The Start Of Our Adventure

We finally hit the road: we’re 4 days, 1400 kilometers and 4 countries in. We crossed The Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Slovenia. In this blog you read more about the highs and lows and the life lessons we learned so far.

Ultimate freedom

We were so busy preparing for the trip the last few weeks that we didn’t really have time to think about what we were going to do. The people around us seemed more aware of this than we were. But the time has finally come: our adventure has started. We left our hometown Utrecht in our Toyota 4Runner with rooftop tent to drive to Singapore.

When I woke up on the day of departure – last Sunday, March 24 – I realized that I don’t have to go to the office the next day. I’m not expected anywhere whatsoever. Same goes for the next day, and the next, and the next… You get the point. We can literally go wherever we want. Decide every day what we want to do. Is that the definition of ultimate freedom? Pitching your tent when it’s time to sleep and waking up with the sun?

Life lessons

I am typing this on day 4 from Bled, Slovenia. We drove over 1400 kilometers and passed through 4 countries in total. We’re obviously never going to keep up this pace, and we don’t want to. It’s not a race to get to Singapore as soon as possible. We have time. Although I really need to start realizing that more often. I need to learn to let go and see where the day takes me. Which is surprisingly difficult if you are used to the rat race in the Netherlands. So it seems I already learned some life lessons in just 4 days time.

Ultimately, that’s what this trip is about. I don’t know if we will ever arrive in Singapore. Or when. But that doesn’t really matter either. It’s about everything we see and experience along the way. The lessons we learn from it. And what we do with those lessons the rest of our lives.

The highs and lows

Is it all fun and games, then? I wish! We almost fell asleep on the German autobahn out of boredom (although we will probably miss that smooth asphalt in a few weeks time), we barely got any sleep in our rooftop tent, Marcel got sick and I managed to set our gas stove on fire. Like, the entire stove, not the thing that is meant to burn.

But it was all well worth it. Because above all we saw so many beautiful places along the way. The fairytale Neuschwanstein Castle with its tall, white towers overlooking the wooded hills of Bavaria. The green, rolling valleys and rugged, snow-capped peaks of Tyrol. The mysterious Lake Bled, with its small church on the island in the middle shrouded in fog, clouds and rain.

What struck me most, however, were all the invitations we got from people all over the world, asking us if we want to stay at their place when we drive by. Simply because they like what we’re doing. Hospitality unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. The world has so much to offer, if you are open to it. We can’t wait to discover it all.

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