Three Weeks Earlier

At the end of November, we gave up our apartment. Without having a new one. We moved into our van, which we had been working on for the past months — actually years — and which we finally wanted to finish. That meant: the final phase of the van conversion plus the stress of moving. Packing boxes, selling stuff, organizing a moving van. Since we could store everything we didn’t want to part with at our family’s place, we had to pack everything up and head to Thuringia. 300 km there, unload, 300 km back.

A few days later, after handing over the apartment keys, the first task was to find space for all our clothes in the van. At the same time, we needed water. The gas station where I usually filled up (also the only water tap for miles around) had frozen pipes. So, we ended up joining the truck drivers in their showers… We eventually got our water from the supermarket, pouring every one of the 50 bottles into the tank by hand. Great idea to move into an unfinished van in the middle of winter…

The Final Stretch

Next stop: the workshop. After all, the van still needed a lot of work. While we were now “officially” living in it, as mentioned above, there was still plenty left to do. The weeks leading up to the move had already been tough with all the organizing and simultaneous building, but at least we still had the apartment back then. Over the next three weeks, we lived in an industrial area in the middle of a Brandenburg forest, with temperatures hovering around 0°C, in a half-finished van we were desperately trying to complete. After postponing our workshop lease termination multiple times, we finally set the date: the end of the year.

"It must be the right path if, despite all the challenges, we still feel like doing it and want to keep going."

Again and again, while we were neck-deep in this project, I thought, “It must be the right path if, despite all the challenges, we still feel like doing it and want to keep going.” But during this final phase — the last two months or so — our enthusiasm began to wane, and we were just running on autopilot. Standing in the workshop from 9 a.m. until late at night. Weeks on end. With a space heater pointed at our hands so we could feel something, avoiding bleeding fingers from every touch.

One Last Push

Right up until the last day, we debated when to finally lock up the workshop and hand it over. There were still small unfinished tasks in the van. But on December 23rd, when I walked out of the workshop with a piece of wood in my hand to fit into the van, and suddenly everything around me spun, and for a brief moment I couldn’t even remember what I was supposed to do with it, it became clear: We had reached our limit — it was just too much, and we needed to call it quits.

That same evening, we started tidying up. Sorting, packing, cleaning, throwing things away. Bag after bag of trash. Sawdust from months of work, scattered everywhere. Everything had to go somewhere. Some items we could leave behind. Wood, paints, and other bits we couldn’t fit into the van were left for the landlords or other workshop tenants — we just wanted to get out. Once everything was done, we walked through the almost-empty workshop a few more times, trying to think clearly one last time. Had we forgotten anything? Were we truly ready? We locked the door, latched the padlock, and left the key in the agreed spot. A few minutes later, we were on the highway in a van packed to the roof.

What a Crazy Time

Thus ended some of the most exhausting and challenging days, weeks, and months we’ve experienced in recent years. I’ve never had such a hard time getting up in the morning. My back, hands, and arms have never hurt so much. And yet something kept pushing me to keep going. Not once did I think about giving up.

Whatever it was, it brought us to where we are now — a year and several thousand kilometers later, looking at the Sierra Nevada mountains and confidently saying: It was the best decision we could have made. All the struggles, every setback, every gray hair — all the crap we’ve gone through to get here (and none of that’s even written down here yet…) — it was absolutely worth it.