Italy to Germany: Travel Bloggers, Horses and Police (Again)-?
We took a short break from the blog, since we were traveling/meetups/traveling/working/traveling… and now we can breathe a moment. Grin.
So, to catch you up on recent adventures: we tearfully left family and friends behind in Milan to go to a Westfalia meetup. It was organized by the amazing Thorston, aka ‘Dr. Camp,’ from Westfalia and we met loads of very cool German bloggers.
Thanks so much to: Camperstyle, Takly on tour, IsasWomo, UMIWO, and 5Reicherts.
We then re-met with our friend Rene from Essen, who has recently finished his job to test out his vanlife dream with his orange T3 Syncro, Horst. It was great seeing him again and we can’t wait to see his photography of Norway. Nice.
There was a deja-vu kind of moment for us. Remember when we stayed for a week with a circus? Armando said: would you like to experience it? And I said: why not?
We were driving through the lush (shockingly green) countryside when we passed a horse stables. We stopped. We ended up staying a few days at Maashof, thanks to Andre. We also got to know Raja from Stall Kultur.
Armando made videos for each of them and I got to ride a horse for the first time in absolute years. It was awesome. Big grin.
We decided to visit Koln again, to see an old friend. Another old friend was traveling through on holiday and we were able to hang out. It was so nice seeing really class friends (Hi Debra, Hi Richie) and swap stories of where life has taken them since we last saw each other.
We helped a small group of Debra’s friends (hugs to Romy, Marcus & Ken) with a video/voice-over/text and basically hung out enjoying quality company.
That is, until the ‘police came.’ Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam!!!’ on the side of the van on a Sunday afternoon. It was an angry street policewoman and her partner, screaming at me and telling me the van was called in as ‘suspicious.’
Debra thinks it might have been one of her neighbors, but we really don’t know. Armando and Marcus came down- and since they aren’t ‘real’ police’- we asked them to call the cops.
The cops were very cool and took care of things.
It’s strange. I guess I won’t ever get ‘angry non-cops’ reasons for her spite/raising her voice. But hey. Not my place to.
We debunked from Koln with a bad taste in our mouths and headed for the hills. Or more apt: the soothing countryside.
Mork had Kai, Rene’s mechanic, work on his water pump only to be told we need a very new, very pricey belt for the engine.
Right now we’re just chilled next to a lake in the countryside. Quiet. Nice. Breath-filled.
Oh- I almost forgot. Ziggy ran off and found some very nice people yesterday. We panicked when he hadn’t returned after his 10-15 minute exploration, looked for 2 hours and sent emails, etc.
He was at a local pound, because someone thought he was a stray.
Dang, we need to get a GPS for that little rascal. And soon. He’s chipped, he has his Euro passport- but it’s not enough.
That’s it for our recent times, without (too) many frills. We hope you’ve enjoyed our latest escapades and we look forward to sharing more with you soon!
Mel, Armando, Ziggy & Mork
