Nothing is forever

Where is the best place to start if you don’t know where? I’ll just give it a try. Since the last post a few weeks have passed. They were or are intense weeks. They are times of change. The lightness, which has accompanied us on the more than 30’000km since we have been on the road, is currently somewhat lost. Changes accompany our whole life. For some people more, for some less. I have no comparative values to others, but I would say that changes in my life was the known constant. Yes, even in the world of work. I have been dealing with change for about 20 years. Be it IT systems, processes, organizations often all at the same time. One of my core tasks was to accompany and manage change in such a way that it ran as smoothly as possible. I have always found this a challenge, and I have always found change to be a good thing. I always found stagnation stupid. Changes like the ones I accompanied in the office often followed the same patterns, the same phases always occurred. The human factor makes all the difference. Does all this experience and know-how help me with the changes we have experienced in recent weeks? Rather less. But the certainty that everything will develop exactly as it should helps. Even if not always. But let’s try to put things in order a little.

Towards the end of our time in the Baltic States, a little bit of travel fatigue set in. How can that be, you might ask. After all, we spent about 70% of all nights on our Northern Tour in nature, only visiting official places to do our laundry and otherwise enjoying the wonderful nature we were allowed to experience on our tour. Being in nature also means respecting it. That means no chairs out, no table out, maximum 2-3 nights in one place. As time went by, we felt the need to stay longer and spread out. Standing longer in one place means looking for new places less often, etc. Since it is officially forbidden to stay in the countryside in Poland, unlike in the Baltic States or Scandinavia, it was clear to us that we would do so in Poland. Official pitches or even camping and chilling out a bit. But somehow we never really arrived in Poland. The campsites we stayed at were all okay, and so were the operators. But otherwise Poland was a horror for us. We found the people very distant and sometimes gruff and unfriendly. Thousands – really thousands – of lorries on the roads, no motorways, the Poles drive like hooligans. I can’t say it any other way, they overtake so dangerously that I almost became aggressive behind the wheel myself. We just didn’t feel comfortable. Then Brownie had diarrhoea again and we had one or two nights where we had to go out with him several times. Sleeping badly always sucks, whether you have to get up in the morning or not doesn’t matter at all.

Yes, and then on 24 August came the surprising news that my father had suddenly died. He lived with his wife in the Altai region of Russia and she didn’t have my number at first, so the news came by e-mail. I was then able to speak to her on the phone straight away to find out some details. He had a nice short painless death and even fell on his bed – you couldn’t imagine it more beautiful. Nevertheless, he died too young at the age of 73. He wasn’t really ready either, in my opinion – but who is when you’re snatched from the middle of life? The contact to him had improved in the last few years, especially since we were travelling with the camper van, he was very interested in where we were and what we were doing. He thought what we were doing was great and was happy for us. He noticed that we are happy doing what we are doing. I am now in close contact with his wife and help her with all the administrative matters. The sanctions from the West against Russia are not exactly helpful, but where there’s a will, there’s a way. In the meantime, I have access to everything important. I am happy and grateful that I can help his wife. That also helps with the grief, at least for me.

Yes, and only a few days after the news from my dad, Lotta suddenly stopped eating. As she had caught and eaten a mouse the day before, we didn’t think anything of it at first. Maybe it was indigestion, it could be that the mouse wasn’t the freshest any more…but the next day she didn’t want to eat anything either. She had already been eating less than usual in the weeks before, but we put that down to the warm temperatures. So she had already lost a little weight. But you could tell that something was wrong with her. We were still in Poland, about 400 km from the German border. We didn’t want to go to the vet in Poland, so we decided to take 2 big steps towards Germany and go to the vet there. Luckily we found a vet who took us the same day to examine Lotta. Yes, and after a few minutes we realised that our 15-year-old lady was not in good health. No more blood could be taken. Her mucous membranes were already quite yellow all over. A clear sign that the liver and/or kidneys were no longer functioning properly. In addition, she had a low temperature and a very high pulse. Of course we both had this horror scenario in mind, but our Lotta, our Highlander, no, it doesn’t happen that quickly. At first we thought we would have to leave her there. But the vet assured us that she was neither in pain nor suffering and that we could take her to us in peace and accompany her on her last stage here. The certainty that we can say goodbye to her in peace and quiet has completely blown away all other issues and the stress of the last few days. We all assumed that Lotta would be with us for another 24-48 hours at the most before she fell asleep. Fiddlesticks. Didn’t I complain in the last blog that Madame had kept us waiting a few times? She decides when she is ready. And so we still had a very beautiful, intense if sad 10 days with her. She was still drinking but not eating. So every day she became a little weaker. But she could still enjoy the beautiful late summer, we were outside with her the whole day, she lay peacefully next to us most of the time, in between she still drank and she even went to the litter box until the very end. She radiated an unbelievable calmness until 24 hours before the end, seemed content and we enjoyed the last days together. As it was so warm and we were mostly near water, we didn’t go on any big tours with Brownie. He could always cool off in the water and let off steam, so we rarely left Lotta alone, and then only briefly. The last 24 hours were not really nice, she couldn’t walk any more – she managed to get up one last time to go to the litter box about 10 hours before she died, but then fell over. Linda then brought her back to us. That was last Saturday. On Sunday morning at 0530 I woke up with a stomach ache, my irritable bowel again. She was still alive then. I stroked her a little, Linda too. 15 minutes later, after my bowels had calmed down, she fell asleep. Completely relaxed and peaceful. Before 7 o’clock we took her to the forest and left her there to nature, where she loved to be.

We are infinitely grateful that we were able to accompany her until the end. That is what we had always wished for. As sad as it is and as sad as we still are and we miss our little Diva immensely, we have made peace with the situation. Yesterday, when we drove on without her for the first time, it was very strange. We really miss her a lot and it will probably take a while until something like a new normality sets in. We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who encouraged us with their words of comfort and stood by us. Lotta was a very special cat, she had a wonderful cat life and especially enjoyed the last 1.5 years and enjoyed the nature of Europe as not many cats did before her. We have tried to put together a small selection of pictures from the last 15 years. Here we go:

Yes, and so every end is also the beginning of something new. A life without our Lotta. Let’s be surprised about what will come. At the moment we are taking it a little easier than we already do. We’re going to explore the south of Germany for a while before we return to the zoo in October to fill up our travel funds a little. So our Northern Tour is officially over, it was a wonderful trip through the north and north-east of Europe, even if the weather was certainly rather modest for the most part. But the hysterically announced summer of the century failed to materialise in many places…but we gained further important insights on the tour and have various ideas about what we want to do next on our Doro. Our solar installation including a 3rd battery has more than proven itself and we are very happy that we did it. Next projects are the change to a compressor fridge to be less dependent on gas. We also want to invest a little in driving safety, keyword air suspension and more ground clearance and 2-3 other small things. When we will go on tour again and where exactly we will go is not fixed yet – ideas are available, but as you know it from us, we will communicate as soon as there is something concrete to report. It will be quieter on our social media channels in the near future, we don’t really feel like making videos at the moment. It was a cool experience but also very time-consuming, so we’ll probably take a longer break. With the exception of threat videos. I still have a lot of cool footage that I haven’t processed yet. I’ll do that in autumn on my other channel on YouTube. Come and have a look at Freesoul Visuals.
I think the first videos will appear at the end of October. I’m also taking a longer break from the blog, because I haven’t written that much in the last few months anyway. I have a few ideas to expand and adapt the website a bit, so I’ll be sure to keep you informed with a newsletter and by then there will be news about what’s going on with us. Only on Instagram/Facebook there will probably be a picture or something from time to time…we will see.

Before I finish, here is a picture I took about a week ago. I haven’t taken many pictures lately, or not at all, by my standards. But I did manage to take a nice picture of the Milky Way and our Doro. Have a look here:

So, and finally, a very few pictures – did I mention that I have my drone back?

But that’s it for now. Many thanks to all of you who always accompany us virtually and explore the world with us.

Take care!