With the motorhome 1.5 years travelling Europe

  • Written by Portal Editor

 or how a journey changed our lives.

Traveling for most people is a matter that is associated with positive emotions. Relax, discover new things, forget everyday life and much more! Sometimes a journey can also take life in a completely new direction, like ours. And we want to share this story with the world and perhaps give an idea for one or the other.

But let us start from the beginning. We are my husband Davide and me, Julia, and for sure our project "Love Create Travel". We are two very different characters, the son of Italo-Spanish immigrants, born and raised in Germany, with roots in several cultures. His great passion: music. He plays several instruments, his favorite is the guitar. He is a free spirit, straightforward in his quest to follow the one path that his passion for music shows. After a few years in a commercial job, he decided for his passion and lives as a freelance musician.

Me, Swabian girl, with the innate need to travel. I've always loved learning new things and sharing them with the world and have been interested in a variety of areas, constantly seeking a way to unite all interests. After a short Speech and Literature studies, I chose a career in medicine, with a life that was marked by many external needs. Oh yes, at some point I completed an online study in photography! Before we decided to change everything, I was after a rather steep career leading senior doctor in a clinic for hand surgery, constantly stressed and disillusioned with the medical system. I have always hungered from one to the next trip, that exactly was my balance, my passion. And capture moments / emotions in photos ....

We wanted to have children for a long time, but that did not work for years and at some point we got used to the situation. I was unhappy, not filled with my life, in an eternal search for something in which I could fully find myself again. My husband was much closer to this goal with his music, but it was he who eventually decided that it could not go on with me and we should dare and break out!

When the spark for the idea of ​​buying a motorhome and moving across Europe was ignited, I quit my job, sublet our flat for 1.5 years, and left in early May 2016. A big step, to let go of the whole (apparent) security and to plunge into the unknown! Our idea was to make our life in the project "Love Create Travel" an online blog. LOVE for everything dear to us, CREATE for music, photography, video, painting and texts and TRAVEL of course for the journey.

And then began time began that was supposed to hold so much more for us than "just" the adventure journey ... With a rough plan, we headed out onto the street, with the freedom to decide anew, what and where to go, every day we wanted to. In Switzerland we visited friends and enjoyed the magnificent mountain landscapes! In Austria there was the contrast between the lively, urban Vienna and the lakes, mountains and caves of the Salzkammergut. About the capitals Bratislava / Slovakia and Budapest / Hungary we went to a first extended stay to Romania! A great and fascinating country, in which the original, partly rather poor country life like in the Maramureş region, co-exists alongside emerging cultural centers like Cluj-Napoca. You can go hiking and the region of Transylvania offers culture and nature en masse. We continued to Bulgaria via the Danube Delta on the Black Sea.

Bulgaria also offers a lot of variety! Beach holiday on the Black Sea, hiking in the Rhodope Mountains, the Pirin and Rila mountains, cultural highlights such as the Rila Monastery or the city of Plovdiv. And very good wines !!! When our plans to travel to Georgia via Turkey stumbled at short notice due to the coup in Turkey, we decided to travel to Greece, where we also met Detlef and made some nice trips with him in the course of the journey,

We explored the Greek mainland criss-cross! Thessaloniki and Athens, Chalkidiki, the Meteora monasteries, the central mountain regions, ancient sites such as Olympia and Delphi and of course the Peloponnese.

Yes and here should then happen a fascinating miracle! But we found out about three weeks later on the island of Lefkada. In a parking lot under ancient olive trees, we realized that I was pregnant and that we would finally have a baby after many years of unfulfilled hoping and waiting! No matter if the medicine had told us that this probably would not happen anymore, it was like that ... 4 months after we left, 5 months after my last day at work! This journey had changed our lives and even though many thought that we would come back home sooner, it went much further! Because it was very clear to us that this little soul had come to us because we were courageous and followed heart!

On Detlef's recommendation, we went to Macedonia to the beautiful Lake Ohrid, where a friendly gynecologist even turned back from her holiday to her office to show the beating heart of our daughter for the first time!

And then on to Albania.

Also one of these completely underrated countries with the beautiful Albanian Riviera, where we partly had coves with crystal clear water for us alone from the end of September, a lot of culture, a lot of untouched nature and warm people. By ferry from Greece we transferred to Italy and explored the boot from south to north and visited a part of our Italian family in the following 3 months.

Sicily, Calabria, Puglia, Abruzzo and then Tuscany! The wonderful winter light over this fascinating region has captivated us so much that we have put together a photo calendar for the year 2018, which we sell via the online shop on our website.

We spent Christmas in the magical places of the Cinque Terre and New Year's Eve in the great Venice!

When the temperatures fell below the -10° C at the beginning of the year, we decided to make a short stopover with our families in Germany, and then in February travel another 4 weeks to the other part of our multi-cultural family to Andalusia / Spain.

With a mighty belly, infinitely happy and full of impressions, we returned to Germany at the end of March, full of anticipation for the arrival of our daughter! Our apartment was still subleased, but we found a warm welcome from friends. And in the middle of May it was finally time! Our wonder, the little gypsy girl was finally here! From the beginning, incredibly alert and receptive, she wanted to go out into the world and explore it!

And so we packed everything back into the motorhome and crossed France again to visit the northern Spanish coast, Galicia and Portugal from the beginning of July to the end of October!

The wild Atlantic coast has wonderful beaches to offer and exciting cities like San Sebastián. And Galicia is a world of its own with its fjord-like rías and lush vegetation.

Yes and in Portugal we lost our hearts! Whether North or South, coast or inland, this country is so beautiful and varied and the people´s warmth,  that we did not want to go home! But there we are again, in southern Germany, our (still) home, enjoy life as a small family, share our travel experiences on our blog www.lovecreatetravel.com and work to finance a life with music, photography and journalism, to be able to work independently of location and to be able to retreat soon into the wide world. And we are in the best of hands, that works too, because after all we have experienced in the last 1.5 years, we know, miracles happen, you just have to have the courage to follow your  dreams and even take the unconventional way!

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