Leaving the VAN

Last days with the van

I started off hating this van, naming her the "Beast", with her heavy gearbox, dash board signs to forever shift up yet another gear, and the wide berth on narrow lanes. But my driving a manual has greatly improved, my skill at manoeuvring through tight little roads with oncoming buses is now quite adept, and I love the van. 

She has been our home away from home. We have lots of cupboards and orderly ways to tidy up and then still be able to find everything. She provides us with a bed, and a place to wash, cook and even pee when needed. And now we are about to return her and the next phase of our adventure is about to begin.

It must be the nature of adventures that some angst is raised. 

I spent our last morning in the Salzburg camp making phone calls to recruiters to finalise the plans to meet up, present documents and hopefully be directed into employment. While keeping in semi regular contact with these people whilst travelling, there were still several hours of enrolment forms to complete, emails to send etc to maximise my interview time, so our first morning in Munich that's what I did. Along with all this is the concern that there is still one piece of documentation I require to work, the DBS check, and this is tricky as it requires formal proof of a UK home address which we will not have initially and then may still take several weeks to process. 

This meant we didn't venture into the city until about 1:30 in the afternoon, and the prospect of returning the van in 2 days, moving onto the UK, the uncertainty of how long it will take to get into a position, and the expectation that our living costs will rise in London, and our tight tight budget has left us feeling very stressed and quite anxious. 

But that's adventures right! If there are no unknowns, they are not adventures.

So while trying to jolly each other along, heather and I chose a "slow" afternoon in Munich city. We wandered about, ate lunch, and enjoyed several music stages - the first playing Irish music - some with German lyrics  - the second, in the very centre of Munich surrounded by beer gardens, country music. Here we grabbed a couple of beers and settled in to just relax in the sun and be part of the crowd. 

Then home to the van, to try and enjoy our 2nd to last night. We sat outside in the warm evening and did more planning and scheming, thinking of ways we can live cheaply and somehow anchor ourselves for the following ?4 weeks of uncertainty.

By the time we had finished, we looked up and realised that the evenings have lengthened over our short time here, and it's light right up to about 9:50 pm.

Munich Camp

Munich

Sun music and beer