Our playlist on spotify when we’re on the road. Take care, it’s really freaky 😉
Serendipity – or The Art of Letting Go
About 7 months ago we let go of a lot of things: of our former life, of most of our belongings, our job titles and our safety thinking, we let go of life as we have known it until then. Then we went on our journey and after some time we were used to being bagpackers, owning very little, world drifters as we called it.
Then a new idea came and it was time to let go of the former life again. Now we no longer just owned some bagpacks and stayed overnight in guesthouses or hotels, we bought a camper van and again needed some stuff for this kind of living. So we started to buy some things again, owned a lot more than before. But therefore the safety of having real walls around us, having a bedroom and a bathroom, vanished. Now we started sleeping just somewhere on our way, places that life offered us. Very different places, where we never knew what would happen next, how loud or how cold it would get in the night.
And even if that was not enough change, again a complete letting go of what we used to live before, we also became house & pet sitter. Today we again have some solid walls around us, a bathroom and even a kitchen, but nothing of it belongs to us and we are no paying guests, we take care of it for someone else and even of pets that we don’t own. Again a letting go of what defined us a few days ago …
So we are no longer bagpackers and also no real hardcore campers, but part of our time we live in someone else house and take care of their beloved pets, part of our time we spent in DumbleBee (our van) and part of our time we will also stay in hotels.
So it seems letting go of any kind of labeling – ourselves or our lifes – is what became one of the most important characteristics for us. Our mind likes to label things all the time to give us some kind of safety and control. But as soon as you put a label on something (even yourself), you deminish it, you fix it, make it static and it loses its freedom of being and flowing. It loses its inert energetic fluidity.
Letting go of being a fixed person that’s this way or that way, letting go of being successful or somehow special, letting go of what others may think about you, letting go of knowing anything by sure or at all, letting go of old mental safety programs, letting go of who we think we are every single moment means enjoying real aliveness. Enjoying the openess and specialness of this very second.
The funny thing is, we don’t need all these mental regulations to live our lifes, we don’t need to define who we are (only our busy mind wants to do this), it’s really enough to live what life is presenting you every instant, no matter what it is. Don’t label it and it doesn’t label you 😉
What happens then is: you feel immense aliveness and freedom! Freedom from being a labeled person, encaged in your own mental files. You are allowed to savor every moment in its isness and yourself in your perfect imperfection. Love it, hate it. It doesn’t matter. It just is what it is. A happening in this very moment. Nothing to become, nothing to strive for, no new label you have to become. Just pure aliveness, right now.
What we realized is that when you stop this kind of permanent labeling and always let go of what you thought before might be right or important, the most outstanding things start to happen in your life – that’s “Serendipity”.
If you live this moment openly, not as a defined such-and-such person, there are no things you really need to have or that need to be changed. Life starts to take over … and so much better as you might have imagined it before. Life can now flow freely through you and offer you one serendipity after the other … like it has for us over the last seven months. Much better than we could have imagined. Not always just nice or pleasureable, not at all! But always worth it.
So when we strolled through Bruges a week ago and the word ‘serendipity’ infused my head like a lovely scent and the descision to give my next book this title was just made, we crossed the corner of a small street just to find this shop sign in front of us:
Unbelievable? Or: just another magical happening of serendipity 😉
The Magic of Avalon (Glastonbury)
Next stop today: Glastonbury Tor, Chalice Well and Glastonbury Abbey 🙂 So we were kind of pilgrims following the Avalon and King Arthur legend. What a beauty, great energies, freaky people and what a gorgeous day!
First: Glastonbury Tor
Then: Chalice Well (a really unbelievable place of peace, tranquility and beauty)
And finally Glastonbury Abbey (just a lot of stones, so it was me alone walking through the Abbey 😉 )
Stonehenge by day & by night
Stonehenge is really quite a funny thing. Some love it, some think of it as a lot of stones standing in a circle. I belong to the first category. Andy to the second 😉
So it was me paying the 23 £ admission and Andy waiting outside with DumbleBee. And yes, I also thought that’s a lot of money to see some stones, but I wanted to see them. On the way to the stones I saw a lot of camper vans standing in a rural road, so I asked the guard at the entry, if it’s allowed to stay there overnight. The really lovely man informed me that it’s allowed to stay at such a road for 3 days (some special English law I’ve forgotten how it’s called) and also told me the exact directions to this special road. So, as so often on our trip, by kind of magical happenings (serendipity 🙂 ) we now knew where to stay this night. I enjoyed the beauty of the stones and afterwards Andy could also glance at Stonehenge as we had an unbelievable view from DumbleBee and there is even a free walk right before the stones (with two small fences between). What a great night and morning coffee with such a view!!!! Only negative subject: it got really awfully cold and damp at night …
The pictures above are from my paid entry. The pictures below are from the rural road next to Stonehenge where we spent the night.
I neeed a shower !!!!
After 2 nights sleeping in DumbleBee and only having a cat’s lick we have chosen a simple Travelodge hotel and both enjoyed loooong showers and a good night’s sleep in a (real) room again. You only honour what you have, when you don’t have it … so right!! I definitely honour a bathroom now more than I did before 😉
Our first 2 nights in Dumblebee
For us Dumblebee is more than a vehicle, it’s our new home. So for sure we will also sleep inside, indeed a complete new experience for us.
The first night was next to Brussels, near the motorway at the end of the village road. We just parked, implemented the mosquito net, pulled down the jalousies and lay down on our brand new matrasses. What a sound, just the birds, the teen bikers, the joggers and the dog walkers. It was awfully hot but anyhow, we felt asleep, woke up thousand times at night, sleeped again.
The waking up in the morning brought us again bikers, joggers and dog walkers but we didn’t care. Some of them greeted us friendly with a ‘Good morning’, which felt quite nice. We used our gas cooker to heat the water for a fresh brewed coffee and enjoyed it.
50°49’47.5″N 4°41’19.0″E
https://goo.gl/maps/isE9ADtWWCKAfgZG6
The 2nd night was in England, on the shore side of Hythe, a small village 20 km west of Dover. We chose a small place next to a golf yard, directly at the coastal road and the beach. We thought the traffic will stop at night and we were right. What we didn’t expect was the beach party with 120 db of arabic music and screeming ‚ladies‘. And, complete opposite to the European mainland, it was fu****g cold at night. So lesson learned: with wild camping you really never know that happens next and life is getting even more an adventure than it was before for us 😉
Yeah, Ravioli! 
Hythe, Vereinigtes Königreich
https://goo.gl/maps/knDpoeKzT4ncYVdV9
On our way to the UK
The next 3 months we totally dedicate to one of our favorite holiday destinations: the UK. First from Dover to Wales (for a house & pet sit), then heading north for Scotland … 😀
A short Bruges intermezzo
Everybody who knows the movie ‘In Bruges’ can guess that we had to have a stop over in Bruges on our way to Calais. What a fancy and extraordinary city, and YES, we always had the bad f**k word in mind – seen the movie too often, we guess ^^ and looked at the famous church tower in gaze! Definitely a city we would like to visit again sometime 🙂
Good Bye Germany (again)
After 5 days full of errands and to-do’s, many visits and lots of excellent brunches and bbq dinners (many many thanks to everybody!!!), we left Germany today and are heading for Brussels for our first overnight stay in DumbleBee. About 40°C in Belgium, so will be quite hot tonight we guess 😉
And off we go again …
Starting our road trip and house & pet sitter time 😀
DumbleBee
DumbleBee is not only a car, but also our little kind of home since June 2019.
We hope he has the magical abilities and kindness of Dumbledore and the transforming super powers of Bumblebee. For us he is already a beloved travel companion and we adopted him as part of our family right away 🙂
May we introduce: DumbleBee :)
DumbleBee will be our new home and drifting vehicle for the next few years (hopefully). We hope he has the magical abilities and kindness of Dumbledore and the transforming super power of Bumblebee 😉 Definitely needs new interior design, some repair and corrections, new mattresses a.s.o. So will be some work for us the next weeks, but building us a new mini home and travel companion is sure worth it. We already hug the idea of adopting him as part of our family and can’t wait to start our new freaky & weird wild camping life 😀
What a joy!!!
We met Karin exactly half a year ago in Thailand on the Koh Phangan Island and deeply enjoyed the conversations (and cocktails ^^) we had for a few days before our journeys parted again. Today Karin visited us in Austria and it directly felt like before, talking for hours and enjoying the openness and stories of each other … how beautiful to have met you, Karin! Thank you for driving all the way to Austria and looking sooo much forward to our next meeting (maybe in Scotland?)
Oh yeah, that’s already 6 months ago 😉
Groundhog day :)
“Brothers in Arms”
Adieu France & Servus Austria!
Yesterday we crossed (former) borders again and arrived at Mayrhofen in beautiful Zillertal, Austria. And today we already enjoyed a fantastic day at the Zillertaler Höhenstraße. Sunshine all day long … we can’t image anything more beautiful than a blue heaven sprinkled with some nice clouds, high mountains and summer meadows full of wild flowers. All you can think is: Oh my God, what a beautiful world!!! 😀
And again: Monkeys :)
This time not in Bali or Thailand, but in Kintzheim, France.
Ohana means family
Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten (Lilo & Stitch)
Beautiful Vosges
What a difference after 6 months of heat and subtropical surroundings! We so much enjoy the rain (really!), fresh air and the green trees and meadows in Soultzeren, France. We rented a lovely cottage for a week and enjoy being together with our family again after such a long time. So it’s mostly relaxing and talking, going for a walk together and indulging in gorgeous fresh baguette, cheese and red wine 🙂
Back again – for a day :)
Yesterday we arrived savely and happy in Frankfurt. Funny to hear people talking German everywhere ^^
Tomorrow we’ll be off to France already with our Ohana (family)
