Published via Ecency

Hello my online friends,

It’s been a long time since I last posted here. A lot of things have happened in the past two months, and I’m going to tell you all about it.

Starting with my trip back to the Netherlands. While I was staying in Spain, I had someone taking care of my apartment. She was looking for a place for herself, and I offered her to stay in my apartment during that time. Now that she has found a house for herself, it was time for me to take the big step and say goodbye to my house. And that immediately means saying goodbye to the Netherlands. That felt like a very big step to take, but I think I’m ready for it.

The weather was tipical Dutch. Grey, cold and wet. I am not going to miss that.

I stayed at my brother’s house during my time in the Netherlands, and that was good because he was getting a new kitchen. When I arrived, they had just demolished the old one, and I could start preparing things for when the new kitchen would arrive. Removing tiles, doing some minor electrical work, plastering, and painting the walls. It was fun to do, and I learned a lot about renovation again.

Meanwhile, I was looking for a van. I needed to move my stuff from the Netherlands to Spain. I could have hired a moving company, but that’s really expensive. Buying a van is also costly, but I’m planning to sell it again here in Spain. So I hope to break even, or maybe even make a little profit.

It was good to stay at my brothers house. A bit of quality time wirking in the house and watching the olympic speedskating tournement.

This is it—my new VW Crafter L2H2. It’s a beauty and the newest vehicle I have ever owned. Still 13 years old, but my campervan is 34 years old now.

Then it was time to get my stuff out of my house and into the van. It was more work than I had anticipated, and not all my stuff fit in there either. I wanted to take all my plants with me, and that created a lot of empty space. So I had to bring quite a lot of things to my parents’ house. They have an attic that could be filled up again. But eventually, I managed to get everything sorted.

Thats it, its fillde up completely.

Time to sit in my balkony for the last time, eating a Dutch "gevulde koek"

I had a nice goodbye lunch together with my family, and after that I was off.

First stop: Eindhoven, the Netherlands. I needed to arrange export papers for the van, and I also wanted to visit a close friend there. I stayed one night in Eindhoven, and the next day I was off for real—2,200 kilometers to the south of Spain.

Second stop: Luxembourg, to fill up the tank with cheap diesel. During this trip, diesel prices had already gone up very quickly.

And there I made a mistake. I drove a bit too far on my reserve tank. I didn’t yet know how many kilometers I could drive on one tank. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Belgium, I almost ran out of diesel. That’s not good, because there can be deposits in the tank. And it happened—very quickly after I stopped at a gas station, warning lights began to appear… Luckily, I found a gas station that sold diesel additive to clean the engine a bit. I put it in the tank and got back on my way.

The next day, I drove around the area all morning looking for a mechanic who could help me.

After visiting a couple of places, one finally gave me a full engine system check. They reset the warning system, and I could finally continue driving. I did get one warning again, but after quickly turning the engine off and on, it disappeared, and I had no more problems.

Because that took almost the whole day, I just drove another 500 km and stayed at a hotel in the town of Valence. I really needed a good night’s sleep after all that—it felt very stressful.

After a nice breakfast I was up and running again, ready for the next part of the gerny to Spain.
And when I saw the snowy mountains of the Pyrenees, it felt a little bit like coming home.