FINAL DAY

DAY TWENTY NINE

Well alas faithful blog followers, our last full day in Europe has finally arrived.
Today has been the quietest day of our trip so far. We were up at 8am with our only aim being to pack our belongings and clean Betsy. A task that might not sound all that difficult, but we’ve been living in the vehicle for a month. Also we’ve had to make sure we leave Betsy in good nick since the rental company imposes a 150 Euro fine if they have to clean the van internally. That said after a hearty cooked breakfast in the van we
set about packing our clothing and gifts. Fortunately Kurt’s purchase of extra hand luggage greatly helped with fitting in all the extra bits and pieces. Bags packed we spent some time sweeping and cleaning, returning Betsy’s interior to the condition we found her in.

Our afternoon included a walk to a pedestrian shopping area and a very filling lunch at another Nordsee restaurant. Fortunately we have free wireless in our hotel room which has helped with planning and emails. A quite evening lies ahead before we face our return flight tomorrow pm. We won’t be posting tomorrow since the day will include returning Betsy to her owners and taking a taxi to the airport where we hope to use the business lounge for a quite day of reading and rest.

In reflection I think a month away is the perfect length of time one needs away from normal life before beginning to feel the desire to return home. Both Kurt and I are eager to board our flight tomorrow and be on our way back to normality. It always seems strange to me to feel this way since I enjoy travelling so much, but home is where the heart is as the saying goes. We’ve covered 4700km in pretty bad weather conditions, visited eight countries, seen some really wonderful sights and tasted the flavor of some interesting European cultures. Originally we had planned to travel from Germany through Poland and then down into Italy, but give the cold weather conditions in the north we changed the direction, our route being refined over and over again as we progressed. A real blessing for both of us was spending time with respective close friends at different points on the trip.

The greatest challenge has been spending so much time with one person in such limited space conditions. A camper van isn’t a very big area to cohabit, and the cold winter weather has kept us indoors a good portion of the time when not exploring. Kurt recons we’ve spent about 700 hours in each others company over the last month which is a lot by anyone’s standards. Somehow though we’ve managed to get on quite well with only the occasional fall out here and there. We’ve certainly seen aspects to each other we hadn’t seen before in the seven years we’ve know each other.

My greatest disappointment of the trip was missing out on seeing the ‘Eagles Nest’, but we’ve been very blessed to have seen all the other sights we had hoped to see and a few others which we stumbled across on the way. As a time of reflection the trip has been a success for both of us, giving us the opportunity to consider the year ahead and what we’d like to achieve both personally and professionally.

From my side thanks to all of you for following the blog over the last month. It has been great sharing the experience with you.

Kurt’s Note: I have already said on my facebook profile that this trip has been a life changing experience and I have gotten all I desired out of the trip to Europe – and more. I really appreciate the comments and short notes from you avid followers and look forward to seeing some of you when I return on Friday.