After blasting through the entire season of La casa de papel yesterday evening – I love this series and managed to convince Heike that we should watch all season 5 episodes – it was time for us to get ready for another trip. Two nights at home is more than enough, and I even managed to squeeze in a paper resubmission and my first editorial assessment (or whatever these are called). Now it’s time to get back on the road. I still have three weeks and a bit of parental leave, and we want to make the most out of it. To be honest, it is also more difficult being at home with two young kids than it is being on the road, or parked somewhere green near a playground. We’ll have to find out the best routine once I get back to work, and Rafa goes back to kindergarten. For now, we’ll just live in our camper van.
This time around we sort of have a plan. We aim to reach a campsite near Grenoble in France, and when planning ahead we noticed that along the way we would pass Konstanz and Bern. In both cities we have good friends that we haven’t seen for too long. Unfortunately, the Bernies were unavailable this weekend, but our friends in Konstanz were! So tomorrow we’ll meet up. This weekend it has been exactly one year since we last saw them, as we went camping in the Allgäuer Alpen together last year. I don’t think we have any real plans yet, but I’m already happy if there’s coffee. I’m a simple guy and very easily satisfied these days.
For the night we’re parked on a small RV lot near Konstanz, along the mosquito-infested Untersee. We just had dinner at a close by lakeside restaurant, and we were eaten alive. I don’t care much personally, but they somehow always bite my son – often in the face – and he’s super sensitive to them. As a result, he often looks like he’s been in a street fight. I assure you, it’s a weird look on a 2 year-old, and maybe this is just in my head, but I don’t think it creates a picture of good parenting… For this trip I brought mosquito candles and some mosquito spiral, but nevertheless Rafa was already bitten in both his cheeks. Let’s hope the bedtime dose of antihistamine I gave him does a bit of damage control.
And now let’s see how many pages I can read in my book before I fall asleep. (It’s a problem.)
Robin Heinen 