Day 6 The Tack family

The Tack family who were so helpful and friendly. Thank you Virginie!

The best place in Benelux to have a trailer fixed.


We left London with the mission to arrive in Bulgaria in 3-5 days. Normal cars do it in 2-3. We were only meant to wiz through Belgium between Calais and Koln but destiny had its own intentions. We had expected potential trouble in Germany as we were crossing the country diagonally over 800 km or in Romania because the roads might be bad but never Belgium.

But the wheel of our trailer fell off and our journey was changed. The voyage we had planned and controlled from inside our slow convoy fell apart. From now everything that happened to us was unplanned and unpredictable. We had to improvise. All three together we had to find solutions to cold, food, transport, space and time. We had to make decisions that we were not prepared for. It was a test to see how good we were together at resolving problems with the elements we held between us. It was a puzzle we had to complete. All the pieces were in front of us and we had to make decisions on how they would fit together.

We were stuck in small-town Belgium. We couldn't move forward or back. Once we realised that there was no escaping, no easy way out and we had to deal with the present situation, here and now, we relaxed and thought practical. After all we are safe, healthy, a bit cold and hungry. Let's find solutions to our problems and make the most of it.

We had left London without enough time to buy cocoa, our precious indulgence. How could we survive in the Bulgarian mountains for a whole winter with a hot cocoa drink, the way only Mariya knows how to make it. As destiny would have it, or was it Mariya's power of mind, we broke down in chocolate-country. So on top of problem-solving our broken wheel we set ourselves the mission to find cocoa powder.

When you arrive from London in small towns like Oudenaarde and Aarsele in Belgium you wander what people live from. How do they survive? There is no city buzzing to the electric ebb and flow of the digital money markets, there are no office blocks, tube lines or regular bus services. The cows graze in the fields. The tractors shift loads from barn to field and field to barn. And yet people look relaxed, smiling, rosy cheeked and relatively content. They are human. They just don't look grey, tired, rushed and hyper-stressed. And after just a few days outside London we can actually say that they look normal. We don't.

People have jobs. There are car repair services, farmers, doctors, people who work in banks, the post office and public amenities. But they stop at lunch for one hour at least to eat together at work or with their family. The Tack family break for lunch between twelve and one. They eat all together with the workers of the small trailer factory. In the front office where the daughters manage the admin they have a play area for the kids and go about their business professionally and in a relaxed way. No sandwiches in front of the PC listening to the iPod whilst writing emails. No running around like a headless chicken snacking on a chocolate bar. A break is a break and work is work. Both are done separately and fully.

Our choice of lifestyle makes us ill. Stressing about paying the bills and keeping up at work whilst neglecting our health, ignoring our need for quality sleep and always eating food that is nutritionally dead can only lead to ill-health, fatigue, depression and cancer. Heart disease is the illness of those who are physically and emotionally broken. Our choices determine our health and happiness. Every time we light a cigarette, binge drink or stuff a chocolate bar down our throat we are making a much bigger decision than we care to admit.