I cannot believe how quickly this has come.
Tomorrow is my final day at work.

I cannot wait, nor do I want to go in tomorrow. It’s a battle everyday and to be honest I want to hold up my white flag early.

(Click here to leave a comment)

Life has just become so busy recently, plans are afoot for this and that, plans that take time. Tonight I sat down with good intentions of writing a damn fine travel information post; went through the usual processes – grab a nice cold glass of Ice Tea, turn the mobile off, turn laptop on, whack on the media player, find links – then it all stopped.

And I make absolutely no apology for the post below sounding like a bloody hippy or “life coach” thing – I don’t really believe in them personally, but who knows they may be on to something.

Whilst the glorious piece of technology that is Media Player trawled through my collection of random noises that is my music folder it stumbled across a track that I hadn’t heard before. You know the ones I’m on about, you bought the compilation because you knew eighty percent of the stuff, but had only got round to playing the first of the two disks before you copied it onto the laptop and promptly bought something else.

I am listening to Beyond Time (ambient mix) by Blank and Jones. You can listen to it by clicking here.

Listen to it, close your eyes – don’t look at the screen, don’t look at anything. Picture yourself where you want to be. Take the moment of solitude before the bass kicks in to do a complete 360 shot of yourself, once the heavy bass kicks in dream of the discoveries you will make, the small things you see everyday that have made you stop and look twice. Allow yourself a little smile.

Seven Minutes and 40 seconds.

How often do any of us ever actually dedicate that amount of time to just closing our eyes and dreaming of somewhere else. And not the dreams before you fall asleep that you actually have very little control over, in this you are in control.

Seven Minutes and 40 seconds

Isn’t really that long, so why do we push ourselves continuously to be as busy as possible, cram everything in, work harder, play harder. Just stop.

For Seven minutes and forty seconds.

Don’t think about the music, don’t analyse it, don’t think about the lyrics. Just shut off.

I’m still not a hippy, I just wish that the whole world would take a day off, without insecurities or stresses most people are actually quite nice and a whole lot happier.

I hope that some of you will appreciate this. I look forward to my new life. Because I have suddenly realised that it’s not about the travel, it’s not about getting out of a job I didn’t like. I don’t know tha answer yet, but I’m going to go looking.

I realise that some people will just think that it’s because I’m “at that age”.

My question to you is this – when did you give up, when did you give in?

Think about this also for just a few minutes…

If I said to you that I want you to plan your life around me, around where I want you to be for 30 hours each week, at the times I specify – which happen to be during the day, when the sun is out, I will leave you the dark evenings though, so you can eat, have a few hours to yourself and get some sleep before you come back to do what I want you to do.

How much would you want for me to disrupt your life like that?

Back to normality, please leave a comment – even if just to say hi, it has been a pleasure meeting you.

Hey all, how are ya doing?

I’m really tired after my first day back at work after the holiday. Still – only four days to go, I think that’s the only thing that is keeping me going currently. Things aren’t exactly rosy and I have never had so many problems trying to teach people bloody simple things. Anyway – musn’t grumble (in the word of Terry Wogan!).

Four days until the real hard work begins. But this will be working for myself. Which makes it a seem so much easier.

For now though have a look below at some of my skiing photos. Some of which are wonderful sunsets, of course, you could never guess which time of day I most admire!

That’s all for now folks – will update more later!

Happy Travelling
OverlandSi

Hello to all you readers. I now have nearly three hundred followers (stalkers), which is brilliant.  I haven’t bee able to look at all of your blogs because the connection whilst I am here in Germany is not the fastest and online time is limited, mainly by my Facebook obsessed sister!

Please leave a commnent and I will check out your blog as well.

In our brilliant little stellplatz there are many, many campervans. A lot of them are coachbuilt wagons that are incredibly expensive.  Unfortunately my budget will not stretch to any of these travelling mansions.

There are also a number of van conversions here.  Most of them are, of course, Mercedes Sprinters or Volkswagen Crafters and Transporters.

All of these types of wagons are brilliant for converting into campervans. Below are a few things that you may want to think about before converting choosing or converting your own van. I have noted a few of these points before in my post talking about travelling Europe and Scandinavia in a Van – Link here

When choosing a van ask yourself these questions.

Do you want to have a van that you can stand up in?

Having somewhere to stand up whilst getting changed or just moving about can make a huge difference.  If you do buy a hi-roof van then make sure you check for water ingress at the connection between the van and the roof.

Think about where you will be travelling, If you will be travelling a lot into towns and cities then bear in mind that you may not be abe to get in a lot of car-parks due to the height.  I would always recommend taking public transport into major cities though.  Much easier and usually works out cheaper.

How big do you want the van to be?

This will affect your design, think about how many people are travelling with you and what you will be taking with you.  Also bear in mind the extra costs that you will incurr if your travel plans include any ferries, most of them will charge by the metre.

Van widths vary between manufacturer, with the Mercedes Sprinter being narrow but long whereas the Fiat Ducato is short but wide. The LDV Convoy is long, wide and tall.  Making it a perfect choice for conversion in this respect. You may not be able to get down every county lane in a wider van, but fold your wing mirrors and hope for the best!

Weight

Anybody who passed their driving test after 1997 in the UK is unable to drive any vehicle over 3.5tonnes gross vehicle weight (GVW).  (I am not sure how this translates for other countries, if anyone would let me know I will be grateful.) Make sure you check before you buy the vehicle that you can actually drive it!

A lot of Mercedes Sprinters and VW Crafters are 5.5t rated, having them down-plated to 3.5t is a hassle that you could avoid by buying the right van in the first place.

Also make sure you take the weight into consideration when converting the van.  The van must never weigh more than its stated weight, even when full of people, packing and food.

Also if you plan to visit Austria or Switzerland then note that your Vignette (compulsory road tax for all) will be more expensive ifyou are over 3.5tonnes.

Is speed something that concerns you?

If it is, then you may want to look at the Mercedes Sprinter – it is a beast.  Unfortunately the more powerful vans usually means a more expensive insurance policy and less economy therefore more money spent on fuel.  Speaking of fuel – go for the Diesels everytime, try to get a turbo charged one, they have good enough power and reasonable economy.

Tomorrow I will be posting a list of all the vans I have looked through and considered.

Fameseekers can post a comment here!

Ok, so I promised you a post on car / van insurance for Europe and here it is!

Please remember that this is only my own findings, if you have been told something different to what I have written here then please let me know – It might be something I have missed out on!

Travelling Abroad

Two Europes

Again though be careful of which countries you want to visit. “Old Europe” will cost you less whereas the “New Europe” countries will cost you more.

As usual please post any questions in the comments and I will try to get back to you as soon as possible.

Happy Travelling
Overland Si

Guest post…

Hey all, you may remember I offered a guest post a while ago seeing as I am off on holiday this week and connections can not be guaranteed.

This post is from Kevin Littleton, you can find a link to his blog at the bottom of this post. Right, that’s enough from me….. enjoy!

Splashy Splashy

The rains have left me sometime last night while I slept after visiting for a couple days. I awoke this morning to find sunshine pouring through all my windows. I miss the gloom that I danced in yesterday and the puddles that splashed all around that seemed to dance with me. All the puddles are slowly dying as I type this and I can’t help but feel a sadness for them and their mommy who floated inland with the gentle breeze. The weather man says more rain is coming for the weekend and that gives me hope.

Yesterday I sat on the corner of the street with my girlfriend and a cup of tea. It was lightly drizzling and there was a huge puddle in the street before us. We sat there for a long time all bundled up and just talking about nonsense. Lots of cars went by and through that puddle. But the puddle was next to a stop sign so all the cars had to stop before turning onto the main street. This halted any big splashes that could have ended in disaster with the two of us sitting there. We were both surprised that the splashes from the cars were not even making it to the sidewalk, let alone where we were… We both had mixed feelings about that though. When we got up to leave I stomped the puddle…

I didn’t hit the sidewalk either.

They say the rains are coming back for the weekend. I really hope so because my feet are dry and this can’t last for too much longer…

Kevin Littleton
http://www.kevinlittleton.blogspot.com/

Good evening all, how are you?

Thanks to the wonders of mobile internet from T-Mobile Germany I am able to stay in touch with you guys direct from our glorified car park hehe.

I should also say that we have snow, wonderful snow, and lots of it. When I get round to replacing the batteries in the camera I will upload the photos of our excellent Snow Table!

While the snow storm outside batters us I shall inform you all of a new travel invention that I have seen on my travels.

We stopped over night at another stellplatz near the German twn of Julich, which is home to one of the largest open cast mines in the world. Whatever you may think about the terrible destruction that this way of mining causes, you cannot stand near the edge of this “hole” and wonder at the scale of it.

Mahusive! and yes that is intetionally spelt that way!

Whilst staying in Julich I noticed that next door to us was a lovely patch of flat land, with some brlliant “pitch turf”, lights and a small toilet and shower block. This is the future of budget travel ladies and gentlemen…. A youth tent platz!

We’ve all heard of youth hostels, so just apply the same principle to tenting, basic – but nice and clean – and of course fairly cheap!

So there we go – ony one day down and already I have found the future of travelling. You can find out more about this place here

Happy Tavelling
Overland Si

Howdy all,

I am not sure if Blogger has issues or if it is just me but the last post seems to have some sort of issue accepting comments. Bizarre! Try this one – hope it works!

I be off on me holidays in about 5 hours (and counting) and I need one of those “split-screens” that they have on the rather brilliant 24 series to clearly demonstrate just how many tasks I am trying to do all at once so that I can get going!

I have been looking through the Google Analytics package to see how most of you are finding my little piece of bloga firma and have found (without surprise) that it is from the wonderful Blogs of Note.

Then I found out that some of you were also arriving from Search engines. So i thought I would be all clever like and actually answers one of the questions from the search phrases, seeing as they are related to this blog anyway.

One of the most popular is asking “How long to drive round Europe?”

Well I think that this is the wrong way to approach it. There is just so much to see that you could spend months, years, decades or centuries just travelling round Europe.

The best thing to do is select a few destinations (and not whole countries, yer we’re gonna DO Italy, Yuh huh… quite a LOT to DO!) Keep it down to individual campsites / areas. “Doing Rome” is a plausible statement. You could spend a couple of days in Rome then move on to your next destination.

The trick is to have a plan about how you’re going to plan bear with me it does make sense.

If you have a few people travelling with you then all try and pick on destination of your own. Set all the destinations then see how far the journey is.

If they are a few of you doing the driving then you can do many more miles, If it is just one or two people then make sure you get a good nights sleep otherwise you will be seriously affected by tiredness. Also, remember that in a lot of European countries you can stay in motorway service stations overnight, sleep in your van if you want to – save money!

If you haven’t got a set plan then take a map and a dart or something that makes a mark and lob it at said map, this must be done over your shoulder and well away from any livestock. These have heralded some of my greatest adventure travels. As you may end up in some quirky place you must be prepared to enjoy everything you see and accept the choices.

Alternatively, and currently my favourite destination planning device is Google Earth. Scroll over and just have a look at some of the photos (Panoramio) until you see something you like and then go there! Works brilliantly!

As for timings though – Plan some sort of plan first then work out how long you can take to drive round Europe.

Unless, of course, you have nothing to get back to. In which case put your right foot down and get that van rolling.

Speed limits in Europe.

UK motorways are a ludicrously slow 70mph (112kph) The rest of Europe is mostly at 80mph (130kph). Then of course there is Germany. Their Autobahns have no set speed limit (on some sections only) and you can expect a lot of BMW’s and Audi’s and Merc’s to be passing you at 130mph (209kph).

Beware though that Germany has also brought in a new rule for many parts of these de-restricted motorways and enforced an 80mph (130kph) limit between 10pm and 6am.

Equipment

Yes – something that has caught a few people out. Most countries in Europe require the following equipment by law, else you may face a fine. And there’s no point blaming it on the rental company. It’s your responsibility to be safe. Also for your own safety carry them. You never know, it might just save your life.

• First Aid kit
• Reflective Jacket
• Fire Extinguisher
• Sticker stating where the vehicle is registered (GB / D etc.)
• Spare Light bulb set
• Warning Triangle

Not having any of these could lead to be fined, or just hassled, there is also possibly more. Check before you go with your motoring association, they should know or be able to find out.

Lights

In Austria, and some other countries, you are required to have your lights on all the time, Day or Night. Don’t argue, just do it. Put a post it note, or make a sticker, to remind you and put in on the windshield or somewhere prominent.
Update – this is no longer the case in all of Austria, only certain counties – better check or just leave ‘em on! – thanks to Susi @ 2girlsincalifornia for the info

Also – a note for American visitors.

A note from a previous experience. Please remember that us lot over here in Europe mostly drive manual (stick drive) vehicles.
If you are looking to get a van to travel in then I can almost guarantee that this will be the case.
Automatics are very few and very far between, and will cost you a lot more to hire or rent.

Next time I will do some sort of information on the Insurance policies and how they work in Europe, Feel free to post any questions you may have in the comments.

That’s all for now. I hope this helps some of you. I will update you guys from our glorified car park some time next week.

Happy Travelling
Overland Si!

Evening all, I have been tagged by the wonderful Lis over at the Travel for the Over 30’s blog, in one of these wonderfully easy yet enthrallingly interesting games that us travel bloggers do.

So, I am to tell you now seven secrets about yours truly and why I love to travel. So without further ado, please continue reading below or click here to add a comment.

1. I was born and raised, for most of my life, in Germany and I still consider Germany “home”.
2. I changed Primary School 12 times as my farther was in the army and was posted to different places
3. I went to a military boarding school in England so that I wouldn’t have to move about so much in my secondry school education – and we moved only once after this!
4. I have never owned a car that could be described as “normal”, it’s either been a bright colour or some strange, yet practical, travel wagon.
5. I love country music and electronic chillout
6. I play the saxaphone.
7. I travel because it is the only thing that presents a new experience everyday.

Ok so now I have to tag seven more blogs to do the same, hopefully some will respond, but mostly these are links to blogs I read and find interesting.

Flight Level 390 – this is a blog from a pilot, Dave, and gives a good view into their lives and thoughts. I would feel quite safe flying with this guy!

Also Kevin Littleton keeps a good blog of his daily adventures and thoughts. A good read that contains thought-provoking pieces.

Previously.Bitten is pebble dashed with brilliant photos, informative travel articles and some brilliant travel tips!

The Foodie and Travel Bug Blog from Mei Ting is also good for travellers, it is filled with all sorts of information and if Mei does a post about food I will usually end up salivating like Pavlov’s dogs!

An absolute must for all travel bloggers is Nomadic Matt’s site, brilliant photos, brilliant layout, brilliant writings – I think its a crap site though, nothing to do with jealousy, nothing at all. hehe

For those that are interested in building your own campervan then a look at “The Journey Continues” is an absolute must. I love the ideas on this blog and may soon steal some ideas for my own DIY Campervan

And finally for all those who wish to take up the nomad style of living then you must visit Working Nomad – a fellow brit who has “made the dream”
Just before I go though – a quick reminder of my offer from the previous post

You can add a compliment here (comments sound too negative) hehe.

Happy Travelling
OverlandSi

Morning all, please leave a comment, even if it is just to say hi!

The weather is terrible here; according to some people. This morning all the roads were flooded.

Hang on a minute, roads floaded? Terrible? I think not!

There is nothing better than carefully piloting your own vehicle through a small lake in the road with the water coming up from the wheel arches and proudly watching your small bow wave lap against the wall of bushes that mark the edge of the road whilst humming the “Flight of the Valkyrie’s” to yourself and imagining that you are in some sort of beach landing craft or extreme 4×4.

Unfortunately on the other side of this puddle (small lake) is just normal tarmac and you start to realise that you should really get out more, I also hope that someone else has thought this – otherwise I have a feeling that those nice men with white coats will be visiting soon.

I am starting to worry that this blog is dragging. Perhaps because that’s how I feel life is right now. Kind of on hold again, waiting for this to happen before that can happen. Please do not fear readers! I shall be on my travels soon.

Here is an offer to all of you;

I am offering out a wee guest post that I will upload later this week. So, if you have travelled yourself or want to raise a topic that you think should be mentioned then please scribble some words down and email it to saxy.si@gmail.com
If you have your own blog I’ll put a link up to that as well. All ideas will be considered and things with pretty pictures may also grab attention as will controversial ideas.

(Photo Credit)

Happy Travelling
Overland Si
Fame seekers can click here to comment, mwahaha!