Intro, budget and spending
The Big Europe Road Trip…
Just over a year ago I set off on a huge adventure with my two kids (10 and 2 at the time). It was incredibly intense and overall, a massive success!
Although I love writing, there was NO WAY writing about the trip could be part of the plan, but I have an idea..
I will share stories, the design of the trip, and reflections about it one year on to the day. So please follow me, and look for the Big Europe Road Trip title if you want to hear all about it. I’m not sure how often, or when, but probably most Thursdays I will write.
For today I just looked back through the drive and saw the budget. I design my life to spend very little money, in the screen shot of the excel you can see how much the trip cost (it was actually just over 3.5 months).
Countdown – 1 Month to go
One of the things I didn’t mention about budget yet is that the KEY to being able to do this was that I cut my usual living expenses to 100€ a month.
Back in BCN the empty rooms in the flat were rented out to cover most costs, and I just don’t have other bills. I spoke to my insurance broker and she realised that between the EHIC and the car insurance there wasn’t any need for travel insurance. The most important financial plan was that the 350€ that Bernat paid monthly for childcare, he would now spend on coming to visit us each month.
But mainly this week I want to reflect on the planning process!
Professionally I did three things:
1) Find people to cover the day to day running of the Boodaville projects.
2) Reduce the number of activities of the Association while I was away, and accept that the finca might be empty.
3) Organise the travel plan so I could work one morning a week, and also be available for meetings one afternoon a week, thus maintaining my 600€ a month income. (The day I worked each week was sooooo challenging every time – except once on the youth exchange in Romania where I joyfully remember having a long, uninterrupted important call!!!) I also booked in time to work, as well as time to rest, while Bernat was with us.
The route was pretty clear by this time last year, and the key points were Lesbos (an ex-volunteer, the edge of Europe and refugee education), Ramnicu Valcea, Romania (an EU youth exchange featuring Boodaville), Stockholm (staying with an old friend). So we had many miles to plan. The trick was finding enough hosts / hostels / cheap rooms, that we could keep within the accommodation budget.
The Big Idea
I gathered ideas for the trip for over a year before leaving, in a whatsapp group with just one other person, who stuck with me even though they could have left at any point! This was my dumping ground for ideas, contacts, important things to remember.
I was actually thinking about the trip from well before that – the idea of a sabbatical to travel with Kira was always there. I wrote on the kitchen wall “Go around the world Sept 2023” at least 6 years ago. Then with Joanna the trip was reduced to a few months in Europe. (The next thing to write on the wall is that when Joanna is 10, and Kira 18 we will leave for a year to go around the planet!*)
This was an experiment in integrating education, holidays, parenting, permaculture teaching and my professional life. I got to experience stepping out of the 9 – 5, leaving behind photocopies of grammar exercises, forgetting bedtime and alarm clocks, and visiting European partners and friends in person. I chose to take my elder daughter to participate in activities with refugees at the edge of Europe, rather than watching other peoples’ documentaries.
The patterns
Allowing for different phases of play, work and rest was crucial- we never aimed for more than one activity a day!
I had a few things very clear during the planning phase – firstly that I needed to organise as much as possible before leaving, as it would be impossible to plan and travel at the same time. Secondly that we would ALWAYS stay at least two nights in each location, or 3 if I needed to work, and that we would travel no more than 6 hours on a travel day.
Something I find incredibly important in life in general, is the integration of careful planning and detail, with its exact opposite – allowing for going with the flow and accepting what the universe offers up.
I dedicate a lot of time to fostering and nurturing connections, and when planning the trip, I didn’t contact people and projects in a methodical way, I was guided by what came up in my day and who it reminded me of. I didn’t start with what I wanted, I integrated elements that I wanted with the offers that came to me. This was perfect because my time was incredibly limited with parenting, organising the practical details, and leaving our NGO in a good state during this sabbatical.
It was also interesting and beautiful to accept that I was going to miss out on a lot, that I wasn’t going to have time to research the “best” plan, but instead I responded to suggestions and offers that came to me.
From these overall patterns I worked to put the details into place. I kept many lists, the whatsapp group and a written calendar for planning. I developed a system where I could work for just two minutes at a time if that was all that was available, to put ideas / tasks / contacts in place and keep going until most of the calendar was filled.
I’ll leave you with some images of those planning tools!!! From the 28th Feb I’ll be sharing pictures and stories of the trip.
*what’s left of it
March – Week 1
After months (and years!) of planning I had all the bags packed at home, I had a plan of how everything would fit in the car. (There’s a photo of the full list if you want ALL the deets!) The documents, money, bank cards carefully kept in different places in case I lost my bag / my suitcase / the car itself.
I left the kids with Bernat, went to get the car to prepare for the ferry with about two hours until check-in and encountered my first, and actually one of the worst problems. My wing mirror was hanging off!
I jumped straight in the car and went in a panic to the local mechanic, without even taking my bag. Thankfully David stopped what he was doing, and found a fix by forcing a screw in. I didn’t even have time to pay him, I left it with Bernat.
By ferry departure time we were back to the plan, eating our cheap supermarket tortilla in the terminal, with a bag full of food to get us to lunch the next day. I love the picture of the two little travelers on the ferry as we set off to Rome.
Well, close to Rome. After planning the whole trip without having to drive in the dark there was an unavoidable issue with the VERY FIRST half an hour. We arrived in the dark and the rain to Civitavecchia with it’s insane potholed roads in low season. It was pretty bleak, but we were welcomed to L’Asina y la Luna by beautiful permaculturists and were tucked up in a yurt, listening to the rain, feeling pretty good by 11pm.
Friday was a perfect day, we looked around the farm, had a home-grown feminist lunch with awesome people in an ecological house with a very funky lemon. The evening was spent by the fire doing homework and happy games.
Saturday was one of the toughest days of the whole trip, an absolute MONSTER of a day. The lovely hosts who didn’t charge us for staying with them, had to kick us out at 7:30 am for logistical “we are going to a farming conference” and “you can’t pass through the electric gate without us” reasons. As well as driving in the dark, getting up and packing to leave by 7:30 am was another big NO for the trip… but we had no choice. We did our best and by 8:45 were in the car park of the Necropolis near their project, having a picnic breakfast minus one VITAL item.. I didn’t have a lighter to light the gas stove to make my tea. I just hadn’t thought I’d need the camping stove so early on. And was very surprised that the few other Italians around didn’t have one, although it was “out for a morning run” time, so they were the healthy folk!
The Necropolis was fun until it started absolutely belting it down with rain. We ended up taking shelter with a French school group at the far end of the site. Then got totally soaked as we legged it back to the car. It was a joy to have a change of clothes and heating in our dry comfortable seats. With the rain we managed to leave Jo’s scooter behind, the first time we got it out of the car.
We’d taken some local advice on driving into Rome and it was an hour from the Necropolis. At one point I had to stop at a petrol station. The kids were asleep and it all got too much, the rain was insane and I was driving through giant puddles, I made a mistake with the GPS, and I just stopped the car and closed my eyes for ten minutes. Then a big lorry was beeping me out the way, and it was time to find our destination. We drove in through Europa, Mussolini’s grand marble buildings which was a sight, and found a free place to park in the recommended neighbourhood. We took the risk, in front of a café, to leave the car with all the stuff in it, and went to find a carbonara for lunch. It was a totally authentic experience, but Kira didn’t actually like the food!!
Next stop an expensive car park next to the Colloseum, and some pure tourism while Kira perfected the art of the selfie. There were some arguments, I think a lack of ice-cream combined with Mummy’s stress about the imminent rush hour drive across Rome, to get on the highway to Tularu eco-project, before it got too dark.
Driving across the city was ok. Well it had to be! After years of experience in Mexico City I felt pretty comfortable with finding the balance between calm and just the right amount of pushy when needed. Due to the fact that Italy is WAY further East than Spain yet in the same time zone.. we had a long stretch of night time driving, up a mountain in the middle of nowhere to arrive at Tularu. Miguel and his family were so lovely, and made us dinner, which unfortunately included liver which none of us ate!
But my parenting skills were diminished, and the dining room was cold, and when we went to bed I discovered that my poor little Joanna had had soaking wet feet since a puddle at lunchtime. I just throught she was moaning because she was hungry.. and the cold really set in and she spent the next two days being a sickly little thing, mostly on my boob. (She looks fine in that photo with her little friend though!)
At Tularu we ate amazing foccacia and cake from the ancient grain variety they grow in their fields, we saw a text-book example of keyline design, spent a lot of time with a tough family volunteering there, who were living in a broken, freezing cold caravan with their two-year old. They were planning to tow it with a mini, which seemed wildly optimistic, verging on dangerous to me.
On the second day we went on an adventure to visit RocaRierni – the tiny town on a big rock where Maia, one of my original permaculture teachers and all round awesome human, is planning a cooperative housing / eco-social transition project. Again, a totally authentic experience, ending with a drink in the tiny village bar.
March – Week 2
The day we left Tularu was a particularly challenging one. We had a drive of about 4 hours to Pompeii where we were planning to meet Sara (ex-volunteer) visit the site and go for a pizza. After a few hours traveling slowly down the middle of Italy on pretty small roads in the rain (and one missed exit resulting in a big double-back and a toll for nothing) I realised we were not going to make it before closing time.
Joanna was the opposite of thriving, she hadn’t eaten well for days, she had a rash and a cut on her knee that was starting to look a bit weird. So as soon as the sun came out I pulled over to take a break and deal with our situation. Everyone was melting down with hunger, there were no motorway services, so we just headed towards a town. When I saw a small side road to park I stopped, planning to walk to a café. But noone was up for walking, and to be fair there probably wasn’t a café. At this point I really needed the bathroom and had no chance to get to one – I couldn’t leave Jo with Kira in the middle of Italy while I walked 500m up the road, and I couldn’t get anywhere fast enough with both these small humans. So I just hid behind the car and hoped noone would come down the road.
After I dealt with my physiological needs, I moved to Joanna (Kira was fine – she found some snacks and sorted herself out). I got the first aid bag for the first time and applied some antisceptic to the dodgy cut, gave her enormous cuddles and found some dried fruit, nuts and biscuits to fill her up with something decent. I checked out her rashes, which looked ok, and spent about an hour just holding her, warming up a bit in the sun. Everything felt much better, even though we didn’t find the café of our dreams. We continued to Pompeii to meet Sara for a pizza.
We run the car on LPG gas, for ecological reasons: As well as less carbon emissions (although not that much less) the exhaust fumes are much cleaner. Italians love LPG and it’s available in many places and on this journey we saw the cheapest place of the whole trip 0.64€ a litre. We didn’t buy it there though!! Our destiny this day was to pay 12c a litre more, on that small section of highway where we took a wrong turn. There’s some maths learning here for Kira today!
Pizza in Pompeii costs just 4€! And they serve you at 18h in the evening on a rainy off season day in March. It gets dark so early in Italy! We had another dark drive, but just half an hour, from Pompeii to the bungalow we had booked in Sorrentino. This is a very busy part of Italy, close to the famously cramped road on Amalfi Coast. We went past Naples, through a tunnel and, because it was absolutely needed, got the directions down to Sant Antonio right first time to arrive in this little port.
Arriving at that bungalow, putting on the heating, having a kitchen, sofa and table in the same space was one of the best moments on the trip! We had spare pizza in a box, everything we needed to hand, the car right outside, and were warm and dry.
Within about ten minutes I think I decided that we were staying 2 nights longer than planned. That was one of the biggest changes I made to the itinerary in the whole trip, we paid for it with a MONSTER 8.5 hr journey across Sicily a few days later, but it was absolutely worth it.
The next day we played badminton, did some laundry, watched some old Italian men nearly get hospitalised when the branch broke while they were up an orange tree. He got a massive branch right on the head. I went running to reception to advise the owner about the accident. He started swearing at them for being so careless and they got back up another tree within about twenty minutes, with the blood stains still on their shirts. Then the owner told me that he had exactly the same accident a few years earlier and it took him over a year before he could walk again.
While we were in the bungalow we had some good tourist days. We went back to Pompeii for one of the most amazing days of the trip. Visiting off season and on a sunny day was incredible. We would have had a grim visit with Sara, in the rain, on pizza day, so we were feeling extra good about all the changes in the plan. Kira joined an American tour group (they loved her) and Mummy lost it a bit laughing when one of them asked “What were they running away from?”. Then we made a special effort to see the “bodies” (which are all bodies of servants by the way – all the upper classes had left), and left with tired tourist legs, some more rain to soak us on the way back to the car, and the purchase of an owl necklace souvenir.. the second time they dipped into Grandma’s money.
The local supermarket had some surprisingly cheap olive oil, and at this point Joanna will still eat a banana for a snack. Soon after she gives up on all fresh fruit and veg except avocados.
We managed a brief trip to Amalfi coast just before sunset one day. Then after dark went down and down into Positano. It was a pretty wild driving experience, I was sure it was one way. At the bottom we found somewhere to move the car off the road and stop a moment, and the man assured me it was a two way road and we should go back up to get out. Well, somehow it worked. We wound our way back to the dodgy left turn to the campsite. Kira helped with “Yes mum, this one”. Then we realised we’d turned to soon, Google told us to carry on (well turning around wasn’t an option) and we followed the road round getting narrower and narrower, until the last bit was so tiny I scraped the back of the car on a low wall. Luckily that was the worst bit and then it got wider, and took us back to the main road for a second attempt at getting home.
We also manage to park for a moment in one of the towns close by and speak to a pharmacist about the rash. Everyone agreed it was just a weird “moving to a new country” thing that seemed harmless. The happiness factor of a warm bungalow, cooking our food, and spending plenty of time on screens has everyone on the mend.
Then we had to leave our lovely pink home and start a monster drive to the far end of Sicily. We found a 40€ room in Mileto. The driving in the South of Italy is absolutely INSANE. To get to this room I was on a highway in the dark where the speed limit switched instantly from 130kmph to 60kmph as you entered and left different sections of roadworks. In the 60kmph zones it would have been insanely dangerous to drive that slowly (I think the speed limits in Italy are just a joke actually), because people regularly come roaring up behind you, even if you are driving past a truck, and start flashing their lights until you get out of their way. It was incredibly stressful, and Friday evening so probably extra busy because of that.
When we arrived to the hotel it seemed that noone else would be sleeping in the building, but the owner explained there were some people coming back later. I asked about a kitchen, and he kindly switched us to a different room, with a kitchen, for the same price. The room was massive, we could play badminton inside. This time, we stuck to the two night plan, and spent the in between day exploring Mileto; a second disappointing carbonara for Kira, a museum, and playing lost lands. My Italian is terrible.
March – Week 3
The day we left Mileto was an absolute MONSTER, the biggest and craziest drive of the trip. The highway down to the bottom of Italy was much more relaxed on a Sunday in the sunshine, with some snow in the high points.
Then arriving to catch the ferry to Sicily was hilarious, a testament to my curated Mediterranean attitude of being relaxed and ready to talk to anyone. I had no ticket, and no idea where to go. Following Google was great until I got to a big sign saying “Don’t go any further without a ticket”. So I turned back but couldn’t see anyone to speak to, it was raining and windy by now. I did go through a moment of stress navigating my way back to a place I could stop the car and figure this problem out. The place I stopped was the train station car park, and the person who saved our day was sitting on the steps and said “Buenos Días” because he’d seen our number plate (Did I mention that my Italian is terrible). It turned out he was English and used to live in the area. He gave very clear directions to the ticket office, but with a warning “the final left turn doesn’t look like you can do it, but you can, and if you miss it you get straight onto the motorway out of town”.
So off we went, totally committed to that left turn. The next thing I know I’m driving the wrong way down the exit from the ferry, heading towards the drop off into the sea. Someone in a high vis jacket comes running up waving their arms and opens a barrier to let us in to the car park. Luckily everyone finds the whole thing hilarious. We find one of the worst toilets on the trip and enough food to keep people happy and can see Sicily. Things are looking better… until the ferry trip of 700m takes 50 minutes instead of 10 and is incredibly bumpy. Disembarking the ferry is a total stress of having to get two kids in the car and be ready to drive in the tiny amount of time available, all with an impatient couple in a fancy white car behind us. Everyone is desperate to get off the boat at this point!
The next what .. 5 hours?… of driving all the way across Sicily was a mixture of tunnel, bridge, tunnel, bridge along the coast. And the occasional tunnel section with NO LIGHTS on at all. Totally weird experience going through a tunnel with just the headlights. The second time I was a bit more relaxed. We stopped just once for lunch, and very fortunately found some steps down to one of the tiny sections of public beach. The peace while doing some stretching and throwing stones in the water, was amazingly reviving, and then we got on for the last leg.
It was a complicated arrival that would have been impossible without Vitalba, who left us keys to stay in our wonderful friend Giaco’s flat in Massala. The first night it was just us 3, which wasn’t in line with the overall design of the trip, but we felt safe and had phone numbers.
That evening I had an experience to be repeated several times, of walking into a cheap restaurant with two kids (a pizzeria for a Palermo on this day!) and having two kids melting down while they try to take our order. I try to explain “Just please give me 5 mins to get all the screens out and make the cartoons work, then I can look at the menu”. In a few weeks it will feel totally normal to walk into a restaurant just me and the kids.
The next few days we explore Massalla a little, do homework, visit a windy peer with some saltbeds nearby with Giaco and Vitalba. Kira finds it hilarious when I drive into a post at the car wash. Once again we find a car wash where you can’t just put in euro coins. You need a special token, a man gives us some minutes on his token.. it’s not enough for the insane quantities of food that end up all over the car. But better than nothing. The post came off worse than the car by the way.
My highlight of the time here is visiting the house that Giaco is building and sharing a very special Spring picnic in his garden. I love that I know his place, and saw his pomegranate farm, and met Vitalba’s dad. It makes the crazy Sicily crossing worth it.
Next stop is Catania!! and Daddy’s first visit to join us.
March – Week 4
Sicily is bigger than I thought, and as far as I can see none of it is flat. On every journey the highways are bridges or tunnels, or in the interior on the way from Palermo to Catania the highway has supports to keep it flat over kms of small hills. I have the feeling of never driving on the ground!
Arriving in Catania was exactly how I imagined the trip. We were in the centre of town, so had to figure out parking, and more specifically unloading. The kind of place you wouldn’t leave the car open, plus you have to keep an eye on the other doors while unpacking. There’s also traffic so you need to watch the 2 year old, and the hostal is on the fourth floor, through two locked doors and a tiny lift.
We got all the stuff to the hallway, some of the stuff to reception, and found our room. Germans were cooking in a shared kitchen, there were people of all nationalities mingling on the terrace, and young volunteers running the place. A proper hostel and the only place we found using “Fair bnb”.
I made a quick friend and left the kids inside while I went to park the car somewhere legal. Luckily that was easier than I thought, I can’t remember how I communicated to figure it out. It must have been English. There are way more tourists here than in Mileto!
It was nice the next day to just leave our room on foot and wander around. We had a pastry in a square, invented the “observation game” where you have one minute to study a city feature then have to answer questions. “How many dragons were on the front of the building?” that kind of thing. We wandered into a palace and they let us in for free since it was 10 mins before closing time. Absolutely perfect: no 11 year old needs more than ten minutes in an old building. Kira is working on her “selfies” and the hole in the ceiling is because the musicians sit upstairs out of sight, and the sound travels down.
We drove to the beach for lunch. Parking was interesting… we found a sneaky spot and stayed close to the car for a picnic, then were joined by an old guy who pulled up next to us. It turned out he was the first of a group of friendly locals who had come for a game of petanque. We stopped worrying about getting a parking fine or worse, and went to the beach to make a sand Etna in front of the real Etna (which was hiding in the clouds).
Daddy arrived at the expected time! We met near the hostel, found a free parking space and went for a pizza. Kira was into Harry Potter these days in our lava filled high ceilinged room, and someone got so excited jumping on the camp bed that it broke. But we actually got bites during our 3 nights at this hostel so we didn’t feel guilty about sneaking away.
The kids were happy to eat out these days and escape the budget meals and picnics that mum always prepares. I spent some time away from the kids working and resting, and of course.. we went up Etna.
We are not a German outdoor family with all the gear. We have coats, and a pushchair and a blanket. The cable car up to quite far away from the top of Etna made this the most expensive day of the trip bar one. (Well bar 2 if you include the day Daddy missed his flight because of a terrible error. Well bar 3 if you include the day the car got towed in Stockholm. Anyway it was up there) And the overall experience was 10/10. This was the best day of Kira’s whole trip.
Just as we decided to go all out and pay even more to get a 4×4 bus up to the crater, the weather turned a little and they stopped running. We spent plenty of time walking around up there, not going far from the café, but throughly enjoying the incredible atmosphere with steaming rocks, and snowy mountainsides. The second half Jo was in my arms, tucked into my warm coat. I stood holding her watching the clouds come and go, thoroughly appreciating the moments where I could see up to the top and watch the plumes of smoke, and feeling very much in awe of nature.
Kira was sliding around in the snow getting totally wet, and suddenly it was time to move quickly to warmer climes. On the way down we had one of the most ridiculous, funniest moments of the trip. I won’t go into loads of detail, but you know how you get that panicked feeling when the cable car keeps moving along the platform and your time to get on board is limited? Well 2 children and mummy were in, Daddy and the pushchair were out. The pushchair was refusing to fold, so in a panic Daddy tried to shove the whole chair in the bubble and then get in himself. He’s not a small man. I can’t remember much else apart from crying with laughter (and relief) on the way down, but they didn’t have to engage the emergency stop.
After warming up in the car for a bit, we did another walk around some craters further down. A totally unique and impressive place. As usual we feel grateful to be exploring these places off season.
The next stop was Bari, and with the split responsability between two adults we took a more relaxed attitude. We didn’t book accomodation until the last minute, and ended up driving for hours in the dark and the rain. Overal this was quite lucky because the campsite that Mummy nearly booked would have been one horrible rainy weekend.
The arrival in Bari, after our rainy epic drive, was another one of the most ridiculous moments that can leave me crying with laughter whenever I think of it. “Don’t worry, Italians drive anywhere” was one of the phrases from Daddy that got us through. In order to find our appartment in the historic old town we used google. We were driving on smaller and smaller roads until it was so small there was barely space to pass one person either side of the car. Unfortunately it was peak aperativo time and there were literally hundreds of people on the street. They had to squash and squash, drinks and food in hand, to let us pass. There was no way back, and actually two cars behind us. We turned a corner and just stopped illegally, next to some construction works. Daddy went by foot to figure out where the appartment actually was, and I recovered from nearly running over people’s toes and the stress of having to keep moving on through, with so many people staring at us.
It wasn’t over, because we were at a dead end. We needed to reverse out, to get to the escape route the cars behind us had found. A “helpful” old man got involved and went down shouting and shooing the crowds out of the way so we could reverse. 100% ridiculous.
After a couple of pleasant days walking around Bari, and one weird picnic in a footbal stadium car park, we all got on the ferry to Patras. When we checked in I took Daddy’s DNI, and thenjust popped it back in my wallet with all the other IDs. That tiny move would have dramatic consequences a few days later.
March – Week 5
Arriving in Greece in the rain was fun – I wasn’t driving!
We stopped in a little coastal town with a super friendly man who translated the chalk-board menu from Greek. I took a zoom call in the car while the kids hung out with Daddy, and then we found our way to the flat we’d rented in a neighbourhood in Athens. After a day we figured out it was a nice walk through a wild park, then a neat park, to get to our nearest metro. The rain stopped after the first night.
This was the building with the scary lift. We didn’t actually need the lift for our ground floor appartment, so I can’t remember why I even went in it, but it didn’t have an inside door. You could just see the wall moving past as you went up.
We had the whole place including a big bedroom and a bath for 50€ a night. Kitchen knives are different from country to country, Greeks prefer a rounded end, flexible metal and a finely serrated. Italians – I can’t remember actually. But when we arrived I was like “oh, different country different knives”. Wow, is that really the memory that stands out. Well, I did spend a lot of time preparing food.
When we did eat out we went for the cheapest local food – Souvlaki then. A total overdose of pita and tzaziki in the first days.
I visited our Boodaville partner in the HYP office – several times on the trip I met people I’ve been emailing about Erasmus+ projects for up to ten years! Eleni was an inspiration.
Acropolis day was amazing! After the visit we walked down the hill along this pedestrian avenue looking across the city, Joanna toddling around happily. It was so peaceful – which is why I recommend off season travel. On a busy day it would be filled with stalls, buskers and thousands of people.
And then the beautiful puppet moment! It made me cry, a very delicate dancing puppet, with emotional piano music and my lovely little ones sitting on the cobbles totally captivated.
Our standard Athens day was go out on the metro, then taxi back. The days are mixed up in my head, we had a lovely trip to Agora with Marina and that was the day Kira bought her dress and Marina gifted her the leafy crown. That was without Bernat.
We also visited the marble stadium, I think on Acropolis day. Kira went off doing a whole lap of the athletics track, and then somehow Joanna with her tiny legs and no shoes on, tried to follow.
Then drama day was when we went to the stunning Acropolis museum. It was so amazing to learn about so much more than the ancient Greeks – you learnt about different attempts to preserve / steal these amazing monuments over hundreds of years; there’s a whole room about the Elgin marbles, another tale of when people accidently smashed a massive statue when they took it down. Originally there was also a huge gold and ivory goddess inside the Parthenon, but no details of where that went.
Near the end of our visit we got the call from Bernat that he couldn’t get to his plane because his ID card was in my wallet. There was a crazy mad panic as we tried to figure out if we could get there in time, or find a courir. It was just two tight, Bernat didn’t have any totally urgent commitments so he lost 150€ and 24 hours and we all suffered a lot of stress.
So we had another night in the appartment altogether. In the end this worked fine for me, the last night alone with the kids in Athens was a tough one. I didn’t know who I would call in an emergency, I was pretty drained, and felt like packing was going to be a drag (ha HA wait till I’ve packed up every few days for another 3 months!!!)
As usual though, the night when I was tired, everyone was, and all was calm. We got out ok and went to hang out in a park until our ferry to Lesbos that evening. The park was great, it was a Sunday, and like any place all across Europe and probably much further, people were out with blankets, kids and ball games – parenting.
We walked around a funky library. Looking back I can’t believe it myself that we did all this. I was just a picnic genius by this point, we had boxes of food in the car, ah yes there was the ever present snack bag. We moved around with the pushchair loaded. Often with folding chairs hanging off it. But the absolute worst was packing up the car. It was just kids on screens, music on for me, and make sure you leave enough time to do it without rushing. Twice on the trip we took people’s door keys with us and had to send them back in the post!!
There was something great about the evening ferry; sunset, heading to Lesbos, a really kid friendly arrival, it doesn’t feel anything like winter (like the bleak empty first ferry to Italy). I had a beer. I was very proud of getting through those last two nights in Athens!
April – Week 1
Lesbos!!
What a beautiful week this was. Just the three of us stayed in Maria’s house, but knew we had friends around. It was such a lovely place, with a garden, and really comfy and Maria was so kind it was such a total joy to share this week with her.
I’ll start with the worst thing about Mytilene and then take you through the brilliantness. Walking around town is just terrifying, so very stressful with motos everywhere, hardly any pavement, and me and a pushchair. Also the locals were not friendly at all – this was one of the only places people didn’t find mum and her lovely kids cute and worth a smile, or a act of generosity. Like maybe not trying to run us over.
Everything in Lesbos was a highlight!! Helping Maria with her pollinators research project at the castle, visiting Sporos and meeting the best volunteer ever – who came in as a refugee, the hot springs (jaja they were going for a calm, white dressing gown atmosphere, which me and the kids kind of ruined), Kayaking with Poli and Konstantinos, Chocolate egg hunt with the Sporos volunteers. Ah yes, that was a downside to Lesbos – erm – there was no Easter (at the expected time), as they follow a Greek Orthodox calendar. So we made our own one.. but not quite up to Kira’s vision.
At the hot springs we were with a refugee from Afghanistan who was living in the camp, we took him back and dropped him at the gate, and he told us a bit about life there. He has his papers and asked me whether he should go to Switzerland or Germany, I couldn’t help – ask me in 2 months maybe!
We also visited Parea the NGO Project, which has community spaces and a permaculture garden, above the refugee camp. Kira wouldn’t play in the park, she said “It’s not for me”. We watched the Open Arms documentary over a couple of evenings while we were there. It was the experience that I expected and hoped for, to address really important issues with Kira.
Another highlight for me was to visit Errosos, Maria’s favourite town, and to see the land that, I hope, is now hers! So special. And we had to go to the petrified forest of course, I love the picture of Kira looking less than impressed. It’s diffiult to grasp the idea of seeing fossilised life from 20 million years ago.
In Greece they don’t sell cooked chick peas. Feta comes in giant packets. There was one place on the island to get LPG. We couldn’t clean our own car. So embarassing to take my car for another human to clean. I wonder if you can even imagine what it’s like inside after a few days with the munchkins, and food.
I’m trying to remember more challenges and ridiculous things. There was an incidient in a Souvlaki restaurant that was crazy embarassing, but I can’t remember what exactly, I think I accidently ordered one pincho for all three of us. Some kind of ordering fail for sure, and I definitely told Kira how happy I was when another family came in and their kid was being super loud and naughty!
The day we went to the beach with the Kayak, Joanna was asleep at 8pm and didn’t wake up until the next day. That is the earliest night she has ever had.
We actually got a bit of a routine staying so long in the same place. We went “to the office” – twice at the same bar on the seafront! Kira doing homework, me working, while Joanna was napping. It was always pretty disastrous, Kira didn’t find it easy to work independently on her homework. There is, however, a Lesbos Project, on card that formed part of her portfolio.
Leaving Lesbos in the sun was lovely, and for once it wasn’t an overnight ferry. That did mean we arrived in Kavala at 6pm with the scariest drive of the trip in front of us. (Don’t worry mum – not VERY scary, just emptier roads than usual, and in the dark, and in Bulgaria).
The end point of the drive from Kavala was a four star hotel, with full board, a pool, a jacuzzi and a trampoline in Bansko. We were meeting Vilislava from a Bulgarian Erasmus partner association – and arriving on the last day of the Youth Exchange they were running. So we just needed to get there, and I had her phone number if we needed any help. (Bulgarian is a complicated language!)
Getting lost on the way out of Kavala didn’t help, and then we were on a small road, towards a very tiny border crossing. The thing with borders is that most people aren’t on their way across, so after the last town in Greece the roads are really quiet, until you get close to the first town in Bulgaria. We were driving through hills and mountains, and staying close to a truck in front to feel less lonely… then after dark the truck was going faster and got away from us. At one point I remember seeing a camper van, with just one man, stopped for dinner and a sleep, out there in the middle of nowhere. (Mum – it probably wasn’t the middle of nowhere at all, it just felt like that)
I was nervous at the border, the first hard border. Just another single British mum, crossing at 8pm into Bulgaria with her two kids in a Spanish car. We passed the Greek police, then the Bulgarians said something very nice to us, then we asked if Kira was still allowed in the front in Bulgaria and they said “No, and she’s not allowed in the front in Greece either”. She just popped in the back, and off we went.
Then after we passed the first town in Bulgaria there were cars on the road, then we saw a Lidl. There are Lidls everywhere.
The hotel was an amazing break. We saw some snow, swam, saw British families on ski holidays with teenagers. The best thing was that it was Bulgarian school holidays, there were kids everywhere and Kira made friends via google translate. Well, the actual best thing was no cooking or washing up at all for 4 nights.
So I spent my time planning the following days. Someone told me the town we were headed next, to stay at a rewilding Europe Vulture centre WASN’T in the Rhodepe mountains. (It was though). I panicked and changed the route so we spent two days driving all the way across the mountains. Changing the plan is a complicated thing, I only did it twice on the whole trip.
April – Week 2
We left Bansko, Bulgaria with a route change to spend 2 days driving through the Rhodope Mountains, and an overnight stop in Smolyan. One of the few “one night” stops, booked with my new booking.com skills, and we cut the stay in the Rewilding project Vulture Centre by one night. I loved it. We were in really rural areas, with Mosques and Muslim cemeteries in the towns we passed by, and it was Eid so we saw several large celebratory gatherings in fields close to villages. In Depsot we had the cheapest, and one of the most delicious lunches of the trip, in a restaurant recommended by a man at the broken cash machine. (It wasn’t just a conversation about food – we really urgently needed to find a cash machine that worked.)
We had fun communicating about the menu and with the help of a lorry driver who had recently been in Barcelona; we got a veal soup, rice and probably eggs and potatoes as that is a sure win for Joanna. Kira started talking to a girl her age from the village in pretty good English, and we saw our only squat toilet on the trip – which I was overjoyed about! I wanted Kira to see new things.
The hotel was very odd, but basically brilliant. A dark walled room, in a mirrored building, next to a casino, with a huge leather sofa. The entrance was covered in dust sheets for repainting. They were super friendly and we could park on the pavement in front. We drove around looking for bears, or waterfalls, and found only some manky chickens and an impassable dirt road. Then we tried for the waterfall in town, and ended up on top, looking down from where you could see nothing.
It’s a real treat to be able to eat out each day and stay on budget and we ended up being the only customers in the “Typical Bulgarian Restaurant” i.e tourist trap, in the town. With carpets on the wall and music – we had our own room.
The next day we went up to an old fort before leaving towards the Vulture Centre. We walked around a bit looking for wildlife. There were no other humans and I felt suddenly a little vulnerable, and then five minutes later we were back in the play park, hanging out with a local family, eating walnuts from their tree and talking about how wonderful their life in Smolyan is, and that they never lock their door. It was such a beautiful encounter – one of the few people I shared the word Boodaville on a scrap of paper so they can find us if they come to Spain. (Mental note, next time bring business cards)
They told us not to miss Devil’s Bridge, and also where we should have lunch. I LOVE not having to decide where to eat! That was a pretty tiring day though, a lot of driving including the round trip down to Devil’s Bridge. I was too tired to move to prevent Kira from knocking over a whole rack of souvenirs at lunch that was standing up on a small wall. Well, at least she bought one. I always hope people find our little entourage funny and cute – and it mostly works.
I think our deer experience was today. During the drive Kira was on nature watch and when she shouted that she’d seen a deer, we stopped and went for a little walk. It was beautiful sunshine stepping away from the road. We assumed the deer had run off – or that Kira had seen something else, but then as we were walking down they came running past us, it was amazing!!! Almost as amazing as my desperately needed cup of tea in a bar. I took my tea bag in and asked for the water, milk and sugar to go with it. An essential tea and they gifted chocolate to the kids.
The Vulture Centre was a great place to stay for a few days. Some international bird watchers came through, we could eat in the restaurant or cook ourselves at the tables outside. We explored some local paths, the vulture exhibition, the meander with incredible views, I had a work meeting with Angela and Carles while Joanna and Kira played in the grass and met some fisherman camping next to the water. The local village was quite crap – I want to find the video footage I took on Kira’s camera of me driving round and round looking for the shop and the cash point – which did exist in the end. We found some other tourists at a waterfall there, and there was a mushroom rock on the map but mutiny prevented that excursion.
It’s interesting that a hazard of traveling is minor accidents, from staying in other people’s houses, and tripping or banging your head in unfamiliar surroundings. But uneven steps caused major bruises twice on this trip – in this case poor Kira absolutely smacked her shin on tiled steps and it bothered her for days.
And then there were the puppies. Our lovely picnic by the river included mountains, vultures, clear running water, sunshine, great use of the folding chairs and blanket, a dead fish which Kira dissected and found a green ball, (we looked it up – the swim bladder or something, I can’t remember). But also there were the puppies. Abandoned and very needy. Kira – because she is a decent human – insisted that I do something for them, which ended up being emailing a dog shelter run by a Brit 300km away! The fellow travelers at the hotel saw them too, and very kindly let Kira know that they would surely get picked up, as they were a breed of dog that people want to have. They also looked up the route to Bucharest for me, told me how to make the online payment for the motorway tolls, and sent me the location of a restaurant that fitted what we needed for the next day!
The drive to Bucharest was exciting – and we were meeting Daddy there the day after. Spirits were high and the lunch spot was hilarious and brilliant. A little shack in the countryside near a monastery with typical food – chips, burger, tomato and feta salad, I think we were in fried cheese territory by now which was great. What we didn’t realise until two days later in a rather sad story was that Joanna picked up a tick.
Driving into Romania was another hard border with a monster tailback of lorries waiting to cross. Some of them would be waiting around 8 hours. Drivers were falling over themselves to buy the kids huge pieces of pink cake at the rest stop. We could drive past the lorries in the car, and it didn’t feel as weird as the tiny border into Bulgaria from Greece. We drove across the narrow bridge, everyone was super excited to arrive in Romania. We saw a lot of British cars in the towns we passed, then navigated the ring road to a dive of a hotel right next to the highway. Well I say a dive – it had everything we needed and with Bernat there after the first day we just paid for a taxi into town. No honestly, it was a dive and one of the worst places we stayed. The woman who ran it was a mum and we connected, and everyone who worked there had family in the UK, or had just got back from visiting friends in Spain. Cambrils I think!
We visited Green Mogo on Romania day 1, which was amazing to see (more on this blog post about the Eco projects we visited) and then listened intently in the heat, among giant trees in the park, to story after story from Felicia about the history of the palace and forests just outside the city.
We spent some time in the centre – with a young ballet dancer, a family friend living there. Bernat ate the cabbage dish. We were shocked by the prices being not at all cheap. Joanna switched off the freezer in a very fancy cake café. Luckily we noticed and put it back on again.
The next day could be described as the day we went to Europe’s biggest spa and Galaxy waterpark, or, the day we spent five hours in two different hospitals in Bucharest getting Joanna’s tick removed by a surgeon. I was incredibly happy to have Bernat with us for that one. By the end of the day I’d learnt that with antibiotics and some careful observation Lyme’s disease wasn’t gonna be a problem, and that the chance of Encephalitis was 0.01% in this area. So yeah, not great, but could have been worse. Not for Kira though – to this day she holds a huge grudge against Joanna for causing the water slide day to be cut very short.
After the tick incident we were in the centre with the car and somewhat enjoyed our last night in Bucharest at a restaurant with traditional dancing, incredible decor, and a secret staircase.
April – Week 3
Our first stop after leaving Bucharest was a decathlon to replace a water bottle and get something else urgent. The virgin forest picnic opportunities in this area were limited and we ended up in a shopping centre food court. That happened sometimes when we were travelling with Daddy and often ate out cheaply rather than the usual boring picnic food.
The second stop was an awesome visit to the castle where they filmed Wednesday. Spontaneous and an incredible place with amazing gardens and the longest swing I’ve ever seen hanging from a giant tree. In the evening we arrived at the cheap rented place in Zarnesti, it was bleak – a cheap housing estate with a broken playpark. The flat was huge with two giant bedrooms, but it wasn’t your typical “holiday” accomodation.
We were based here for 5 nights, and spent many an evening eating in the flat as it was rainy and there were no restaurants nearby, and it was all pretty expensive. There was a lidl at our end of town, and a pretty touristy area at the other end of town, near the national park.
We enjoyed hot chocolate after seeing our first “Beware of the Bear” signs at the National Park. I was working one day while Daddy took them to the visitor centre. Kira went to Libearty Bear rescue centre twice because Joanna wasn’t allowed in. The first day with Mummy was crazy rainy and the group were so noisy they scared the animals away. The second day with Daddy – less rain and more wolves. Overall everyone in the family except Joanna saw bears.
We also visited Bran which was a crazy crap tourist experience. It is interesting to see people living gypsy style wherever they want. Just a few minutes out of Bran we were at this beautiful church by the river, overlooking a falling down house, with washing hanging out, some dirty kids with old toys, and rubbish all around. We learnt that the rubbish in the river is a big issue here in Romania, and had the chance during our 3 weeks in Romania to talk more with local people about gypsy culture and the exclusion and discrimination issues that are very obvious everywhere you go.
Our last day in Zanesti we went up to Fargaras forest and had an amazing, very wet and cold, and also very disappointing day on a guided tour to Virgin Forest with Nicu. This was the most expensive thing we did on the whole trip – and because of a fallen down tree blocking the track we spent hours walking up and down through logging country with no pushchair, and then only 15 minutes in the virgin forest. When rain/snow started falling, and Joanna was completely freezing, we started the long walk back down to the vehicle. The amazing part was talking to Nicu all the way who has a permaculture garden, works with Cristof at the Carpathia Foundation in amazing conservation projects, as featured in Charlie Ottley’s documentaries. He grew up all over these forests – his father would give him a sandwich and drop him one side of the forest to walk across alone, scaring the animals towards his father who was hunting from the other side – when he was about 8! He goes up to the forest in winter for fun and sleeps out in the snow. He took a proper German family (like the ones we saw at the Libearty) mountaineering in winter with a two year old and ended up sledging back down the mountain. And of course he knew so much about the living ecosystems we were walking in.
I still message Nicu occasionally on whatsapp, and when the Rovira Regenerativa project is up and running I hold a special place in my heart for these incredible conservation projects, working in the largest and wildest old growth forests in Europe. Regeneration is not needed – They still exist!!! – and humanity wants to keep it that way. I would love to organise some of our Erasmus projects with Carpathia Foundation in the future and go with Nicu to the forest again, and actually walk in it.
We had one of our dodgiest adventures on a rainy day while we were staying in this area. There was a nearby village that I had read about in the itiniery of a very expensive Romanian Adventure holiday (I did a lot of research on Romania – probably too much I was in a right fizz about how to fit it all in). We drove up there, and it was stunning, a mountain village – with ladder like teepee structures made of wood in the fields, and the clouds moving slowly across the green hillsides. We went all the way up to a monastery and met a bent old nun who showed us inside the locked chapel. It was beautiful, and we bought a lovely little jar of honey from her, which stayed with us all the way to France. When we came down from the monastery we were driving away from the rain out the other side of the village, but it was a tiny track with no tarmac, which then became a mud track. There were rain clouds around and we were driving on this slippy track with no idea of the state of the road ahead. Obviously I would NEVER have done this if Bernat wasn’t with us, but even with him it was sketchy. There was one point when we drove down quite a steep section. I thought – my car won’t get back up there. So we better hope this track is passable all the way down to the main road. I was pretty uncomfortable.. If we’d got to a slidy uphill we’d have just been stuck in the middle of nowhere. Anyway about half an hour later we got to some houses, and then to tarmac.
When we left this area we travelled down to Curtea de Argés for three nights – two more nights with Daddy. This was his longest stayed with us – 9 days. Our missions here were firstly to visit the “Trees with Stories” conservation project in Nicosoara, and also to get to the famous Transfagarasan road – which would be closed at the top for winter. The Nicsoara project was amazing, and also supported by Carpathia Foundation. You can sponsor a tree, and you record a story. A QR code is fixed to your tree, and then visitors can scan the QR codes and stand under the tree listening to the story. We saw a few other visitors there as it was a weekend – but some of the locals we asked in the village didn’t seem to have heard of the project. See links on the other blog post about this trip. I love the potential here, to connect our human stories with giant 400 year old trees, a real vision of what we can do to deeply connect people and nature (and thus prevent planetary systems collapse which screws all of us). Just an aside from today’s mad Trump administration news.. please please can “the 89%” stop rich white men trashing our entire planetary home even further.
Our trip up to the Transfagarasan and a big lake, was spooky and totally awesome. We left Curtea, driving past some tourist infrastructure and horses and carriages. On a winding road up through a dark valley our phones buzzed with the emergency alert for a bear close by. Luckily Molly in Bucharest had told us that this happened, or we would have been totally freaked by this urgent message in Romanian! Romanian by the way is not disimilar to the languages we know – some words are a bit English, or Spanish, or French, and the alphabet is the same. It does feel good after Bulgaria and Greece to be able to vaguely recognise what a sign is saying!
The bear was back in the village we were already long passed, and we wound our way up to a damn. It was dizzying. I mean really dizzying, I went back to sit in the car with Kira – it was so high, and industrial in the middle of an otherwise natural place. There was a space for tourist stalls in high season, but this wasn’t high season and there were just a few other people, and it was close to sunset. Bernat walked all the way across and we drove to pick him up, which is when he took one of my favourite photos of the trip. Our Spanish family car in deepest Romania. We drove further up the road and along the side of the lake. We weren’t sure how far to go, and it was getting late, but then we got to a high point, and in the distance you could see the snow-covered hills of the very famous Transfagarasan winding road. Where people are changing the behaviour of bears by feeding them, and Jeremy Clarkson (who I thought was on the brink of discovering Regenerative Agriculture, before I realised the whole farm thing was just as attempted inheritance tax scam) once had a very exciting day.
The day that Daddy left was a total stress. There’s a rare picture of the three of us together, after we finally found the right petrol station to get Bernat in the correct airport transfer vehicle. I was super happy to have a picture of the three of us, and I shared it with my Mum “You look stressed” she said. And yes I bloody was – we went to three different places, made several panicked phone calls, to find the vehicle that matched Bernat’s pdf bus ticket. The petrol station where we said goodbye to him was in the same place that we stayed for the next 10 days or so : Ramnicu Valcea. We drove past it so many times over the next week, and the exact same petrol station was where we filled up before leaving the area to Hungary. I said to Kira when we left – Do you remember saying goodbye to Daddy here? And we both had that weird time distortion feeling where something that happened 10 days ago felt like another lifetime!
After dropping Daddy we went back to the hotel in Curtea where we had one more night – and stayed in the room, barely leaving, for nearly 24 hours. We were wiped out after so much activity. The kids set up a den in the second room, and I imagine we had plenty of screen time.
April – Week 4
We moved to Ocnele Mari to live in a big apartment for 9 days while we participated in the Youth Exchange organised by Adelina, her family and colleagues. The kids were in heaven, a giant double bed and a giant screen and Netflix – but only kids content was accessible. There was a lovely garden behind the flat, a Romanian granny next door who was looking after us and gave us home made jam, and brought us a pan of soup for lunch.
The one free day before the exchange started I wanted to get to another location on the list – close to, or maybe getting a bit into, an old growth forest. We drove up to Cozia national park for the day, to take a walk through the forest up to a waterfall. I was researching how we could get to the most awesome places, maybe even ready to pay another guide, but it was low tourist season, and our requests and family unit were a bit random. We stopped at a tourist office, and then a monastery, on the way up. We can now recognise bear prints in the mud with ease!
Then it was raining, a LOT. We had a very long lunch next to a lake, watching the rain, and built up the energy to go for a walk. We are British, we walk in any weather. So we parked, got coats on, tool the push chair and set off upstream. We were all incredibly happy on our rainy walk – Kira saw many Salamanders. My battery was low so there’s just one blurry photo of one. I think she saw 12 alive ones and 2 dead ones, she was keeping count. The rain was coming down hard, and after about half an hour we got to a bend in the road and a little waterfall and turned around. Things got really rough on the way down – my waterproof ski coat decided not to be waterproof any more and was soaked through, my arms were out in front of me pushing the push chair with what felt like giant wet cushions on top. There was noone else around, spirits were dropping. And the relief when we got to the last bend and saw the car park was incredible. We piled in the car and did some complex manoeuvres to get all the wet clothes into the back and change into dry ones. The heating was on high, the windows were well steamed up, and the rain continuted to pour down. There was only one other car in the car park, the owners came back and drove off. We were the only car there, and I thought, I hope the car works. In reality we weren’t very isolated, it was 100m down a track to a main road with a lot of traffic even in this weather. So we could have got help, but we weren’t in any position to get out of the car again! Within an hour we were back in the flat with all the wet muddy things hanging around in the entrance, and luckily no plans to go out the following day.
That was the nearly the end of our Romanian adventures – we spent a week on the Youth Exchange, participating in some sessions, often missing breakfast, enjoying time with friends from the Spanish team. We visited the famous Ocnele Mari Salt mine which was nuts – an enormous underground cavern, which acted like a climate refuge, at a constant 14ºC where they had tennis courts, skating rink, café, play areas, and more games and exhibitions. All with the backdrop of stunning walls with white salt seams in black rock.
I also got the car serviced while we were here. Gabriel helped me get in touch with his mechanic, and we bought the oil and filters together in the city, then left the car at his friends house and garage. The day we went to pick it up with Joanna we all went together and it was half business half social. This family live on the outskirts of the city, with a big warehouse for the garage and their house next to it. With a terrace and a trampoline surrounded by the cars, and next door a flat field of cereal. They offered me a sweet juice drink, and were all hanging around on a Saturday sharing food before most of them were going out. I got the feeling Gabriel had called in a big favour, and I felt a bit awkward, but it was just another chance to connect with local people and see how they live. This whole city Ramnicu Valcea, has its economy built on a huge chemical plant outside the city. The contamination from this plant caused very high rates of cancer – Gabriel and Adelina lost 3 out of four parents before the age of 60. When EU regulations got applied in the late 80’s the plant stopped 90% of it’s activities, but above all else the people in the city were angry for lost jobs. I found Adelina and Gabriel to be the most amazing and down to earth people I met on the whole trip. I have so much respect for them choosing to set up an Environmental education association and find a way to a right livelihood. I hope we work with them again, and host them in Spain!!
By now on the trip we are totally used to going to restaurants just me and the kids, and I am so confident with booking.com that I occasionally book things last minute. I can pack the car without thinking and can do a quick and reliable mental check to make sure we have each bag, before leaving each place. Especially the high stakes days where we are about to drive for six hours. The kids know how the snack bag works, and that mummy’s mug, tea net, and tea are among the most important items in the car. (Bernat has been bringing tea refills, and Kira’s next book, over from Spain on his visits). In Lesbos I ran out of tea and was saved by Poli from Sporos. Of Cyprian nationality, she lived ten years in London, and had a giant stash of Yorkshire Tea bags in her house.
We left the Youth Excahnge just before the end because we had a date in Brno Czech Republic with Martina, OJs Mum. I rearranged plans a few times for the route up there, and the final version was – 1 last night in Romania in Arad near the border. This was a sad day, leaving our new and old friends at the Youth Exchange, and heading all the way to Stockholm before we had another stop for a full week. We found a random lake for a picnic lunch, drove past forests and mountains, saw a Gypsy Palace which was one of the last things ticked off the list for Romania. The hotel was fun, with breakfast included. Then we did one night in a leafy suburb in Budapest with Adam and Rebeka. This was a cool and random hosting situation. They contacted the Rovira Regenerativa project, and then we got to know each other a little online and they offered to host us. Hungarian currency was the most complicated one, tens of thousands for LPG, and we didn’t have a chance to get used to that in just 24 hours. We had a meal at a motorway services, but in a real touristy Hungarian restaurant with wooden benches and funky fittings. There was a family all eating schnitzels twice the size of the plate. I can’t remember what we had. The driving plan is always to get 3 or more hours behind us, have a long stop for lunch, ideally somewhere beautiful, then do another shift in the afternoon. We arrived in Budapest in the rain and saw a foggy river and nothing of the city centre. We left in the rain I think, and just headed out quickly the next day after enjoying breakfast with Adam and Rebeka. Kira started watching Friends.. that was our evening entertainment, and how Budapest is remembered for her.
The next day we arrived to Martina’s village. It was a tough day – we briefly saw euros in Solvakia, then were surprised by having to buy LPG in Czech currency and having to faff around with Revolut. A little extra screen time can push me over the edge on a day like today. I don’t remember where we had lunch, which probably means it wasn’t a good one. We drove around a town looking for a lake at one point. Then we definitely got a bit lost, and finally arrived at Martina’s which was lovely. They were smoking on the balcony waiting for us, and we went up for some food and a comfy bed. The visit with Martina and Kate was really special, and of course very emotional – joy to see Martina cuddling my kids, and grief as Martina still suffers every day the loss of her wonderful son. The village where they live is touristy and cute. It feels like we’ve arrived in Northern Europe here. Blonde kids, strangers are not so open, the pub feels quite like England. We are in fried cheese territory which is great as everyone loves that. There are a hundred photos of this visit in a whatspp group somewhere – I’ll just leave you the highlights!
May – Week 1
The plan to have some rest was that we stayed in a place for a whole week every now and again. Nr Brno, however, we stayed in the same area in 3 different places, and it wasn’t quite the same experience. It was the hardest section of the trip.
After leaving Martina we traveled just under an hour to stay with Eva and Ondra, who very generously offered us a room at their flat. In the end Eva – a participant on our youth exchange in Spain in 2023 – wasn’t at home, and Ondra was a wonderful host. We figured out where to park, got settled in the room with wifi and tv options (also a way of keeping the children still so they don’t break anything). Then instead of exploring Brno we stayed in the flat for a whole rainy day doing homework, working and going through the “fun” bag. I think we were traumatised by the walking Romania.
Ah no actually – let me think, we also had a crazy rain experience near Brno. There was one day, when Kira was still feeling very hard done by about the Galaxy incident (when her waterslide experience was cut short because her sister had a tick) that we went to try and do something fun. The activity goes that Kira writes a wish list and we try and do the things on it. So Mummy looks up all the theme parks and possible activities in the area. At this point she has been visiting with OJs Mum for a couple of days and is understandably in need of some age appropriate fun. We drive to some amazing looking place, but it’s Tuesday and of course it is closed. So we go to a nearby village and sit by a river, play in a kids park, try and smile. East gnocchi in a touristy restaurant for lunch. The kids in the park don’t make friends with Kira, it definitely isn’t the done thing this far north, and the people in the bakery don’t want to talk to us in English because they say they can’t speak it. They speak English way better than people we met in Bulgaria and Romania, but as Eva tells me later, it’s a cultural thing. They have high expectations of themselves and want to speak perfectly, they aren’t just aiming to share the information about where the river is. This disappears when we get to Germany, and everyone speaks such fluent English that they don’t worry.
So we found a deer park nearby and went to visit that instead. There was a particularly sad looking deer, but it was a good enough activity to bring some happiness to Kira. Then it started to rain. We hung out with some other families (now it’s after school time) under a shelter as the rain got worse and worse. Then made a run for it to the car and I remember getting absolutely batter by rain as I tried to get Jo, and then the pushchair into the car.
So maybe the day we didn’t leave the flat, and watched the rain through the window, was the day after that!
Then we moved again to a room in a campsite near some famous caves, about an hour from Brno where we stayed 4 nights. This was an area recommended by Violeta – another participant on the 2024 youth exchange. We had a very stressful arrival which involved getting shouted at. We arrived ten minutes after the time she was supposed to close reception, and wasn’t very receptive of my explanation that if I stopped the car to call her we would have arrived even later.
The campsite was quite cool, even though Kira described it as shitty! It was next to a lake, and in the village we had a good dining experience – a Palermo pizza, and there was a kids area with a toy kitchen where Jo played happily for ages. There were some other families around – it’s getting warmer now and there was a bank holiday I think. In the room there were three single beds, and Jo actually went to sleep in her bed, by herself a couple of times.
I remember some volunteer drama upsetting one day. Joanna drew on the wall of the room while I was on the call to clear things up with Antonia, and then I arrived late again to reception to pay our bill (It’s only open like 6 hours a day) AND I parked in the wrong place and got a grumpy note on the car. Yes, this is why Kira didn’t like the place.
We did a couple of day trips from here – we went to a zip wire adventure place and Kira did some flying and climbing. Luckily a random Dad helped out by giving me some cash in return for a Revolut payment to his card. We couldn’t have done anything that day without cash. We also did a trip to the famous caves, I think we went to Elizabeth caves. We missed the tour we had booked which stressed me out, but then waited an hour to get the next one.
In Czech Republic if you arrive at 15:05 for the three o´clock tour you are late. In all the countries so far, this wouldn’t have been late. You see in Northern Europe for an appointment at 15:00 it’s normal to arrive fifteen minutes before that. But it worked out well, as the last tour of the day we were the only people and the guide spoke English. They had this moment in the cave where they played classical music and did a little light show – super cheesy but enjoyable all the same. Kira was being what I felt was over demanding, and asking if she could take a stalagmite out of the cave, but I guess really I should applaud her for expressing what she wants – Because the guide found a broken one and let her take it! So we had this little precious piece of cave saved with the most special of the special rocks, knowing it had taken hundreds of years to form. You know what? It disappeared.. it just kind of disintegrated when it left the cave. By the end of the trip it didn’t exist.
The last night at the campsite we joined a bonfire – the new experiences of northern Europe where fires are part of camping! I remember quite some drama to get the kids outside for the campfire, they were in not wanting to go outside mode. But I’m glad we did – marshmallows, fire, stars and a few other people around.
At this point on the trip I was really missing visiting community eco projects. Tourism is ok, but it’s not quite as soulful as joining people in their life projects working in service to people and planet. We stopped by Brno to see Eva and say goodbye on our way out of this area, and our next stop would be a room in a campsite in Berlin.
