Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast,
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding,
today with Nathalie
Schwemmke and
Samuel Lukow, Lucian Haas on the mic.
Who hasn't dreamed, as a paraglider, of just hanging up the job, having plenty of time and a camper at their disposal, and then heading off across Europe, from one flight site to the next? Nathalie Schwemke and Samuel Lukow from Cologne dared to do exactly that. In the next hour, they tell us about their experiences in Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast. But don't worry, it won't be a travel report in the style of a DIA lecture, just without the pictures. It's about, among other things, how the project came about in the first place, the challenge of leaving everything behind, the human highs and lows during such a trip, and what insights one should take back into everyday life.
Samuel, if you wanted to summarize that in one sentence. What was your big dream? Yes, to spend more time on my hobby, paragliding. Now, that was a dream. How long did you dream it? I mean, how long did it take from the first idea of "I'd like to do something like that" until you actually set off? Well, it developed a bit. It didn't happen from one day to the next. It also had a bit to do with working a lot and having little time for paragliding. And because of that, you gradually became more, I'd say, isolated from friends and, whenever possible, maybe went flying.
But otherwise, you were at work and thought, well, okay, this can't be everything in life. And so the idea gradually emerged and the whole thing grew. I think we talked about it for a year beforehand. And at the beginning, it was still very foreign for you, right? And yeah, the more we talked about it, the more it became an option for you too.
And then at some point we decided and started planning the trip. Well Salli, what did "the unknown" mean for you at first? What were you afraid of? And what ultimately convinced you to say, no, I'm actually doing this?
So generally, I've always been afraid of strangers and new things. Or what does "afraid" mean? Maybe "afraid" isn't the right word, but I like to avoid it. And when I think about it now, I have to leave everything behind here and be on the road for half a year, a whole year, constantly in new places. That meant a bit of stress for me at first. So, when we finalized it last year.
Yeah, so I struggled with it internally for a long time. Am I doing this or not? And in the end, I thought, if you don't do it now, if he takes me by the hand, it's actually not a problem. Otherwise, I would never do it.
Well, giving up a daily routine like that also means giving up security. You have a job, you have an income, you actually have a structured daily routine. And everything you have to do is dictated from the outside. You don't have to worry about it that much. Now you've planned something big, where it even involved giving up your job for it. Was that hard for you?
It was very hard for me. I mean, it's been almost exactly a year now, and we first canceled the apartment just so we could save a bit of money on the rent. And when the call came from the landlord asking when he could do a viewing... I think I cried bitterly for an hour.
Although, you have to say, I think that was also due to it happening very, very quickly. I believe we called the landlord on a Friday or something and gave him proper notice so he'd have a chance to find a replacement tenant. And on Sunday, he put the listing up for just a few minutes. We had lived in Cologne before and he gathered his 20 applicants, picked ten of them, then called us and said, "Yeah, we'll do the viewings on Wednesday." And then it was just uncomfortable for a bit. But it all happened very fast now.
And for me personally, it happened too fast. And yeah, I cried for an hour and then I was okay. But then there was a catch.
Samuel, was it difficult for you to give up your job?
Yes, well, it was actually quite difficult for me too.
I loved my job. I was really into it, let's say, and I always had fun in my IT job. In the end, it became quite a lot for me. And because of that, it wasn't that difficult at the time, in hindsight. But yeah, you could already tell that something was missing from the job too. Now you have this idea, then of course you tell your parents, your friends, and so on about it. What were the reactions like? Did they say you're crazy or something like that? With friends, telling them was never really that big of a hurdle. Rather? Rather, I was thinking, oh, the parents, how are they going to take this?
And well, then at some point we finally set up an appointment. Or rather, we were visiting them here. And we had to confess to them, because our idea was to store all our stuff here. And also to live here, at least for a transition period. And well, I actually imagined it being worse. I...
Were you scared? Yeah,
I was afraid we'd be met with misunderstanding. Because, why would anyone give up their steady job just to travel around a bit? Well, that wasn't a problem at all. My parents took it relatively cool and said, sure, no problem. You can live here and store your stuff for as long as you want. And yeah, that was... From that point on, I thought everything was cool. Now you've bought and built out this Citroën Jumper. Was the build actually manageable alongside your job, like saying, "I'll still work on it in the evenings"? Or did you take time off and say, "I'm going to focus on this now"?
So the build itself was also... it took a lot of time, significantly more time than I had planned for. Because in a vehicle like this, nothing is straight; everything is crooked and slanted, there are no right angles, and so on. Because of that, anything you want to build inside takes a lot of work. You have to adjust everything precisely.
I've been doing this alongside my job for a long time, even before we quit our jobs. Now, of course, there was the added factor that we lived in Cologne. In Cologne, you have a rental apartment, and I didn't have the opportunity to set up a workshop there. So, we actually worked on it every weekend, almost every weekend, or as much as the weekends allowed. And looking back now, regarding the preparation time, what was the biggest difficulty for both of you? A big difficulty for me was really the time estimation, as I just mentioned, for the conversion. Whether we would even finish. And we weren't finished with the conversion for a long time, not as quickly as I would have liked.
But then there came a point where it was like, yeah, there's no point, we can't keep building here forever, we have to actually hit the road at some point. Yeah, that was actually the biggest hurdle. And for you, Nathalie?
My biggest hurdle was saying goodbye to this place internally. All the paperwork, that was actually worse for me. Like the stuff around it, health insurance and changing my registration.
So you started in April, if I followed correctly. Yes. Was there some kind of master plan for the route from the very beginning? Like, we want to stop at this and then that? Or how did you do it? I kept making notes. Even years before, if I saw some nice spot somehow. Whether it was in pictures on Facebook or wherever. I'd note it down, like, oh where is that, is it worth going there? Could you maybe even, I mean, sure, it's beautiful there like any other country. Can you maybe even fly there, etc.? And a relatively large list accumulated for me, but not just through Facebook, also through friends who said, "Oh, here too, I grew up there, you have to go there. When you're there, then say hi to this and that, and so on."
However, of course, it always turned out differently than planned. But that was intentional too. I mean, I didn't want to fix it like, we have this date, then we want to be there, then we want to be there, but rather say, oh yeah, it's nice here right now, let's stay for another week. Or, well, let's keep going, I don't like it here that much. And that was the idea behind it, that we wouldn't set a route too rigidly. Now, looking back, to summarize briefly, which countries did you actually travel through in the half year you were on the road? Let's list them. Switzerland, Austria. Italy. Italy. We were in France. We drove through Belgium because the flight conditions weren't right there.
We also just drove through Luxembourg. Then we take Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro. Briefly through Bosnia. Bosnia and Albania. Albania, exactly. Greece. Then back over to Italy. Yes,
then the whole boot. Back to Austria, so I think Austria and Switzerland were where we were the most, the longest. At
most often, yeah. Exactly. Now, regarding the destinations you headed for in those countries—was that all ultimately aimed at paragliding? No. Not exclusively at paragliding. I'd almost say the opposite, at least for the Balkan route; we just did it, and we had some very good sources on where you can fly there, under what conditions it might be possible, and where you should be more careful. And yeah.
Based on the route, we were actually told where it was possible. That means you looked left and right to see where you could fly and then took that in, but it wasn't always about specifically heading towards, say, the next destination 200 kilometers away, there's a great launch site, we have to go there. No. Of course, you took the one or the other detour at some point and drove a different way because you knew there was a flight area there, but you didn't explicitly align everything. We have to go there now. We have to drive there because you can fly there. But it was still a lot about paragliding. What does flying actually mean to you? Maybe I'll tell you how we started flying, shall I?
So, flying actually started with me giving her a tandem flight. I hadn't done anything with paragliding yet either, and I'm not going to let her fly down alone, so there were two tandem pilots who took us down. That was at Achensee. And yeah, then we had a nice tandem flight. I had booked the action variant.
You had fun, I felt sick.
They did a few maneuvers with us, wingovers and spirals. Yeah, and I had fun and had a grin on my face at the landing field, and that was the initial spark for me, how I then started paragliding. Nathalie, what does paragliding mean to you? Are you guys very similar, or are you a bit different as a woman, do you approach it differently?
I didn't start paragliding directly. I was always along for the ride, more or less acting as a taxi, driving up the mountain and picking them up somewhere again. I was always there. It was always nice because it's just a great community. We met some great people, even back when I wasn't flying yet. And eventually, the moment came. Yeah. Where I thought, you could try it too. But I also thought, it's something new for me and it could be dangerous and so on. And I wrestled with myself for a long time until I finally said, come on, I'll do it. And then we tried it out a bit here on the meadow, and I immediately flew pretty high and pretty far with his paraglider.
Well, like that
a few meters.
For me, it felt high and far. And then I kept thinking and thinking, should I or shouldn't I. And it costs a lot of money too. So for me, for me, it's a lot of money. And in the end, I'm annoyed that I didn't start much earlier. And that was, well, it's already nice. So we also hiked up the mountain a lot with the paragliders. We earned the flight, had a lot of nature. And flying down is just, just beautiful. Like
How long have you been flying now, Nathalie?
Yeah, a year and a half now.
Not much background yet, not much experience at all. No, exactly. What is it like to go on a trip like that, which is also quite adventurous? Some starting points, I can imagine in Croatia or somewhere else, where you're standing up there on something rocky. For someone who's still relatively fresh, it's probably quite exciting sometimes.
I often, well, maybe I rely too much on the trip. On my partner, who then says you can do this or I wouldn't do that.
So there were moments that weren't so great. Not such great starts. I never got injured, but for example, I just got caught in a gust of wind in Slovenia, got twisted, and then, yeah, got twisted out of the air. It apparently looked pretty cool from below. I didn't think it was cool. Yeah. Yeah, turbulence in the air.
It looked really cool; you handled the situation pretty smoothly for the outsiders still sitting at the launch site. You grabbed the twist up there afterwards, rolled out, and flew out. Everything was wonderful. They thought, "Hmm, that was smooth."
Yeah, or landing sites like in Italy where we were. All crooked, partly in the lee. And then Sami flew over, signaled me, and said, you're not flying out. And then I thought, nope, I won't either. If he says it's better not to, I mean, I think he can read me pretty well.
Yeah, it wasn't just about you. Even I had trouble somehow forcing myself down at that landing field. It wasn't a nice landing, and the conditions weren't great. That's why I said I wouldn't recommend you fly right now.
Where you were also right. And then I went back down. It is
was okay for me too. What kind of gear did you guys have with you? You just said you did a lot of hike and fly. You always hiked up to the launch sites. Did you ever say, I need a super light mountain glider for that?
So what I have is a vari-harness. It fits my back pretty well. I tried something out from a friend recently, and with it in a backpack, it wobbled too much on my back. That was a normal pack bag. And I'm very happy with my vari-harness. It's not a lightweight harness either. It's a completely normal one. I have an Alpha 5, which has its weight. And in total, I'm probably at 13, 14 kilos. With jacket, with water, with radio, with food. Maybe even more, I don't know. Thick jacket. That was good. My calves were definitely feeling it. But we got used to it eventually. And for me, it was actually a nice way to get up the mountain.
And the weight always gets easier over time. So it was never the problem.
Well, we didn't have... any ultralight gear at all that was specifically designed for hike and fly. It wasn't really relevant either. We weren't in the X-Alps where we had to somehow achieve something in a certain amount of time or something. And yeah, I also had completely normal gear. Also a harness, because it sits nicely on your back and is quite comfortable to wear. But a completely normal glider, completely normal weight. I have an old Tequila 3 flying, which weighs 6 kilos. And yeah, otherwise... Well, my rescue, because it's new, the SQR isn't that heavy now and the harness is also acceptable. Yeah, but the glider was a completely normal one. And the gear, I'd say, also fits a trip like that.
Or would you do something differently now, looking back? It always depends a bit on your budget, too. So, if I had too much money right now, of course I'd buy a lighter glider. But we wanted to use the money for traveling, too. We don't have a rescue, we didn't have any source of income while on the road, we saved up beforehand. And yeah, because of that, we flew our old gear. If you look at it now, over half a year, you've probably accumulated an enormous number of flights. At least that's how I like to imagine it, quite romantically. No, it also depends. Okay, maybe the weather wasn't always that great and all. But out of all the flights, even if it's hard to weigh them against each other... But what were your most beautiful flight experiences? For you, for example, Nathalie. So
I started out as a beginner just with gliders. And thermals weren't really my thing. And I had, well, a beautiful flight where I was of course scared again, was in Grindelwald from the upper glacier, out of the Glecksteinhütte. Beautiful surroundings. I was totally terrified because there could be some sink or something like that. But it was beautiful. It was totally quiet. So that was really a great flight. In Croatia at Trebalje, I flew with vultures. I was impressed by that too. That
was your first long flight. You were up there for over two hours. For me, that was
something new.
Flying out to the sea in Greece was also a great experience.
Castelluccio in Italy, also a longer cross-country flight. Beautiful surroundings. I demanded more of myself there. I used to be happy if I somehow ended up back on the ground and the flight only lasted five minutes. Now I wanted more. That
was really interesting. We were in Castelluccio and there was dynamic ridge lift, nothing thermal. There was also quite a bit of wind. That means we really had to watch out not to get too high. Because it was even stronger up there. But then you flew out and were able to gain altitude. And then you wanted to test if you could also get back down when you flew out and that it all worked. Yeah, and then you landed at the bottom. And I was standing on the ground. Because you were standing on the ground and were too far out. Okay, no problem, up again. And then on the second flight, she wanted to stay up there, but it didn't work. And then she actually stalled a bit. And in plain English, she was pissed that she couldn't stay up there.
And luckily, I forgot—wait a second, you can't expect yourself to be doing monster flights here yet. And do you mean, like I used to, how many flights I needed until it finally worked and you could stay up there? And why do all the others stay up while you can't? Yeah, and then after the third flight, I coached you a bit and then we flew away together. That was really cool.
Then we, I mean, first did a longer distance.
You were just talking about, let's say, stronger winds being there, which were probably also more frequent. I think the summer was also very stormy, at least on the southern Alpine side, and everywhere you have to keep an eye on the weather and stuff like that. What was the hairiest situation you experienced during that? For me, it was in Greece, in Lefkada. That was the first time I spiraled out because I'd had enough, because I... Lefkada is actually on the coast; we were at the lower launch site right by Katisma—that's what the start or the beach down there is called—and about 100 meters above that is a launch site where the wind is always or frequently blowing in from the west off the coast.
But regionally, we had an east wind. So, I knew that, and, yeah, okay, but down at the launch site, it was blowing west. I thought, maybe a small hop, maybe a bit of soaring here just before the edge, and then landing down on the beach. Yeah, no problem. Well, and I launched and thought, okay, there's not much to get out of this. And then I flew out and actually found some thermals. And yeah, it's okay, you can turn out quite nicely here. Wonderful. And then I somehow turned up to at least 700, 800 meters, and then the east wind made itself felt. Then it just tore the rig apart up there, even with a hang-up and I don't know. And then it happened again immediately. And those were conditions, wow, no fun at all.
Did it then get pushed out towards the sea as well? I mean, east wind probably means the exact opposite. And then it pushes... Yeah,
exactly, no, like
not quickly then. I was probably caught in some kind of shear where it tore my glider apart multiple times. I didn't get very far out to sea, where I would have been afraid I wouldn't be able to get back.
Rather, I actually head out to sea, intentionally for at least a little bit, to then spiral down. Because there, I thought I'd have calm, calm conditions. Even the spiraling was completely different than, let's say, in a dry run over a lake or whatever. Yeah, and then spiral down to the beach, glider put in the corner. So, today is only for swimming. Let's stick with the weather. Especially when you're traveling and have different launch sites, you obviously always have to check, does the wind fit? And you're missing your own local knowledge of the terrain. Nevertheless, you naturally try to get as much information as possible. What did you look at? I mean, what did you use, for example, to inform yourself about the weather? Especially while on the road, when you can only look at your phone?
Yes, an important tool was Windy. Windy was important because it's not just local, it's somehow, I think even available worldwide. Or at least Europe. With the different models, you can go up beautifully and see what's happening at altitude. As you often write too, the wind at altitude is also frequently relevant. That's the most important thing. That's the most important thing, yes. Especially for flying. Yes, and it's actually happened less often that I've looked at large thermal forecasts, but rather it goes
it for flying. Can
can you fly at all? Exactly. Is it safe, is it not safe? So that's what decides more when you're on a trip like this. Yes. Weather is one thing, but the other thing, when you're traveling to countries like Montenegro,
Albania, so now you'd say, maybe I want to go paragliding here too. Where do you look for that? I mean, where did you get information about launch sites? Because probably, if you ask locals, it's sometimes not even that easy to communicate with them at all. And maybe they know nothing about paragliding because they've never even seen one. Yes, that was actually a combination of many things. For one, we might have to jump back to route planning. The route planning was planned for us for the Balkan route later, yes, if you will. No, it wasn't quite that extreme. But it was already quite nice. We were at the flight school again and then one of the flight school...
Blue Sky flight school. This isn't to advertise, but just so you can place it. In Siljan. At the Blue Sky flight school in Siljan, we were there—among other things, I actually did my tandem training there pretty early on the trip—and then Ralf Schlöffel showed some pictures of Greece, and there was this moment, oh cool, that looks really nice there with the colors, with the watercolors and all that. That
is now
Levkada as a great coastal flight area and so on. Exactly, right. And that's how we became aware of Levkada, and then over a beer in the evening, a landing beer at the flight school, it just happened, somehow Stefan on the left, Ralf on the right, me in front of the computer, and then they said on the route, open the map, and then, ah, we can fly there, if you're there, then get in touch with that guy, then you can ask him what the conditions are, then he goes to the kiosk afterwards for a landing beer, say hi to him from me, and so on and so forth. And that went all the way down the route, because they're with the flight school, and because they offer a lot of trips, they know a lot of areas, and so they were able to pre-plan the whole route for us down to Levkada, so to speak, with areas. I naturally always had my little booklet, my digital notebook, and I always neatly wrote down what they just said, which launch site, where should we go?
And that was a factor I'd pull out again and again, like, where did they say we can fly here? The other thing was Paragliding Maps; I used that app a lot, and later on in Greece, I read that in Paragliding Spot—I think it's called Spots—
you can download a KML file for Google Earth there, and for Greece at least, it was confirmed that there are more flight areas in it than in Parklining Maps. So I added that to the mix. Those were the means to inquire about flight areas, and some hotspots you obviously knew about from other people. We had already heard about Castelluccio many times before. Yes. I didn't really look into it beforehand that we were going there, but we knew that was a destination on the trip. Did you always find the launch sites and landing sites with that, or did you ever end up in the middle of nowhere and say, "Hey, the GPS position says it's here, but either there was a launch site here 10 years ago, but there isn't one anymore"?
Can you remember if there was anything we couldn't find in Italy?
Yeah, in Northern Italy,
where we got stuck.
Oh, that was... You still have a
wind vane set up, because that was supposedly supposed to be the landing field. Yeah
exactly, with the landing field that was somehow in the
Lee was.
That was already touched upon earlier, that there was a situation where I said, "better not land here." I had already said before, "Are you sure we should land here?" I mean, that was if the wind direction at the start up there was like that.
and if there's exactly that wind across the region for the launch site, then this landing field is absolutely in the lee. So I can't imagine that's the landing field. But it actually was, I heard afterwards, that's normal for the Italians, they land there perfectly or something to get out of the way. Exactly, we saw afterwards that they also land somewhere else. One or two did land there, but it was actually the official landing field, which I wasn't entirely sure about. But otherwise, we always found everything quite good. I mean, I also, because of my
IT affinity, I'd say, a bit of experience with how to handle GPS and your phone and so on. So, that wasn't really a problem. What about the network abroad? Especially when you're looking at Google Earth and stuff, you need a good connection. Sometimes a lot of data flows through.
So, network coverage abroad isn't nearly as bad as you might think, like thinking you won't have any signal anywhere in Montenegro. Montenegro was great. But Montenegro was also awesome for another reason, because I have this little router in my car with a SIM card in it, which had an extra data plan—we had 5 GB a month on that data plan. And you did have to somehow keep an eye on it to make sure it was enough. 5 GB across Europe, basically, like a data plan. Yeah, this EU roaming has been abolished. So now it's no longer a problem with the normal tariffs. You can now use the whole thing for free in the EU—important, in the EU—abroad.
Where Switzerland doesn't belong.
Yeah, or Montenegro too. Exactly, but why Montenegro was so cool—I saw an advertisement right at the border for 200 GB for 10 euros. And I thought, are you serious? Do they mean 200 MB or 200 GB? Yeah, then shortly after we actually decided to do it, because in Montenegro we had no internet with our normal phones and the extra tariff. And that's already, I think, an important tool to be able to check the conditions. Is it going to work or not?
weather information, etc. Yeah, and because of that, we did it, and actually, you could somehow get it for ten euros
excluding 200 GB, special services, Facebook and the like only had 10 GB, but oh my god, 10 GB. Yes, and then we could, then suddenly Spotify was being listened to and streamed and so on and so forth. YouTube
- videos, we watched TV on the laptop.
At least Montenegro was worth it. And the network coverage, especially in Montenegro, I'd almost say was better than where you are. Yeah,
except in the back of the national park, where we partially had no signal. Yeah,
that was, I'd say, right in the middle of nowhere. A bit about safety, especially in a country like Montenegro, where you'd think, hmm, if I lie down here, no one's coming or they'll carry me away in some kind of cloth litter or something like that, at least. If you're lucky, maybe a donkey cart will pass by. Maybe something like that. Did you make any special arrangements for yourselves or say, I'd rather skip flying just because of that? No, we didn't have, I don't know, do you want to go for things like Spot or something? We didn't have a Spot with us where we could somehow trigger an emergency call differently. However, it was important that where we were flying, there was reception; that wasn't the problem. Because we didn't fly huge distances or anything like that.
But what we asked ourselves
have is, what's the emergency number here? Which number do I dial for emergencies?
Do you guys maybe always have, for example, live tracking turned on for each other, to say, even if I fly away, Nathalie always knows where I am? If I've landed somewhere out there, she can look on an app to see where I actually am. I think you could tell a really nice story about that, or what do you mean by nice?
That was in Switzerland, in Grindelwald again, and there, well, I always stay near the landing field and Sammy had already headed out on his route towards Kandersteg and back, and I waited at the landing field and all the other pilots eventually came back and landed, and I couldn't reach him over the radio or by phone and then, yeah, somehow, everyone left the landing field and I was left alone and yeah, I got a bit nervous and eventually decided to walk towards the train station.
And I waited there, tried the radio again, tried my phone, no sign of life, and then, yeah, I kept getting more and more nervous and
at some point the radio came in and he said, I'm on the train right now, I'll be at the Grindelwald station soon, and I actually got a few tears in my eyes because I was so relieved that nothing had happened to him, because I didn't know where he was, if something had happened, or if he had just drunk himself to death or something. And then he's on his way to me and we have that rule, I'm only allowed to start worrying half an hour after sunset, maybe even inform the police, otherwise, yeah, there's that level of trust.
Yes, I also have to say that I always use my smartphone in combination with an XC Tracer as a variometer or as a display, so to speak, for altitude, airspaces, etc. And I actually have a power bank with me, but for some reason, the power bank was empty and I had no battery left, so they couldn't reach me anymore, I couldn't call them, and well, the radio was then, because I was further away at times, at least occasionally, wasn't working either, and eventually I was able to check back in via radio. Yes, that was the reason why. And from that point on, I paid more and more attention to making sure I still had enough energy. There were also flights where I eventually turned a phone off because
so that in case of emergency—and it's not just important for her if something happens to me—that I can get in touch, that I can still activate my smartphone. On a trip like this, you're somehow even more dependent on each other than in everyday life, more reliant on one another, and at the same time, you probably also rely on each other a bit more. However, you're sitting in such a small cart together for months.
How is that? Did it help your relationship move forward, or to put it differently? What qualities of his did you get to know and appreciate anew, maybe even for the first time? I mean...
You get to know each other, you get to know your partner in a whole new way, and you get to know yourself in a whole new way. Conflict situations used to be like, you're being an idiot, then I'd just leave and I'd go, and then I don't know, I'd come back after two hours, having cooled off, and then it was fine. But in such a small space, that just doesn't work, and you have to make sure that you resolve the conflict immediately, and I appreciate that about him too, that he doesn't hold grudges the way I used to for a while. I've tried to let that go, and it has worked.
Yeah, we talked about it, talking always helps and that's actually the most important thing. And Sammy is a guy who's relatively calm, whereas I'm the type to hit the ceiling, and he says, "Relax, don't get upset, it's fine," and usually he's right.
Exactly, for me, I didn't think it was such a problem that you couldn't get away from each other, because I felt it was still possible. I mean, of course, you had to be a bit lucky with the weather to be able to escape, but yeah, if we had a row, I'd just go to the beach for two hours and do some beachcombing or something, and that worked to a certain extent. Yeah, but we haven't known each other since yesterday either, so...
Yeah, I guess if you've only been with a partner for a few months, something like that could go wrong, but we've known each other for a few years, so in the end, it wasn't really a big problem, right? Now you're saying you've known each other for a few years, but at the same time, a trip like this means you're constantly meeting new people and you're so much more dependent on the people around you—like, "tell me where the path is" or whatever kind of help you need there and stuff like that. How did you experience that? What were the special moments, what kind of special people did you meet? What were the highlights?
Yeah, we spent a week on a cheese farm, basically, and took a look at the farm operations, milking cows, and then I helped out a bit in the kitchen. It turned out that the, well, what do you call it, the kitchen manager took a trip, and so Elisabeth was left there alone; she makes the cheese, she runs the restaurant, and yeah, everything together—she just can't manage it all, so she really needs some help. And then we both more or less offered to help, yeah, and then for the first time in my life, I milked cows, I set the plates, I served, and I was also very nice to the guests, so
with the Swiss guests, even if I didn't always understand them,
got along well, and we had an evening, actually shortly before our departure, where Elisabeth said, we don't know much about you, we know your names, we know you're from near Cologne and that you're currently on a trip through Europe, we don't know much more about you, but what we do know is that you two are great personalities and that we're glad you're here.
And that also felt different for them, I think—well, she did say that—it felt to us like we'd known each other for much, much longer. But one...
don't know anything about each other, but I'm showing up as my personality now and it just feels good to know, I wrote that in the blog too, a week for the soul, simply that I am valuable as a human being and can give something of that. And that was a very nice experience for me, or a very conscious experience. Professionally, I experience that again and again, but it doesn't get as close as this. And that was the first time I realized that I can't be that bad, that I might even be a very nice person.
I'm just really getting along with you right now.
I mean, stories like that and encounters with people like that are probably also the highlights that really...
So we heard some goosebump-inducing stories along the way.
I can imagine, since we were traveling in a camper, you already have the chance to be by yourself. I think you experience the locals even more if you, for example, just trek on foot with nothing but a backpack and so on. You have to... Or then you ride with the locals. Then you certainly experience them more intensely. For us, that wasn't really conceivable because we need a bit of our own realm, so to speak. We met a lot of other travelers ourselves, which was already super exciting. I think it's almost even more exciting when you get to know the people from your own country better. But that was rarely the case. We had one encounter in Montenegro.
Maybe you have something more to tell about that.
We wanted to head towards Taraschlucht and then an old woman jumped in front of the car. So we slammed on the brakes and asked her in English what she wanted. She just kept shaking her head and telling us something. We didn't understand her and she didn't understand us. In the end, I had the feeling she wanted to ride with us. Samy wasn't comfortable with that because he thought we were going to get jumped by some people coming out of the bushes. Which didn't happen at all. This woman—we have three seats in the front—she got in with us. She held onto my hand the whole time so that she wouldn't give me a kiss.
Yeah, that might have been added too. She was definitely super happy that we took her along. She also told us things that we obviously didn't understand. But a smile is usually enough. And yeah, at some point she called out "stop," got out, gave us a few kisses on the hand, and waved. And yeah, and we were like, what was that? How cool was that?
That sounds like a lot of those positive encounters you often have on trips like that. Did you also have anything, like an experience where you'd say, that went completely wrong, that really hit us hard?
Yes, there was one experience—the experience itself is stupid, but what followed was actually much, much worse for me. We wanted to go to Dune de Pilar, and since we still had to stop by the TÜV beforehand, we started from here, from home. We drove well, I don't know, 1,300 kilometers through France to Bordeaux to the dune, and we had a great time there, like a great five days. Until the sixth day...
Not really like a plane, but... Not really like a plane
So, because the wind unfortunately never really picked up, I was really sorry about that. More for you, I was lying on the beach. But we parked the car on the street every day where hundreds of other cars were parked, and then we went to the beach with our stuff and had a good time there, and at some point we come back and I see that the tailgate is just propped open on the car and think, shit, someone was in there. And I open the tailgate and see the notebook lying on the bed, then I think, oh no, nobody was in there after all. And then I see that the bed area is totally dirty and yeah, I go in and look for my handbag, which of course I didn't take to the beach, my handbag was gone,
Samy's wallet was gone, and that was already enough stress for me, and suddenly he says, "Hey, where are our food boxes?" We had two large Ikea plastic boxes, completely full of food we'd bought here at home a week before, with coffee, with sausage, with all sorts of things that keep. Those were gone, our sweets box was gone, my medication was gone, our blankets were gone, and just, I don't know, a bikini and some pants and other little things—that was already not so great. Then we tried to block our debit and credit cards, which somehow didn't work that well under the stress because I didn't know my account number anymore and I couldn't look it up because it was in the wallet.
Yeah, then we managed, we tried—we don't really speak French—then we tried to somehow inform the police, and first of all, 110 only works in Germany, in France it's 17, I think.
Yeah, we asked some passersby for a phone number because, okay, 112 would have worked for an emergency, but you have to think about that beforehand—who do I call in that case? But anyway, I don't need an ambulance or the fire department right now, I want the police to report this incident here, and so we got a number, but then I talked to them and normally in France, when you get in contact with them, you speak one or two words of French and try to start with that, and then because that wasn't enough, you eventually switch to English. In that situation, I didn't care at all, I just started blabbing away in English right away, and yeah, he actually pushed back because I asked if he spoke English, he said no, he wouldn't speak it, he answered in English that he wouldn't speak it, and then I asked if maybe a colleague of his spoke English, that I...
...we could report the case here, and then he tells me very clearly over the phone, "Little friend, you're here in France, I'm a French cop, and French is spoken here." And at first I thought, uh, okay, everything in the finest English. And you really think, wow, in that situation, we were already down, yeah. That was still relatively at the beginning of your six-month trip, I'd say, if I read it correctly, there were already some thoughts like, wow, now everything is gone and all, that's no fun, I give up, that's it?
Yeah, the biggest problem was actually the documents that were missing. We then went to the police station to...
one and a half hour
century, although you have to say, in that situation, what bothered or surprised you the most was the food supplies or whatever. I was
angry, they stole my blanket and my food.
What I found really interesting was, I just thought, oh crap, now we have to somehow get back, or at least get our IDs from the embassy so we can continue traveling, because if we want to cross national borders, we might need to be able to identify ourselves, or definitely will.
Was, the embassy was on holiday?
Exactly, from... well, it was on Sunday, from Monday for two weeks closed in Bordeaux. And then that was already a no-go. Yeah, that was the reason why we came back. But it was clear, you want to continue, you're just getting new documents now and then it definitely has to go on. Not at that moment. At that moment, you hadn't thought that far ahead, right? At that moment, you just thought about the next step: we're going back for now, gathering ourselves, and seeing how it goes with the documents. We don't even know where we have to go now, what we have to do? And only then did the further plan emerge. Now that you have this experience with France, do you still have some kind of resentment and say, no, I wouldn't go to France again, I had a bad experience there?
Well, they say, no, we're never going back to France. But let's let some grass grow over that for now. We have to get through there at least once more to do our original plan again. I actually still wanted to go to
Pyrenees, Picos de Europa, Northern Spain—that's a mountain range that looked really nice and was on my list, which I just told you about. And then, of course, Portugal.
Algarve, the Algarve coast, we actually wanted to go there right after. You say that's still on your list. If I saw correctly, you set off in April and came back in early November. Was that a fixed date, or could you have also said, "No, we're turning off now," because I mean, you can still fly to southern Portugal in November. So there was never a fixed date. It was never 100% set. That was also the reason for the resignation. Otherwise, we might have been able to negotiate something, like a sabbatical or whatever. But I wanted, or we wanted, to be free in the decision to say, "Well, it's cool right now and we want to go for another 2-3 months," or "Now we actually have to go back." Or the opposite case,
Well, it's starting to get on my nerves a bit; it would be really nice if we could head back now. This life in a motorhome isn't really for me. Well, that wasn't the case just now, but it does get cold at some point in November. The hours of sunshine decrease significantly, which also has to do with our energy requirements and the income from the electricity. We have solar on the roof and did a lot of things with solar. Yes, actually everything, exactly. The normal 230-volt fridge was run via the inverter, which was the biggest power hog. And otherwise, things like smartphones etc., that's actually not a problem. But with the fridge, yeah, we actually had to turn that off in the end.
But it was cold enough anyway, exactly. So, that wasn't a problem. Yeah, that
The problem was that we ended up taking this Genuativ with us to Italy, unfortunately. And everything was wet and damp. At night, I only slept in ski socks, a fleece, and a beanie because it was just incredibly cold, even with several blankets. I even had to make a hot water bottle for one night. It was just incredibly cold because we don't have any heating. The question is whether we'll ever get some installed.
But in principle, it was also okay that we just drove straight home.
That means, from the outside conditions, it basically became uncomfortable, and you'd say, besides, now we're coming up on Christmas soon and it's nice to have that warm atmosphere with the family and stuff. And have you been back in your hometown for about three weeks now? Do you feel like heading off again? So was this something where you'd say, okay, we've treated ourselves to this once in our lives? Like, we won't be able to move out alone again in six months because we didn't win the lottery and we saved up for the trip, and it does take a bit of money, even if it's not that much you spend on the road if you pull yourself together a bit and don't go out to eat every day, but live a bit more frugally. Did you have something like a daily budget where you'd say, we're setting ourselves an average upper limit of not more than 50 euros or whatever?
Yeah, we always looked at what we were spending. More like the other way around, exactly.
We didn't have a
daily budget, but we basically tried to live somewhat frugally, not to splurge too much, and I have this app, an expense manager, where you document what you spent where. There's that IT guy again. Yeah, exactly.
Because of that, you could see afterwards, oh, we've already spent this much this month.
a lot of money disappeared.
Exactly, we could still do that—we categorized it a bit, so you had a category like "treat yourself," treat yourself to alcohol or whatever, and then you had to see if we maybe needed to scale back a bit or if, well, everything was within limits, so to speak. And yeah, that was the financial planning. Not strictly like "we have 50 euros a day," but something more flexible. You both quit your jobs, and now you're back. How are you handling that? Did you say immediately, "I have to get back into that right away," or how is that going?
Yeah, it was quite funny for me. We weren't... well, we were on our way home, basically heading back to our hometown, and on the way there, I found out that there were problems at my old practice.
Practice means you're a physiotherapist.
I'm a physiotherapist and I'm still in contact with my old colleagues, and then a message popped up in the WhatsApp group like, "get well soon" and stuff like that, and I thought, what's going on? So I just got in touch briefly with the sentence, "What's going on with you guys?" And then I was messaged relatively quickly by my ex-boss saying he broke his arm, which is actually a medium-scale catastrophe in our industry. Not
at work.
wasn't on duty and yeah, then instead of driving straight home, we actually made a little detour to the practice and yeah, shortly after, so we're back on Wednesday and I already had my first day back at work on Monday. That was only part-time,
one week for six hours, seven hours, depending, but all my colleagues—well, colleagues again now—are happy, the bosses are less worried, the patients are taken care of and are also happy that I'm back, and it's also a nice experience for me to feel like I might be needed and that I was missed a bit.
Well, physiotherapy is also so much—one patient comes in at 11:00, at 11:20 I already have the next one or something. Does it feel that way to you, or was it hard for you at first to get back into such a structured daily routine? Yes,
I'm coming from a high-paced, 40-hour work week where I can see three months in advance exactly when I have to work, into a zero-pace situation where you just had to get up, survive the day, and then go back to bed, and I've already really enjoyed that time factor along the way.
And why are you collecting? Hey, do you already have job prospects or are you also... I'm staying unemployed forever now. After work, I can just lean back. Does physiotherapy also finance a full... No, I work in the IT industry and we're both lucky that the job market doesn't look so bad for us. Yeah, I'm currently, let's say, sifting through job offers and applying diligently, although diligently, well, I mean,
The thing is, the range of options is huge, so I can take my time looking at where I want to get back into work, what I might like, and where I actually feel motivated to do it, yeah. Do you have any experiences from your travels that you'd say you want to bring back into your everyday life in some way? This experience I had, I definitely want to take that with me into my daily routine. They're both looking at each other so sweetly right now.
So, maybe not specifically into my professional life—nothing specific comes to mind right now that I'd adapt exactly like that. But into my private life? Generally in how I interact with people, yes, I've made a point of it more often because of the trip, that you can perhaps do that a bit more openly, because there are so, so many lovely people out there, and, yeah.
Exactly, more talking, reaching out to each other more, talking more.
Referring back to the trip, is there anything from your experiences that you would strongly recommend imitating—whether it's a specific place or just an experience regarding technology, people, or something else—where you'd say, if you're planning a trip like this, there's this point you might not immediately have on your list that you should definitely keep in mind? So, I'm firmly convinced that what was good was not fixing the route or the timing too much, what exactly should happen. Because things always turn out differently on the trip than how you actually planned them, if you've planned a bit. Usually, it turns out differently, so that you don't get disappointed and also have the freedom to just say, "Okay, then I'll stay here for another week," or not, as I said at the beginning, not too much.
pre-planning and pre-arranging. One more thing, regarding the conversion—if you don't enjoy it at all, then just buy something finished and don't build it yourself, because it really takes a lot of time and that would be wasted time if you're not having fun, so to speak. Regarding conversion stories, you also wrote a blog called thejollyjumper.de, if I remember correctly. Exactly. There are things like that described there; you also mentioned what you paid attention to or how you did the conversion, and you wrote a bit about the electrics and stuff like that. I read quite a lot of that, so anyone who's still interested can read a lot of this whole travel story there.
I printed that out as preparation for this conversation; it was 36 pages of just text, without the pictures.
Whoa. There's a lot of information on what's been achieved, and a lot of personal stuff too, but also some really interesting travel stories, so it's worth taking a look and a read. thejollyjumper.de. Otherwise, Samuel and Nathalie, thank you so much for this great conversation.
You're very welcome.
And yeah, maybe we'll see each other again sometime at the launch site. I met the two of them at a practice slope around here; they were just passing by on their way back, I did a bit of trading with them, and we started chatting—just talking a bit about where they were coming from and what's up—and that's how the idea to do this podcast came about. Thanks so much for joining us, and yeah, have a good trip next time you head out with the Jollyjumper. Thanks. Cool.
Nathalie Schwemke and Samuel Lukow in conversation with Lucian Haas. This was the first episode of Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast. It's basically a test balloon. If you enjoyed the podcast, please give me some feedback via a comment on the Lu-Glidz blog or by email at lugleitzkontakt at gmail dot com. If this format gets a good response, I plan to expand Lu-Glidz into a regular audio offering in the future. Of course, something like this also involves some effort. Lu-Glidz is completely independent and therefore also ad-free. In return, however, I appreciate every reader and, in this case, listener who supports my work with a donation. This can be done via PayPal or bank transfer. The corresponding links and details can be found on the Lu-Glidz website.
See you next time.