Life's a remix

Nothing is created ex nihilo and everything is a source of inspiration.

Do your thing
Do your thing again

Call on me
Call on me again
Call on me again and again
And again

It doesn't matter where it started or even where it's going. It's about what you're doing to move the flow.

Thought shower

We're discussing what to do next whilst picking rosehip in the mountain. It's very therapeutic. The thorns keep you focused.

We wanted to make Rosehip Marmalade but apparently it's difficult if you're a novice. So we'll dry them and make tea. It's one of the best sources of Vitamin C.

The Negotiator

Mariya organises our lives from the back of the camper van. With two mobiles, one for each network in Bulgaria she wheels and deals to find us everything we need from a roof over our heads to goat's yoghurt.

Raphael is our secret weapon. He coos to charm the grandmas who hold all the information on what's going down in the hood. They're all helping us out. We always leave a business meeting with a bag of apples and walnuts.

Mona Lisa: Shut up!

How to keep him quiet...

Raphael sometimes likes to whinge and moan, hence the name Mona Lisa. But we have found a way to keep him quiet. Thank you YouTube!

Here's some tunes we recommend:
No limit
Rythm is a dancer
Power

Musical appreciation starts young. We started with Raphael, Bobcho at the time, when he was in his mother's tummy. Thank you Basement Jaxx and hello Brockwell Park!

The neighbour watches Turkish soaps on TV. Rapahel is hooked. He actually gets upset when we interrupt the program. Ouch! That is trash.

The Fire Starter

Mariya keeping the family warm

Nearly everybody here uses wood to stay warm, cook and heat the boiler for hot water. We took turns cutting the logs to fit into our new wood burner.

Our lives at home revolve around the wood burner. The temperatures drop to zero at night. In the morning I wake up at 6am to start the fire so the living room warms up before Raphael and Mariya get out of bed. In the evening when we get back we leave Raphael with our neighbour Stoyanka to start the fire before he comes in.

Quote of the day:
"Don't take that newspaper it's not thick enough. This one burns better too, it's got oil from the coloured ink."

Mariya's the Gypsy queen. She can start a fire under any circumstances. With her hips or with a match she can set the place alight. But she doesn't like to get up early in the morning when it's cold. I'm an early bird so I don't mind. But I'm a city boy. I can flick a switch but I can't light a fire. The first days it took me sometimes 2 hours to get some smoke with no flames. So now I use firelighters. They never fail. If I had a flame-thrower I'd squirt a bit of kerosene in the corner of the room and set the place alight to save time.

It was the first proper exercise we did since we left London. We were so excited we cut down all the trees in the vacinity.

Sultan Sladur Pasha

Rafi

Raphael's names:

• Pilense > petit poulet > little chicken
• Sladur > cutie
• Slansho > Sunny
• Huggy lump > when waking up
• Fils a son papa > daddy's boy
• Munchkin > Oops! Dorothy lost Toto at TG.
  
• Klein Mann > petit homme > little man
  

House hunting

This is what we saw on our way home walking through a field of plum trees

Our first warm meal

Cabbage and carrots Manja

The cabbage was as big as a football and looked like it had been kicked around the field for 90 minutes. There was no plastic packaging, no label, no health warning or dietary information. It didn't need to say that it was organic. Just cabbage. I peeled the first leaf off. Underneath it looked fresh. Cut a few slices and tasted a bit. Wow! it was so sweet. Subtle in taste and fresh as a fruit. I ate half of it and put the other half in the pot.

The carrots looked like they had actually lived in the ground. Not the nice shinny supermarket ones from plastic wrapped blightey. They had a nutty taste and were sweet too! I ate a few while I was preparing dinner. And I was still hungry for the manja. Too good to miss! The taste of the vegetables blended together. Mmmm!

Where's the Monday blues?

We're lying, there were no clouds in the sky today...

We only realised by mid-morning that today is Monday. But there was no feeling blue. We were neither tired nor grumpy. We didn't long for the coming weekend, nor shudder at the endlessness of the next 5 days...

We haven't stopped all week and even Sunday we were busy sorting out a million and one things. And yet today we're feeling so positive. There are no grey clouds, London drizzle or moody bastards on the tube to make our day even worse. The air is crisp and fresh, the sun was warm in the afternoon and everything just rolled.

We ticked off nearly everything on the long list of things we had to do today. But no stress. We smiled at each other and at many other people. We found time to chat, laugh and play with Raphael.

We're doing what we want to do.

Here we are!

Troyan

We're waiting for Zara to join us and all of you to come and visit us soon!

We'll keep posted on life in the mountains in Bulgaria.

Bliss

Raphael Sunny, aka Slancho, enjoying his first snooze in BG

Camila check-up

Dental check to sort out the front end rattling

In preparation for the next adventures...

Why you need a cup of tea...

When the wheel fell off the trailer on the motorway in Belgium we nearly bought this caravan. Not so much because it fits the style and grace of Camila but just because it was cheap.

After haggling we gave the owner the money and were ready to tow it off. Only then we remembered that the plug at the back of our camper van is not standard. It does not have 7 wires but only 5. It's part of its English heritage to be excentric. Just like the wheels of our English trailer have only 4 bolts and not 5 like the rest of Europe. In England things follow English standards that nobody else follows or understands. A bit like the rules of cricket really... nowatamean geeza!

Anyway, as the butchers dog had never cut a slice of meat I contained my compulsion to grab a hammer to do the job and volunteered to provide the replacement for our hobbled trailer.

Ken who had sold us the trailer via eBay had spent 2 hours re-wiring the trailer to match the 5 pin plug of the camper. It was a cold evening on the outskirts of the M25 but his kindness and diligence is memorable. His family stood around with us and we all enjoyed a warm cup of tea together chatting and joking while he resolved the conundrum.

In Belgium I tried to apply the knowledge I had gleaned from Ken to re-wire the caravan. It was getting dark. It was also cold and drizzly. But there was no cup of tea to keep me going. Cause it ain't England, innit Harry! I tried and failed. I tried again motivated by the thought of staying stuck in Belgium (we had not thought of Bruges yet) but the cold and damp just got to me.

For years living in England I thought that preparing a cup of tea was a early-warning system invented by Miss Marple to announce an imminent murder. But now I know that it is the famous cup of English tea that has resolved so many criminal cases, repelled invaders by air, sea and land and warmed up the damp, sometimes dreary English climate to make it so attractive to foreigners.

Anyway, it was definitely not my fault that day in Belgium when I mis-re-wired the camper van trailer plug. Had I had a cup of tea we would have had back lights (the red ones). Instead we had a fog light (red too but not suitable for driving). We only realised that there was a problem with the trailer lights when they were broken in Hungary. It explains why the truck drivers were clonking their horns at us all the way from Belgium to Hungary. And all we could answer is: F*&$ off!

All this to say that if Belgiums drank tea they would have conquered the world!

L'aventurra sempre

The journey continues...

We enjoyed travelling in a camper van. It takes away the stress of finding a hotel room and knowing where you're going to sleep. You can stop to cook, eat and sleep wherever you want. On the side of a motorway, in a village square or in the middle of the countryside. We were autonomous and mobile.

We've realised that Vienna, Bratislava, Prague, Budapest, Krakow, Sarajevo and Belgrade are all in a 300km radius. Turkey and Istanbul are neighbours and so is Northern Greece. So we will travel more in the region, without the trailer!

Day 13 Mount Zion

We escaped Babylon to find a different way of life

Day 13 Our quest

We wanted space to think our own thoughts. And time for each other.

Day 13 Zdrasti!

We arrived in Bulgaria in time to enjoy the colours of the late autumn. The grass was still lush green, the trees were gold and copper. The fields had been tilled in preparation for the winter. The earth was black. The air was fresh and sky a crisp blue.

After crossing most of Europe we could appreciate even more the natural beauty of Bulgaria.

Day 13 What was it like?

We spent quality time together

We took care of each other and together took care of the baby. This is how it works: Mummy feeds baby, daddy takes care of mummy and mummy takes care of daddy so everybody's happy. Everybody contributes what he can to maintain harmony in the happy camper van. Ahh!

We split the responsabilities. Sometimes doing what the other doesn't want to do.

We supported each other to find solution to problems. Sometimes one or the other felt that it would be impossible.

And we learnt to be patient with each other in difficult situations.

Day 13 Oh no!

Mummy's taken a wrong turn in Bucharest!

There were no road signs in Bucharest. The road to Giurgiu was not indicated inside the city. A taxi driver offered to show us the way with his cab in exchange for a fare.

Day 13 Bucareshti

You can't build a city on ideology

Day 13 Back on the road

I woke up smelling like a truckers bitch. Mariya was still sleeping with Raphael. At the Lukoil petrol station the toilets were scary. Tracey Emin could not have done it better.

The trailer was still there and its content intact. We were boxed in by trucks that hadn't had their load plundered either. After travelling for nearly 2 weeks we couldn't remember most of the content in the trailer. Did we really need it? Would we have missed it if it had been stolen? Would someone else have it enjoyed it more than us? And if so, should they deserve it?

It's 100km to Bucharest and another 60km to the border.

Day 12 Huggy lump

Raphael needs a hug when he wakes up

We relayed each other driving and taking care of Raphael. Spliting tasks in such a small space for nearly 2 weeks 24 hours a day made us develop a natural symbiosis. Intuitively we stepped in to help each other and doing things together.

Day 12 Roumanie: zero point

Romanian drivers won hands down the contest for the worst drivers in Europe. They have a fuck off attitude on the road.

In a space of one day we saw four car crashes. One was probably fatal. Two cars had collided head on in a mountain pass. The paramedics were doing CPR on the side of the road. One of the two cars was a jumble of metal.

In Romania the roads are strewn with corpses of animals at various stages of decomposition. It's like a fast-forward biology lesson.

Romanian truck drivers should be banned from driving in their own country. They are a menace to everybody. They burn the speed limit at both ends and overtake in villages with total impunity. Ironically they make an effort to drive safely in other countries.

Day 12 Guess what?

I'm happy!

Day 12 On the road

It is around 680km from the Hungarian border in the North to Bulgarian border in the South. The single lane road between Arad and Pitesti swerves through the Carpathian Mountains culminating at 2000 metres altitude. We pulled our way up and down mountain passes slowly. We covered 500km in 14 hours.

Quote of the day:
"I don't think we have enough gears to reach the top of this hill."

Camila was breaking up. The exhaust pipe must have cracked. It made a rattling farting sound. It was so loud we couldn't listen to music anymore. So we enjoyed Radio Engine and switched gears to change the tunes.

We must have looked a mess. Romanians on the side of the road were making fun of our convoy.

Once we reached the motorway at Pitesti we had to rest. We were both knackered. Against the advice we were given we slept for a few hours.

Day 13 We're here!

What we'll miss about London?

• Friends
• Topshop
• Brick Lane on Sundays
• Carlos's Moka at Birley coffee shop in Canary Wharf

What we won't miss?

• The weather
• The stress
• Work
• Never having the time to see friends

Day 12 You know what?

I'm happy!

Day 12 Mordor

Tea?

We were coming from the wealthy and lush shires of England. Like Bilbo Baggins our main concerns were relatively trivial: what's for tea? We had a roof over our heads, food in the cupboard and some money in our pockets to indulge ourselves regularly.

If we didn't read the tabloids too much we could open our eyes to realise that we lived in a safe place. The most unpredictable thing that might happen to us today was the weather.

England the only country to have 4 seasons in one day. And what a great subject of conversation it makes!

But how had we arrived at this stage of civilisation?

Exploitation of course.

After subjecting the British work force into waged labour in the fields and factories in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries. The Irish, Welsh and Scottish soon followed.
At the same time the slave trade made cities like Bristol wealthy and England prospered. Then in the Nineteenth century we addicted China to opium and subjected India in order to destroy its textile industry just to help Manchester control the production of cotton and reap the huge profits. And at the beginning of the Twentieth century in South Africa we interned the Boers in the first concentration camps to control the diamond and gold mines. Exploitation is not racist!

And today we have been brain washed into taking out 25 year mortgages and accumulate huge credit card debt. It's the best way to keep the workforce tame and subdued! You don't go on strike or leave your job when you have a mortgage to pay off.

We are stitched up and exploited. And we find ways to exploit the rest of the world by demanding cheap goods and selling them dubious financial products. The negative wave of abuse rolls on. Where will it stop?

We had escaped Babylon....

We were welcomed at the Romanian border by beggars and street traders. They tried blackmailing us into washing our windscreen and buying dodgy road tax cards which are mandatory in Romania.

The older men looked gaunt, the women looked desperate. They were shorter, darker skinned and looked weather-worn. It was a long way away from the slick motorways of England, France, Belgium, Germany, Austria and even Hungary and bright roadside service stations where uniformed women smile plastically.

It is even further afield from the polished city workers of Canary Wharf we started our journey. Everyday on their way to work they carry in clothes and valuables the equivalent of several years earnings of these poor people on the Hungarian-Romanian border.

Mordor is the stark cold reality of poverty. A desperate need for basics: food, heating, shelter. Tea and cakes is a luxury. For us it is scary because desperate men do desperate things. And that threatens our idyllic lifestyle.

We had navigated Camila through Europe like a ship on the ocean. She contained the sweet comfort and valuable possessions of our London Hobbit-hole. Now on a cold grey morning we were smacked in the face by the gusty unpredictable winds of our fears.

We had chosen to live in Bulgaria, poorer than Romania and statistically the poorest country in Europe.

Food for long distance driving

• Natural cocoa for alertness and staying calm and focused on the road
• Cordyceps mushroom powder for stamina and concentration
• Honey and pollen for energy and essential nutrients
• Brown wholemeal bread for energy and fibres
• Nuts to eat while driving (replaces the sugar rush of sweets)

If you have any other please send your recommendations!

Day 12 How to cross a border

How to cross a border:

1. Prepare for crossing at first light
2. Take one old camper van
3. Attach one moribund trailer box
4. Take one constipated baby producing smelly farts
5. Add one yummy mummy
6. Attach the baby to the yummy mummy’s breast and leave them in bed
7. Make sure you haven't opened the doors or windows to let fresh air inside since the previous day
8. Cross the border early in the morning when the customs officer has just enjoyed his morning coffee
9. Present the most diplomatically pleasing passport on top of the pile (French in Romania works well. Bulgarian not so well, it's too close for friendship)
10. If the customs officer insists on coming into the camper van let him in with a smile.

Price of bribe saved, Euro 10

Face on the custom officer's face when he enters the camper van, priceless!

Day 11 Tomorrow we cross Romania

People have spoken about it like entering the Heart of Darkness. You enter in the morning and come out before nightfall. Don't stop over night or you'll wake up with no wheels. It's a 500km journey from Arad in the North to Bucarest and Giurgiu in the South and across the Danube to Rousse in Bulgaria. It takes 10 hours with a normal car because the roads are so bad.

Mordor here we come!

Day 10 Thank you Zoltan!

Zoltan helped us repair the broken back lights. His wife held Raphael while we were trying to reverse the camper and trailer out of the alley in front of their repair service. We had to go backwards over 20 metres and turn at a 90 degree angle. Mariya was driving. I was trying to push the trailer in the right direction. We couldn't do it.

Fortunately a neighbour turned up. He was a "camioneur, professional!" (professional truck driver). He masticated a toothpick between his toothless gums, grinned and re-aligned the camper with the trailer in the alley before performing the tricky manoeuvre in one-go. He handled the steering wheel like a majorette twirls a baton. We were laughing hysterically in disbelief.

The trailer can go backwards. It's just not our destiny to go back....

Day 10 Lajosmizse

Lajosmizse

Tunes for the road: Gong Radio.

Day 10 On the road to redemption

A cyclist takes us to the repair shop

Day 10 Oops!

No way back

We left London knowing we could not go back. It’s impossible to reverse with a trailer. So we had to make sure that from London to Bulgaria we only drove forwards. Hence the reason for not leaving the motorway and straying into towns where we could get stuck.

After the Belgium incident we couldn’t even unhitch the trailer because the small support wheel that keeps it upright was broken. As a result the trailer is stuck to the campervan and we can only go forward till we reach our destiny.

Knowing all this we still tried to back track over 5 metres. But manoeuvring a 9 metre slug with limited visibility through the side view mirrors is a skill that we weren’t taught at school. We managed to crash the corner of the trailer into a motorway barrier.

There’s no way we can drive without an indicator and a back light through Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. It would be death by bribe.

Beautiful on the road

We've spent 10 days with no hot water and no working shower in our camper van. We had to improvise to stay clean and odourless in the confined environment of Camilia's bosom. We used service station showers in Austria and Hungary. Here's how to stay beautiful on the road:

• Cut down your vanity case to a portable size. Keep to essentials.
• Use miniature hotel soaps and shampoo bottles to save space.
• Carry a small towel. Big ones don't dry in camper vans.
• At service station showers you can dry your hair with the hand drier.
• Enjoy the hot shower as long as possible. You don't when you'll have another one!

Day 10 Baby eskimo

Good morning Raphael! :-))

Day 10 Stop gap

How to plug a hole

A Romanian truck driver took one look at the engine and said: "Serviss! silinder kaputt." He looked at me like I was dead on the road, ready for the hospital or grave.

I tried turning the key to start the engine and by miracle it choked back to life. He probably couldn't think that anybody could be stupid enough not to close the engine lid properly.

He said: "Moment!". He came back with a pair of old gloves and a bin liner. I gave him some duck tape. He wrapped the gloves in the bin liner and tightened it with duck tape to plug the hole.

Later we drove to a petrol station and the attendant kindly gave us the lid of a petrol canister to use instead. In the afternoon Zoltan found us a lid for a Lada that did the trick.

You might ask yourself why we decided to drive across Europe in an old campervan. First becasue it's cheap. Second, because the Fiat Ducato 2.5 litre engine is simple. It's a tractor engine and it's easy to repair. And in poorer countries you can find spare parts for a Fiat Ducato easily or something similar enough to fill the hole. There are many stories of repairing a cam belt with a pair of tights. Break down with an Audi R8 in Romania or Bulgaria and you're toast!

Day 10 What do you see?

Autobahn psychological test

Day 10 Spot what's missing?

As Fred can tell you when we were kids I could never repair a bicycle. I could take it apart, sometimes with hammer, but I could never put it back together again. With the years I just stopped repairing my bike and just waited for it to be stolen to buy a new one, second hand from Brick Lane.

Bikes like any other object we have in life is never bought or owned. It is rented. We have it for the time we enjoy it, until we break it, lose it, forget it or sell it.

The only problem with this strategy is that the older and tattier the bike looks the less likely it is to get stolen. During school holidays kids in the Isle of Dogs would go on razzias nicking all the bikes in the secured garage of our building. They took Zara's and Mariya's several times but never mine. I never repaired it and now it is languishing on top of Camila's back. I hope it doesn't attract too much attention in Romania...

I was counting on Mariya who comes from a family of mechanics to keep Camilia rolling. But as she says: "You never see the butcher's dog cutting a slice of meat." She had seen it done but never did it herself.

So I was tasked with up keep of the vehicle. I didn't tell her about my childhood experience. I didn't think it was really relevant since we didn't have a hammer on board. Maybe for the best.

Every morning I checked the oil, water in the engine and tried to put air in the tires and air suspension. I tried to add some oil thinking it should go into the small tube where the testing rod sits. After thinking about it for half and hour and waking up Mariya to ask her I decided to take the risk and put it into the engine box.

I must have been so worried about doing the wrong thing that I did not screw the cap back on properly.

For the oyster card users who know the London tube map by heart and think all cars are black cabs that mysteriously mutate into Somali-driven minicabs after 12am there should not be a hole on the black box to the left of the lettters Fiat. An engine with no oil is like a skinny latte without milk, soya or other.

Oil must have spurted all the way from Linz to Budapest. We were probably lucky to have stopped driving at 10pm, only because we ate quinoa that made us sleepy, as we usually drove till 1am. Otherwise the motor would be kaputt and the journey seriously delayed. This time we would have an overweight trailer with no campervan.

Day 10 Good morning Hungary!

We're the little sister in the family

Inside Camilia 2

Rear view of campervan

Storage shelves on left. Kitchen at the far end left and sink on right. Door to storage and stinky toilets on right behind the jacket.

Inside Camilia 1

Front of the campervan

On the left tray of fruits from Sud Tirol in Italy and bags of Guerande Sea Salt and Green Clay. On the right the table where we eat and change the baby. Zebra baby car seat in front and baby clothes and nappy boxes behind. Baby clothes drying on passenger seat. King size bed above with 2 duvets and 1 blanket for cold nights without heating.