Giving up all the charm in exchange for an elevator! Just for one day. This is how we felt the day before departure. Living in the third and fourth floor of a pretty monumental building in Amsterdam had always been a bliss. Till that day.

It was painful to go up and down the steep stairs about a million times, to bring all of our luggage down to Polaris, our Camper Van. Clothes, food, kitchen equipment, shoes, tools, books, games, bed clothes, towels, and a long etc of heavy stuff. We were exhausted, but happily our friend Yvonne decided that it was appropriate to say goodbye in style and treated us to a gorgeous seafood platter and a couple of bottles of Chablis. This lifted our energy and our spirits.

We were leaving early the morning after… Or so we thought. We still had to go up and down the stairs another million times, quickly hug our friend Darina and Yvonne goodbye, and to realise in horror that Polaris was more than a 100 Kg overweight. it was a mixture of panic and frenzy that drove us to off-load food and books and soap and who knows what else in about 30 minutes. At this point we still don’t have a good idea what we left behind. Christian for example cannot find his belt and spends the day pulling up his pants. But in any case the haste and the last minute panic deleted that sweet and sour sensation that we were leaving our home, friends and comfort for about a year.

Goodbye Amsterdam

Steadily we drove the Dutch highway and the Deutsche Autobahn and made it to some tiny town in Lower Saxon where a farmer allowed us to park in his backyard, in exchange for a small fistful of Euros.

Our first objective was the North coast of Germany were we met our friends, Silke and Kai, the day after. We were welcomed with cake, a nice walk on the beach, wonderful grilled fish for dinner, a luxurious shower the morning after and a truly amazing breakfast. 

We were fully energised to head off take the ferry to Denmark and then drive to Sweden crossing the famous Oresund Bridge, to enjoy for a few days the wonderful southern Swedish coast.