Trouble Was Brewing
Our dream camping trip to the Balkans was interrupted by some bad news
Hey there! Thank you for reading Expat Life—musings from a Dutch-American couple as we navigate life in Europe, Mexico, and beyond. This post is #3 in my NL (NL = Netherlands) series, where I write about finding and buying our home in Appingedam and our lives as Nederlanders.
Driving to Greece from the Netherlands is not for the faint of heart, especially with a 4-cylinder Mazda CX5 pulling a loaded camper. Mini Pearl was 800 kilos empty, but when you add bicycles, groceries, clothing, chairs, tables, pots and pans, a grill, etc., it’s slow going.
Plus we had a new passenger aboard, my college pal Emily, who asked if she could join us on our epic camping trip. We picked her up in Vienna May 2, 2023, and headed south to Croatia.
Trouble Was Brewing.
But trouble was brewing. Our benefactor, who stepped up the previous summer and let us use his name, address, and insurance to purchase our car and camper, was busy renovating his own camper together with his wife in preparation for a serious overland journey into Africa. Thijs said we had to return to the Netherlands as soon as possible since he was quite sure that his insurer would balk at insuring two campers.
We got this news when we had just arrived in Greece. To make matters worse, our trip through Croatia, Montenegro, and Albania had been marred by constant rain. There was a low-pressure system over the Balkans that stayed put, dumping rain and more rain as we bravely tried to explore these beautiful Balkan countries.
When we reached the coast of Greece about an hour south of Thessaloniki, the sun came out, the beach called our name, and Thijs said we had to turn around and head north. We couldn’t be mad at him, obviously. He was doing us a favor by letting us use his name and insurance policy for our vehicles. When he found out how far away we were, he said we could have two weeks to get back to NL, which was about the same amount of time it had taken for us to get down to Greece.
Northbound Journey
Peter, Emily, and I made the best of it. I’ll post an article about southwest Bulgaria in the coming days and also one about Dresden, Germany, which Peter and I visited before Emily joined us. Our northbound journey also took us through Novi Sad, Serbia, and Budapest, Hungary. We fell in love with the Balkans and can’t wait to go back.
The end result of this thwarted trip to Greece was Peter and I decided we needed to buy a house in the Netherlands so we could have an address, so we could keep camping in Europe.
I know, it sounds crazy, right? Buying a house just so we could go camping?
As you can guess, there was more to it than just having an address. I love the Netherlands. I spent almost a year living with Peter in a small town in the province of Groningen in the 80s before we relocated to the U.S. We also moved to Limburg, a province in the south of the Netherlands, with our three sons in 1997. (I’ll be posting installments of my book, Still Life with Sierra, which recounts that move and subsequent camping journey in 1998.)
Forests and Sand Dunes
Once we returned to NL in June 2023, we found a campground we liked in the Veluwe, a beautiful nature preserve with forests and heather-covered sand dunes crisscrossed by bike trails. Located more or less in the center of the country, it was the ideal home base for us to shop for a home. We didn’t have a specific area in mind, except we knew we wanted to steer clear of Amsterdam and environs. A place somewhere out in the country would be just fine.
We paid for our campsite for the rest of the summer, settled into our laid-back camping life, and started venturing out to look at properties. One day Thijs called Peter and said that his insurance guy didn’t blink an eye when he added his new camper to the policy, so we could go wherever we liked and keep using his name and policy for the car. Alas, it was too late. We were already excited about buying a house and living in the Netherlands in the spring and summer.
Kind of a perfect life, don’t you think? Mexico in the winter and Europe in the summer.
Next time: Finding the most beautiful home in the Netherlands.
If you missed my previous posts, catch up here!
