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Tuesday, August 10, 2021
Dear friends,
On Friday 30 July we left Etterbeek (Brussels) for Ophasselt (Grammont, Flanders) for a weekend with Iwona and Gerrit. Monday 01 August, we left Ophasselt for Tecklenburg/Osnabrück (Germany) for an evening and a morning with the community. Wednesday, August 04, departure to Berlin for 3 nights and to welcome Matthieu at the station. Finally, Saturday, August 07, departure for Gdańsk (Poland).
1 week, 4 departures, 4 installations, 1484km.
The "cool" side of this sequence is that we discovered corners of Europe that we would have never seen, and discussed with people we would have never met. This sequence also asked us for a particular energy. The one to quickly relocate each time. Especially in places where nobody was waiting for us.
Imagine after 4 or 5 hours on the road, during which you have to interpret the signs, the functioning of intersections and the driving habits of the country, you dream of settling down and resting, but a little idea quietly appears: "how will the next accommodation be?" You check the photos on the reservation again. And then comes the moment of arrival. Everyone is waiting for this moment with emotion. Every detail takes on great importance. The street. The front door of the building. The stairwell. The front door of the apartment. And finally, you discover the place of your next nights, of your next meals. Is it small? spacious? clean? dusty? bright? noisy? Tiredness makes the emotions briefly more intense.
Barthélémy sums it all up with his question, "Is anyone hosting us tonight?" All is said.
So we developed a little routine, so that our arrivals would go more smoothly.
Before hitting the road: check the health conditions for border crossings; get the address and access codes for the destination address; load the truck; fill the gas tank.
On arrival: quickly find out how to park the truck; unload the 6 suitcases, 6 boxes and a few bags; drop them off at the accommodation; find the nearest grocery store or supermarket; connect to the wifi network; prepare a good meal; look for places to visit; make a rough schedule of the days in the city.
This routine is like our traveler's Maslow pyramid. It made sense as we repeated it. Even if each time, there is a little novelty. The last one was about the supply in Poland. In Belgium, easy, everything was still in French. In Germany, the steps were so short that we just looked for known products. Too bad for the German gastronomy. In Poland, we stocked up for a whole week (wow!), with the desire to find local products, but without understanding the language. Great moment in front of the milk and sausages section. For the rest, the pictures on the packaging were enough. Ah, yes! Another great moment was when we had to find a knife to peel the vegetables. In 1997, in Vietnam, we would have searched in the Guide du Routard and the Lonely Planet for similar words, mixed with a little English and approximate gestures. In 2021, we just wrote the question in French in Deepl.com and showed the Polish translation. The person led us directly to the right department. For milk and sausages, it was Google Lens that got us out of trouble.
Our time in Germany went by like a flash.
An evening and a morning with the community in Tecklenburg were unfortunately too short to get to know Julia, Christa, Christophe, Anne-Brite, Lisa, Elizabeth and Lina. We remember the discussions with Gertrud about the life of the community, its future challenges, and the desire to come back and visit the ESAT. The biggest difference with France seems to be that all the core members obviously work in ESAT, except the retired people. A subject to be studied in depth...
Two days to visit Berlin is just enough time to find our way around the S-Bahn, U-Bahn and tramways, to feel at home and to visit the essential. Our essentials were the Berlin Zoo to tailor the trip to each individual; the striking Jewish Museum of Berlin to immerse ourselves in the history, culture and traditions of this people beyond the Holocaust; and of course, the relics of the Berlin divide and the Wall.
So we are currently in Gdansk, in the very north of Poland. The image we have is that of a country that is developing very quickly. Many infrastructures are recent. And incredible detail, we discovered a swing adapted for wheelchairs in a playground for children. Next week, we leave for Poznań to spend 15 days with the community. We hope that this time will be as enriching as in Brussels. In the meantime, we are staying on vacation at the Baltic Sea where the water is warmer than on the beaches of the Atlantic. And Barthélémy is playing at building Berlin Walls out of sand and breaking them...
See you soon,
🇬🇧 A Week As Fast As A Flash