küche wohnzimmer offen

it's been a while since we originally hit the road in 2012, we decided we wanted to travel and discover the world we thought that a van would be the perfect solution for us and we found that it was we didn't have the time to figure out things we just started traveling in europe and we've been able to witness and enjoy a different sunset and sunrise nearly every day

we've adjusted, we've minimized and we got rid of most of our useless things most of the time, it's not easy to achieve we know that we've been lucky in ways somehow, we've succeeded going on six years through our freelance jobs we've paid our expenses as we go it's how we started our perpetual journey

and we've continued but this movie is not about us it's about other travelers that we've met on the road it's their stories it's their experiences it's their freelancing jobs and most importantly it is their lives

i'm tracy guenard this is our dog rain and i'm john rathwell i'm rene from germany i'm a passionate landscape photographer i'm from canada i'm jordan and this is maddy i'm maddy i was born in austria but this is my home now

i'm olaf i'm asa this one is kalle he's the youngest of the family and then comes stella the dog and in the back is toya and then it's mika the oldest one i'm ceci he’s german

i'm from bilbao in the basque country and he's from colombia i'm ronja i'm from germany i'm martijn i’m from holland i'm mike what do i do? i guess i travel full-time in a van i'm valine i am crom

and this, behind us is box (our van) my name is robin to begin with me and this is my wife she’s called minza and this is our son he's four years old and he's called pio and our two daughters i am noemi i'm albert and i'm 37 years old 38

i'm from barcelona i'm daniel i'm from australia and i've been sort offollowing along with the van life movement i'm kelly i'm from new zealand but i lived with daniel in sydney for the last four years my name is allegra i'm italian even if idon't feel that i belong to a country

i'm theo and i'm bee we've been travelingsince june last year in our vw t4 van across europe we live in freiburg which is in germany we' re on the road for one year we took paternity leave since it's the lastchance for us to do such a big trip because mika will start school soon

i'd been sort of following alongwith the vanlife movement in my own life in sydney for probably a couple of years online and realizingthat it was something that was really sort of - it hit me it was something i wanted to do we've ended up buying a van in holland and here we are in europe starting our journey with four months in

so, i've like - i’ve been traveling forlike three years maybe over three years now before this i had i had like a job probably like a normal career-ish kind of job mainly in an office i was getting bored and i decided to quit

searching for sero is our project that we started almost over a year ago now and we decided to do this project where we want to promote mental wellness through outdoor and sports so we feature storiesof people that use outdoor adventure to bring happiness to their lives and we'rehoping to inspire people to get out and

do what they love i'm an artist i work with public art, mainly so i travel around for my work i’ve lived in box since about a year together with crom and i really like traveling around the best way to define myself is:

i'm a via-lactã‰an who is now exploring earth for people who wonderwhere i was born or how did they come to human shape into this planet that was in brasil i have the privilege of being raised among savage people therefore, i carry much more savage values than i do carry civilised values

i have been around earth from place to place for about 25 years now one and a half years ago, i got this van and traveled around in it a bit in spain and portugal and morocco i met ronja in june in portugal and i kind of squatted in her van and i'm still there

i started traveling in a van in july 2016 so it's around about eight months living in a van or living the van life is not just a great way to travel and be able to discover amazing places it's also a way to dedicate more of your time to your own interests and artistry your life is the first priority, isn't it?

time is the most expensive non-material thing we have on this planet why waste it? we need to find some sort of balance instead of not using it for developing our passions and loves forwhatever we like we're getting rich in experiences and in personal growth living in our van and traveling it has always been a dream

when i was younger to have a van and my first van i bought with a friend of mine and then, when we met and we knew that mika’s going to come we we knew that wehad to somehow get a different van which basically meets our needs

with kids we've been away for two months in morocco we knew that sooner or laterwe’d need a bigger car bigger kids - bigger car is basically what the outcomefrom that trip was i love to travel in the past, i did it mostly as a backpacker i traveled in many countries around the world like australia, new zealand, the usa

on my last trip it was in vietnam i realized that for a landscapephotographer it’s a bit difficult to travel only backpacking so this is onereason i choose to live in a van and travel in a van i choose to do it as afull time traveler because i don't want to waste more time in the office and i don't know what's in 20 years

or what's in five years - so i want to do it now when i first met bee i'd always joked about and told her that we were going to live in a van one day and i had to make that happen she never believed me she'd always say "i'm not sure, i'm not sure,” but

yep - here we are, living in a van and yeah it's amazing i don’t really know how i don't really know how kind of the idea came about but i know i didn't want to work a 9:00 to 5:00 anymore and i wanted to get away from the corporate video world for a bit

and this was the best way to do it, i think it started with adventures in our little citroen berlingo that you converted about two years ago now and we'd go off around the uk on that we went to france and we want something a bit more sustainable than this tiny little thing

your feet were on the dashboard it was that small so we found this - and it was perfect! the idea to go on an adventurethere was a friend of mine actually because i wanted to go to spain inthe summer and she said: "yeah we should get a van from your dad” because my dadhas a volkswagen van like this since he's like 18 so he helped me out andwe found him, ‘spencer’ and then he wanted to keep it, and now i want to keep it

so the situation is still a bit unclear about that but it became my home so it's really hard to give it away again i came back to portugal with thevan, and met martijn - and ever since we're pretty muchliving most of the time in the van 'gianni' he's my husband i love him and i’m traveling with him, more or less, five years we are in a very good balance

we are traveling more and more i was dreaming about it and when i found gianni, actually i couldn't believe that i found him i was like: ‘there will besomething wrong there will be something broken’ and there was, of course we never meant to live in a van or, like we didn't have the goal to be like ‘vanlifers’

and me being a photographer, i wanted to do a personal photography project that would give awareness to mental health and just happiness and so we came up withour project ‘searching for sero’ and when we started discussing of ways of promoting it in ways of meeting people the van just became the way to do it it seemed to make sense, it seemed to be practical

convenient and maybe one of the best ways to get around north america and to meet people and to find people that are in their adventure john's always been attractedto westfalia, so was i because it's just so iconic so when we decided to do the project, living in a van, and we started looking at westfalias and decided - it wasthe perfect means for us i went to university

got a degree in likeelectronic engineering and this is like sort of subject that i love so just bydefault, i got a job and then i guess i had everything that you’re meant to have a good job and stuff, and my own place a car and things like this and i just gotreally tired and fed up and sick of it i was always interested in sound system culture pirate radio culture

i alwayswanted my first car to be a van and then, when i was 25 when i was bored, satin the office the thoughts of the van came again but then i thought actually i could use it as my full-time home i bought this van as like a broken empty van in all my spare time, in my lunch breaks

and in the evenings, i wasresearching how to convert a van how to, you know, make it into a space that is like fully livable i guess we're really lucky that we havejoined the van life movement i guess a bit later in the game so, sort of see that's a way of life people are actually doing it and living it have been doing it for years successfully i always just had, growing upin a small town in bellinger, and

seeing all these little vans andpeople living this different lifestyle always sort of saw it and it was aninterest to me i didn't know whether i would end up doing it and then graduallysort of more and more we just wanted a way to really travel for longer and go to places that we never would have seen otherwise so this is really an opportunity for us i was already going down

minimizing my belongings and sort ofgetting rid of a lot of stuff and for me being able to have the freedom and the choice to be able to live in a small space and in the van - it just made sense we met about three years ago in brasil we found out that both of us always hada dream of living in a van i was traveling by myself with my backpack for two years already before that, i was actually working in a normal job

i was living in berlin going to the office every day so i was always looking for things tobreak out to do something else a year and a half ago, more or less crom came to visit me in berlin i was already thinking again about this dream of living in a van maybe, you know, this is the moment to do it if i'm not going to do it now

i'm probably never going to do it two weeks later we bought ‘box’ and another week later we were already we moved in it's tough to start something daunting it's difficult to change your life even if it is for the better you might be ina small apartment living together and when you need real space you go outside

now imagine if the space was a seaside a mountain a gorgeous country you've never met imagine that you have a once-in-your-lifetime experience with your better half by yourself or with your family when living in a van you normally think that because of

being in a confined space life may become moredifficult but i don't think it's so different as in regular life actually it's not a confined space it's where you sleep, but actually you're in the whole world the sight is enormous it's the biggest five-star natural hotel me and theo, we’ve always been really close

we're the kind of couple that literally from day one we were together pretty much 24/7 we've been together 10 years now and it's not like we just jumped into avan straight away and tried to make it work we knew each other very well already we’d lived in a small flat already probably not much bigger than the van

so that was good training and we find it alright i go off and do my photography and filmmaking bee likes to read and we have our own space but we enjoy spending time together as well we wanted to do it because we like it and we said we try it and if the kids don't rebel and if they don't regret it

or if they don't cause problems one way of knowingthat it’s good for them is that they like it and you just find out as soon as you do it and if you don't do it you don't know whether it'll do them any good or not we like our life at home too and now this is our home and sometimes if you change your life it's exhausting and

it's uncomfortable and i think this is good it's good that life sometimes is uncomfortable because then you look at your life before and you can see things you like or not it's hard sometimes because maybe you arejust in search of some loneliness and some peace some place where to stop and contemplate

and you always have someone that wants to know “why? why are you alone? would you want to sleep alone in the van tonight?” yes, of course i'm used to it's my home it’s not that i don't think that something can happen i used not to have fear fear is my enemy

it's not easy i'm not going to lie to you it's not easy but i think it's an exercise a huge exercise of tolerance dialog too anyway you have a huge terrace again and you can go out and have a walk like calm yourself and whatever for sure it’s a challenge

but more for her than for me we plan to be around six or seven maybe more months together in the van and if we survive and if she doesn’t kill me i will marry her for sure if you want traveling alone has pros and cons you can do what you want come more in contact with other people

because you are alone and you want to talk from time to time you feel lonely but i have my mobile phone and i can phone home to friends and family for me it's not a problem don't be afraid of traveling alone

well you lived in the van just alone for a little bit then i came and met up with her it's way nicer when it's two of you you can keep each other warm i don't mind the two of us really we're both really easy to like we said we met traveling so we can have really little and be happy i think we're the right kind of personalities for it

the point we came through was that with our children especially our children they take a lot of time and we want to have a lot of time and if we travel together we can have this time all together because if you stay at home it's always that one goesout to work something

like this in one bus we areall together the two little ones they are really active it's really important for us that we have a lot of space where they can have their fun and come around the space that we live in is small this is our bedroom our kitchen our lounge room it turns into whatever we want it to be at the time

and sometimes it feels like we've got so much space and we're like kelly can be in the front i can be in the back we can be doing different things and feel like we're not even in the same place it takes some getting used to

and then certainly challenges the relationship i guess the main thing is yes we always live together but we also both have full-time jobs we have quite a large group of friends so we weren't always together like this we just have to make it work we realise that we can get frustrated with each other

and at those time you just have to take the space by literally going outside by just saying i need some space and giving each other room to breathe it can be hard there's highs and lows we get through we still love each other at the end of the day and if anything it's probably made our relationship stronger

because we know that we can do this so we can probably do anything by default i'm on my own but i've also experienced friends have come out to the van traveled with me fora few weeks or a month and then i've met people as well i like both worlds but they're both very different

traveling alone there are loads of challenges everything's harder on your own just from the practical things driving is a bit harder but i guess you get used to it i like being alone not all the time i get a lot from exploring things

just alone being totally free going where i want not having to think about it it sounds quite selfish i’ve never felt lonely i think there's too much to do probably more lonely in my other life and i was around a lot of people

it was very important to us that the van became home and we did have some compromises we did have to give things up i wanted to ensure i had my bike and i had my surfboard and if there is a time where we are just frustrated with each other i'll just grab my surfboard and go out surfing

i'll go through big waves so i know tracy's not gonna follow me and i get my alone time there i go for a walk or i go throw the ball for rain i think it's just a matterof respecting each other's space because there's not a lot of space you feel it right away

if the vibe is not good and the other person justneeds space and time you just go you go for a walk you go 'don't talk to them for a couple of minutes' and it's usually enough just enough pressure that releases and us to look at each other 'you know i'm not really mad at you

i'm just feeling pressured or crammed and it’s fine' i got the van out of the shop and we packed up and we left and we didn't have the time to actually go on this weekend camping trip or get to know the van it was just on the road full time here we go but the first few weeks

we were doing what we called the 'westfalia dance' because we just couldn't i wanted to make coffee and tracey wanted to get dressed and it was like we're just dancing around each other trying to do this so there's a bit of frustration there but once we realise

this is really annoying i brought up ‘hey it's the westfaliadance that we're doing’ and i just tried to make you get things that are you're maybe not used to and you’ve just got to point them out and try to make the best of them so ours is the age of technology

it's helped us to find new solutions and it's created more freedom with the asphalt under our wheels and with our spirits soaring it brings us to astonishing landscapes it gives us the possibility of being connected to the entire world in just a click the time has come again

for a new wave of nomads both online and offline each one has their unique way of being sustainable while traveling a house has a lot of what i call compulsory bills which is you have to pay those no matter what there's a minimum fee and in a house you're not allowed to be independent

whereas when you live in a car you can go self-sufficient we didn't have any savings or our parents are not paying for us we also don't get any unemployment money from our countries i started as a freelancer online i do translations writing content for different websites

doing social media for different companies and i get paid for that right now i work about 20 hours a week that's how we pay the food and the diesel and the car i'm still paying for the car it's a mixture of savings a bit a little income

and hope that the spendings are not too great that the van will last until the end and we know that we’ll continue our jobs so if the gap is too big we know that the income will come and will take a while to fit the gap i'm not doing anything right now i sold all my stuff in holland that i have and that brought me some money

but that got stolen from the van then we came to the next problem that making money was actually something that had to be done in a short amount of time but we're starting a little company right now in carapatera in portugal and that's going to be our

way to make money first of all you don't need a lot because you don't have to pay rent or a fancy tv or an extra car you don't have a lot of costs that people normally have it's kind of been an evolution so the first thing is to spend as little as possible

so spending 10 or 11 euros a day on average this is what i was doing and then i had to find a way to make 11 euros a day actually before the blog i was busking on the streets you make money for food and i was juggling fire and with some other people playing music

and then the blog started getting popular i started to see opportunities so then i put advertisements on the blog at first that got me my 10 euros a day and then it went up and then i found out there was a point where i made quite a bit with advertising on the blog and then i took that all off

because i didn't like adverts and then i made money withamazon affiliate and a few other affiliate programs i don't do that anymore so now my main income is through my ebook this is my favorite way ofmaking money because it's a better deal for both sides my audience and me

now i can take all the adverts off my blog i don't have toshow people crappy adverts i can give them an e-book that has a lot of value and in return i get some money i started in the past to save money as much as as i can i stop to consume stuff i don't need and i think that most people

consume so much stuff because they think it makes them happy to do what you want to love your passion this is what you makes happy to enjoy the life and not to consume stuff traveling in van it's not really expensive

it's totally different from living at one place in a flat so you have to buy food and you have to buy petrol a couple months before leaving we put togethera crowdfunding campaign through indiegogo and that worked out really well for us we had a ten thousand dollar goal and reached thirteen thousand

it was a great success it was amazing we also funded the project a lotwith our savings our own money it was very important to me during the crowdfunding campaign that the money from crowdfunding go towards the project goes towards making the project happen and not towards building the van i didn't want i felt like the van was

not something i could askother people for money for i wanted to make that myself we have been workingas freelancers in the media production for over nine years in between i've become a kite instructor right now i'm working to become as well a scuba diving instructor and we also have several blogs add in all of these different resources

we’ve managed to get enough earnings to be able to travel maybe a plan for the future is the ability to combine media production blogging as well as kite-surf instruction and scuba diving's instruction and pivot around different places as a seasonal way to live

in different areas around the world basically our trip started with just working as much as we could in sydney and saving up so we accumulated fabulous savings we sort of calculated how much we would need for at least six months of this trip which is what our plan was but ultimately we would like to

continue this lifestyle it was always going to be a learning process and we knew that when we started this we have the savings there but we're obviously thinking of ways that we could makemoney on the site as we go you don't need to make much money because your living costs are much lower it's just about having enough toget by

and to continue what you want to do obviously it's all a learning curve for us we know it's not going to happen overnight we do have goals to try and help sustain ourselves i guess with the whole network of online jobs and all these sorts of websites we can go and apply for work it is a lot easier than it might have been before

basically we just worked very hard from 16 i've been working in the film industry and doing corporate videos so i'd saved enough money from that to support us for a year on the road that's basically it and selling a lot of things we sold our cars that paid for the van

and then oursavings paid for the year on the road by selling my art i have an apartment so i used to rent it but just partially and by spending less money than i can that doen't means that i'm frustrating myself if i need something i just buy it

i don't think about that i'm not in a budget but i’m used to living life with many exchanges i give so much to thepeople and people are giving me so much our life our real life is one without picturesque filters the reality is a lot bigger than a tiny square photo

the untold moments are ones that bring us down sometimes they can be frustrating and make us upset but these are just teensy little moments compared to what we get to see with our own eyes not to mention the enrichmentwe get as human beings problems always have a solution the biggest realization when you start van life is obviously you see all these pretty pictures

and you just think'wow! such a glamorous, easy lifestyle you’re just always at the beach or something' yeah, it's not all glamorous mechanical issues with the van i guess when it breaks down to it’s mechanical problems that you never have control of that you’ve just got to accept it can happen anytime and deal with

that sort of completely opened up our eyes we had this idea that we could just pull up to the beach pop out and pop our boot and we'd be there for the night a lot of the time you see something on a map and you think 'oh that's something perfect let's go there' and then you get there and it's horrible

and there's like a midnight rave party in the car park and you think ‘oh my god get me out of this' there's been a lot of those moments but i guess it really helps toput it into perspective there were so many things to go wrong i mean compared to living in a house everything feels pretty delicate 'it's easy to break into a van i guess' that's scary

the thought of that is really scary the thought of someonedriving away your van and your home is scary you're living in a van with an engineand engines break all the time and this is always a possibility three days ago kalle how do you say it? puked you know back homeyou have your washing machine and then it's done after a couple of hours

it's dry and it's back in the in the closet and this is probably one of the challenging things but if you’re asking for fear i think if you're really afraid of things you probably wouldn't leave with a family obviously if somebody is sick or if you can't find a proper place for the night where youfeel comfortable to stay in the van

it makes things much more comfortable every day to find a really nice spot where you can stay where all the needs of all the members of the family are basically fulfilled it’s really hard toja and mika they really like to play with each other but if they just have each other of course they argue and it'snot working sometimes and when we come home

we always realise that this timehas fit us together we can as a family really be together for a long time we can manage that we can really enjoy each other even if it's sometimes too much for all of us we got robbed that was not that nice you come backfrom a great day of surfing and the van is open

and pretty much everything from valuables was taken laptops, phones, money passports that's pretty much a nightmarewhich happened to us and like she said before already not having a bedroom it's living together in a very small space if you don't count the worldoutside of course when you get rain

then you don't really have a lotof places to go sometimes 'spencer' is leaking a little bit from the inside that makes it also a little bit tough of course everything gets a bit moist inside when it's raining outside for a few days that's the downside here in morocco normally there was never an issue before

but finding a place to stay is a bit of an issue here because youget sent away from the nice places and you need a bit of luck to find a good spot like we have right now but in europe there was never ever an issue so sometimes i thought 'i'm having this view here normally you would pay hundreds of euros

in a five-star hotel to get to sleep in this amazing place with an amazing view' it looks like this really romantic thing usually on social media you always show the most beautiful things about it in the end it’s a normal life too with upsides and downsides the negative thing about it is

the lack of routine sometimes because we are always moving which is cool because you can go anywhere which is really great the only difficulty we have in life is the courage of living the dreams people tend to find difficult to let go of this false illusion of security once you let go of that

there's no more difficulty in life i think it's alsoimportant to show about van life that like any life it has positive things and negatives things or things people should think about it's not paradise maybe it is what doesn't look like paradise about this? you're in the beach front house today

we want to be in the mountain view tomorrow we want to be by a lake next week rain? i think we both agree rain is really it seems to have followed useverywhere our whole entire trip but if you choose to stay in norway for two months that's probably going to happen we haven't got a lot of room

there's two of us we've got all of our stuff with us and being locked in thevan for 3-4 days at a time if it's raining it's pretty dire maybe missing friends because sometimes you meet a lot of people but sometimes you need to speak like to have a real talk

with your real friends and maybe it can be kind of sad because you only have albert and i mean he only has me it's not always enough maybe when you are not balancedwith yourself your happiness depends on you most of the time

but if you are in peace with yourself i think you can live the dream and assuming not everything is perfect in this life this is life life is like up and down is there a worse part? no i don't think so when you have to repair the van maybe a lot of tears

i guess sometimes finding a place to camp finding a place just to call home for the night in some areas can be frustrating it's very important to me to sleep in a spot where i'm comfortable and it's beautiful and we can feel like we're at home and some places it's really easy

like right now we're in thunder bay in northern ontario and there's a ton of crown land there's a ton of lakesthere's a ton of beautiful spots up here but we have had some areas where you feel like you're driving for miles and miles and you're like ‘where are we gonna sleep tonight? i don't want to sleep at walmart'

even worst case scenario you end up sleeping in a parking lot in themiddle of a city and it's fine, you know? today is not perfect tomorrow will be better if you see vanlifers and see the photos and the stories for example on social media

it always looks great it looks like a dream but be prepared it's not always fun some days you don't find a good great spot for sleeping you're standing at a highway between trucks it's noisy and it smells bad from the road and other days it's raining it's all day

two days you're driving and it's raining you're sitting in the van and all becomes wet we know that this lifestyle isn't foreverybody it's not easy to cut off your roots your home and simply go but for us this alternativelifestyle makes us happy it's what makes us free it's what inspires us daily

travel isn't just moving from one point to another it's between two points we've become so much happier in our personal experiences we've been able to get tounderstand more about ourselves through the places we've visited and more importantly through the people we've met i learn about the things around me other countries other cultures and stuff

and i've learned a lot about myself you get a unique perspective that's difficult to get in normal life you can stepback and look from a distance and see in a different way i think that's valuable it gives you just way more freedom to do whatever you want

whenever you want and living close to nature is also an awesome thing of course living in a van like this always close to the beach that's what i do what makes me happy instead of staying in a hotel or something like that where you have to get up

two hours before sunrise i can park on on the doorstep of a beautiful landscape and get out of my van in the morning and just go and shoot and have a great time and you're very free as well you're not tied down to anywhere other than the bikes when we lock them to the van

but we can leave whenever we want and just go wherever we want and i think that’s my favorite thing just being anywhere if you start traveling you cannot stop the van gives you the opportunity to do it it gives you the freedom and you just need to take the decision

and live the adventure i guess it doesn't even affect my life traveling is my life we meet people from all over the world and people are so friendly and helpful and generous and everyone is curious and wants to get to know each other to be outside the whole time to be in the nature

now we are at the ocean and a few weeks ago we were in the desert and we can just go there with a van just be brave enough to start it and to do it bit by bit as long as you’re happy the kids will be happy as well unless you don't try you never know until you go

a friend of mine said when you find yourself parked atthe beach for free and can wake up there and see the most beautiful sunset and sunrise it's amazing if you’re thinking about it i say do it start doing steps start saving money for buying a van

the point in the future they wantto start so you realise it's not so difficult you don't have to beafraid to quit your job it's easier than you're thinking another way to define us is there are mad people and no-mad people so we are the group of nomads and we're not crazy at all

in life you don't grow unless you're outside of your comfort zone life has a good way to throw sticks at you and make you trip and fall sometimes going with the van life anddoing this project for us was definitely putting me outside of my comfort zone so i think it's an amazing opportunity and i think it provides the bestvalue in the long term for me because i feel like i grow so much by being

not secured and not safe and not doing the same thing every day what it taught me was to slow down it was very clear when we first started driving this van that things would not happen fast life isn't about rushing and there's moments where we're doing something and there's a beautiful sunset

or there's stars or there’s something you want to stop at just stop just enjoy the moment just be in it and be connected and be mindful and be yourself be yourself by finding your own way thatcan give you freedom

find your path turn on the engine and go you can start toexplore the alternative possibilities and all of the happiness life has to offer

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