. I’m not a big planner, yes I’m very organised but I don’t like to plan too much. So, I’ve organised a very nice Google Docs in which I have written for which country we need a visa, what language they speak, which religion they have and what money they use. It included a check list, addresses and government websites which inform us about corona regulations. But, I haven’t installed my GPS tracker yet, haven’t checked if our MiFi (internet) is actually working and have no idea how a satellite phone works (sorry mum & dad ;-)). No worries though, I can figure this out very easily over here. Which I am going to do today!
So the second leg of our journey brought us to a friend in Germany and gives us the time to figure those things out. Also, it’s freezing at night and our next stop will be in the Schwarzwald where it is going to snow this weekend. Not sure if Alexine is up to some snow but I’m not even sure if we are. Luckily we’ve got some extra sleeping bags with us but driving in snow is also quite cold in a car without heater and with lots of cracks in the door.
What do you think? Should we go for some snow fun? Or stay and bake more pizza’s? Let us know in the comments!
Love, Milene & Yuri
