The Van

Ok, I check my blog and realize that it hasnt been updated since..well the last time I updated it..Im definetly not gonna win a price for most freqwently updated blog, but I suspect this post might turn into something of a price-winner in the longest post competition, if there would ever be such a competition!

Also Im writing this on a really wierd keyboard so sorry for any unreadable typingerrors!

Ok, so last time I wrote here I had just arrived in barcelona, Ill try to continue the story from where I left it.

So I stayed in barcelona for one night only, it seems to me that I am not able to stay longer in this city, and i also seem to be completly blind to the charms of this city. Many friends have told me about amazing fruitmarkets, good people and how great the city is in general; But all I can ever get from barcelona is a lot of stress and a strong urge to leave the city and go back into the nature, or at least to a smaller town.

I spent the night together with Kim, Tim the berliner, Mito the german, and ofcourse Lila and Camille, the french girls. As none of us are in the financial position of paying for hotel, we found ourselves a seemingly quiet parkinglot near some kind of sportsarena in the outskirts of barcelona. Ofcourse the parkinglot would soon prove to be a bit more bussy during nightours than we thought.
The first thing we see was actually a bit funny, a SUV with tinted windows playing cheesy lovemusic at really high volume was parked near where we parked. And even though the wheels of the car remained in the same place the car was everything but standing still... =P

About half an hour after we arrive the moving parked car drove of into the city, the male driver waving happily through his window shouting "buenas notches!" in a tone of voice that brought your mind to small boys on christmas eve.

Shortly after the car drove off, someone points out the fact that for an empty parkinglot close to nothing at all exept the closed sportsarena, there was an awful lot of cars driving up and down and around on this parkinglot. Soon it was clear to us that this was barcelonas centre of some kind of fishy buissness, but we were never able to figure out if it was drugs or prostitutes that was sold there, or maybe both? The subject made for a fun discussion of making crazy theories just for the fun of it, and arguing why this crazy theory is true, untill we saw a man walking around in the bushes on a hill above our parkinglot, with a flashlight in his one hand, and a massive scoped rifle in his other!! now paranoia spread throughout our litle campsite,  who the hell was that guy? why did he have that really big rifle? and why in the world did have his face covered? No conclusions made, but at least we never heard any gunshots so I guess he didnt kill anyone, or at least used a silencer if he did.

the next morning we drive into town, and drop of the boys, Kim needed to go back to peniscola to get his backpack, wich was accidently left there due to a missunderstanding, and Tim and Mito wanted to stay in Barcelona for a night out and probably a cheap flight home.

So from Barcelona I am alone with the two french girls, wich might sound like a dream come true to some, but it really wasnt. In the extremely stressed traffic or Barcelona, Camille asks Lila,who is driving the van, to take a pictureof a fountain in the midle of a 5file roundabout. This mad request is just to much for Lila, who is already stressed from driving in this crazy trafic, without even knowing which road to take, and she freaks out and when camille is completely unable to understand why Lila freaks out over what she thought of as "just a question" the 2 girls starts fighting in french. and the fight go on for nearly 2 hours, when lila stops the van outside a supermarket and tells camille to hitchhike from there, wich is about the only part of the fight i understand, and then we all go into the store shopping for some food and when we come out again, everything is tip-top, and we all continue our journey in the van without a fuz. The only explination I have for this is that girls are girls and sometimes they have moodswings.  Since everything was said in french I have absolutley no idea what the fight was even about, but they seemed angry enough and listening to them was tiring even though I stopped paying attention to their fight as soon as i realized that they were not about to speak any english anytime soon.

Anyway we make our way to the small border town of Port Bou, with the plan to continue to the hotsprings in the french mountains the next day. Actually stopping in Port Bou was also my idea since I knew the place was nice since last time I traveled there, and it didnt dissapoint me this time either. In port bou we meet Pierrek, a mad violinmaker from southern france, who knew a lot about hippiecommunities in southern france, among many other things. we spend the night speaking and listening to the ocean and watching the stars and so on, and in the morning Pierek decides to come with us to the hotsprings of the pyranée mountains.

Its a pretty long drive from port bou, and late in the night we arrive in Olette, the town closest to the hotsprings according to the handmade map I had been given by a spanish hippie outside a trainstation in france on my way between sziget and rototom. realising that its to late to find any hotsprings this night and that we have to wait until the next morning we start looking for a place to sleep. Since Olette turns out to be a really shitty place we take some random road out from olette, and end up outside a small village named Evol. The next morning I wake up early, and i feel like going for a walk to wake up properly, so I folow the dewcovered road into the village, barefooted, hippiestyle baloon pants and armed with a toothbrush.

I am immediatly blown away by the beuty of this ancient village, filled with amazing nature and those old stonehouses you only see in movies and really bad brittish tv-series about a cop trying to find a murderer.

after sitting down on a big rock in the middle of the small creek that runs through the village to wake up and watch the sunrise for a while, I walk through the entire village and find among other nice things a really big garden with no house on it, just a caravan and a barking dog. I couldnt help but thinking that this place would be absolutley perfect to build a hobbithouse on, and to start a community there and to live happily ever after.
I then think that buying ground on this place must be really expensive, so its probably no point in even dreaming about it.

after a while I feel that its probably time to go back to the van, before the others start wondering where I went. On my way back I say hello to a guy sitting on his porch drinking coffe and having a morning cigarette. when I come closer he says hello and ask me if I was camping near his village. eventhough he didnt speak any english and I dont speak any french we somehow managed to comunicate quite well, and I was able to tell him that I came in a campingvan, and that me and my friends where looking for the hotsprings. He told me that he was renovating this house  he bought, and I think he said he wanted to sell it afterwards but im not really sure, and then he drew me 2 more detailed maps, leading to the best hotsprings in the area, gave me some cofee and we talked, or rather we tried to talk, some more before I went on to the van with a beutiful gift he gave me, tomatoes and cucumber from his own garden, "for breakfast" he said, which was about as far as his english would go without gestures. I thanked him properly, wich is about as far as my french goes without gestures "merci becou" ( I hope I pronounce it better than I spell it =P) and I then went back to the van to tell my friends about my incredible morning. Afterwards we all went back to my new friend, and since the others from the van could speak french, we got quite a bit more information from him this time. Apparantly the village was dying, and bying land and even houses there would be really cheap, so if anyone wants to start a hippie comunity in france, this is the place. Evol, near Olette, west of Perpingang. Go there and build a house!! and oh the tomatoes he gave us were without a doubt the best tomatoes I have ever had! especially a green tomato that tasted more and sweeter than any other tomato was totaly incredible.

Well enough about Evol, We decided to go to Andorra before going to the hotsprings, since andorra was near, cheap and supposed to have hotsprings too. I am getting a bit tired of writing now so I will start being short again, in andorra we didnt find any hotsprings, I got sick, vomiting and diareea, very handy in a van with no toilette, the others bought some really cheap stuff while I occupied some restaurants toilette for most of a day. after andorra we didnt go back to the hotsprings near Olette as we originally planned, but instead went northeast through france. Stopped in a town to sleep, just as my stomach starts to feel better, and we realize that the towns 2 main squares are both built around hotspings. So I finally get my natural hot bath, even though most of the natural feel was lost to the fact that it was in the middle of town. But I was happy with it anyway, and this way there is still one big goal for me in southern france, something i still havent seen that seems to be great, and I have a reason to go back there later in my life.

After the hot bath in the town whit a name I cant remember, we went to drop of Pierek who suddenly had to rush home to pay his rent, and also camille went home to northern france by train from what I realised was the same trainstation where I had met the spanish hippies who first told me about the hotsprings.

After all this Me and Lila pretty much went strait to her homevillage where I helped to move some stuff for her brother, and then had all my clothes washed, a short trip into town, a really nice town actually, and i think tomorrow I might hitchhike towards Milano, its not that far from here, which is the reason I followed here in the first place. Although this is a really nice town in the middle of the alps, and with a really nice lake, and I am really enjoying spending time here with Lila, we have lots to talk about and many ideas in common too.

Times are great but I feel soon I will want to move on to milano and Mama Cinicola and so on..

Tomorrow will be a new day, and I am really looking forward to it whatever it brings. I am feeling good again. Free and strong, Partly from playing Eddie Vedders "society", a really empowering song!!

We have also been talking alot about freedom, and our conversation have actually led me into thinking that maybe I should try to hitchhike to india, or even thailand! but nothing decided jet, and I feel I should maybe go back home first to take care of a few things before setting out on such a journey.

I will try to update here more freqwently in the future, so the posts dont get this long, its really taking a lot of energy to write this much at once, and I imagine no one will ejoy reading for this long either...

well until next time,                                                    .....