With a new turbo charger to near car crash!!!

 Hello hello again … long time no hear :P

 

Happy new year everyone and marry Christmas :D for all I didn’t contact in person yet.

The last days at Park Istra in Slovenia has been a pleasure and sadly came to an end at the 15^th of December. I convinced 2 other travellers to join my trip and as many signs (yes I believe in those for those who don’t know me enough yet) pointed me to travel to Portugal instead of traveling further south to Romania and the black sea. I’m speaking about very old friends who I didn’t talk to for maybe 7 years suddenly asked me to come to Portugal. Or random persons sending me articles “they may be interesting in my travels”, over Portugal, old flatmates writing me about Portugal, meeting the one traveller who now is with me, who was thinking of moving to Portugal just before he went to Park Istra, random Workaway persons asking me to come to Portugal, some potential travel buddies who didn’t come to Slovenia in the end ended up in Portugal….just to give a few examples for those who don’t know my spiritual side yet. So for me that was clearly the next destination.

So we (me and the other two Persons with me now: Philip a guy from Sweden and Gemma a girl form Ex-EU Britain) decided to make our way slowly to Portugal with a stop in France to maybe learn some French and meet some new other workaway people in another country, maybe be able to celebrate Christmas together. We found this guy on workaway who was happy to take us three even though I had a very diverse feeling about the situation. I don’t know what but something felt very odd and also OK but I didn’t get the “everything is right” feeling when I normally take decisions. Talking with the others and with friends about this odd feeling helped a little bit but still left me in a very weird mood. Again my spirit part of me tries to tell me something but I didn’t know what it is. But I know if things run smoothly, I’m on the right path….so I decided to watch the feeling but also go one with the decision we took to drive to this place.

  

2020 has been a year of many changes I think you will agree but there is a new glory year waiting for us and also for Jack of course. So that’s why Jack has a new list I have to update …. Yeeey

Finally…

broken_parts_list.remove(“turbo charger”)

broken_parts_list.remove(“starter”)

print(broken_parts_list)

[‘exhaust’,’steering’]

 

…hang on how did we get ‘steering’ on the broken parts list ???

Well well long story short to tell. But first of all I want to share how delightful it is to drive with a working turbo charger. And then I’ll get to the point how a working turbo charger nearly killed us.

So imagine you always drove a Diesel car and got very use to the fact that on low revs (Umdrehungen/min) the car pulls. And on high revs the car is kind of garbage. So having Jack as a Diesel car unfortunately this never applied to him. So basically on each little hill (not even talking about mountains) I had to switch gears downs sometimes one sometimes two. And still got overtaken by many trucks on the way up the hills. In fact I drove the car like a Petrol car as there was no pulling on low revs. Maximum speed between 80-100 km/h. But most likely it was more 80 than 100 km/h.

After I got the turbo charger changed, all this changed. I had this nice feeling of a Diesel again. Suddenly I don’t have to give high revs to Jack to get more acceleration. Now it’s low revs and acceleration :). The good thing is if you get your car close to Italy (because it’s a FIAT) repaired and it was also a very good guy, you may be able to get the last “new” part. The guy literally called around in Italy and found the maybe last place with the last original 30 year old new part I needed. Costly but not as costly as in Germany I guess. And NEW (just 30 years old but still unused :P)

Now Jack easily runs up to 100 km/h quickly. Before you have to really talk into him before for gaining speed over long long time, now Jack just says “yey let’s do the 90, 110 or even 120 km/h”. Suddenly Jack plays in the 110 league more frequently but that also brings some dangerous things with it.

Did you ever experience a bad steering car? I mean not a person who can’t drive, but a car which has a kind of loose steering wheel. Well since Jack only played in the below 90 km/h league we didn’t run into that problem before.

But things changed. So now Jack gets a little unstable or lets call him “Jack delayed”. So you turn the wheel a little bit and it takes a while (1-3 sec) till the car changes directions. In this time you can’t feel much force on the driving wheel so you think nothing happens. Again, this only appears on higher speed (100-110 km/h). Being used to driving a sailing boat I think I handled that new hidden feature which unlocks at >100 km/h without even recognizing it. For those who don’t sail, if you want to change directions on a sailing boat you push (or pull) the tiller (“Pinne” or “Ruder” in german) for a short time then you put it back to the straight position. The boat will make a small turn of direction… with little speed on the water you will not feel much force on the tiller.

With Jack it is: the quicker you drive the less force on the driving wheel is needed (I guess till here that’s very normal) but also you will not feel the change of direction immediately. Still it’s very important to put the steering wheel back into position (which is also unlikely I guess). This little hidden feature got us into big problems when we changed drivers. The other person didn’t feel the response of the car and pushed even a little bit further the driving wheel. Then the response came harder than expected and then steered into the other direction. Again the change was not direct so the person steered even stronger into the other direction and we soon ended up getting the car into a very uncontrolled swing with rising amplitude. §”$%cking eigen-frequency shaking the car up even more….

 I tried to gain control again by breaking the swinging with holding the driving wheel steady, which kind of worked but then we were straight on our way to the road rail on the left, the driver just pulled into the other direction in time so we didn’t crash there…now pointing towards the truck on our right, still swinging but less……..J U S T   A     N I G H T M A R E

Somehow we did get slower while using all 3 lanes of the freeway (luckily the other cars/trucks realised our struggles and slowed down) and kind of ended up on the right two lanes and managed to get slowly to the emergency lane on the very left and turned the ignition to stop the car!

SHOooooOOOOOCK!

Woww that was a very very lucky outcome somewhere in Italy someone was watching over us there….

After we switched back drivers we decided that even Jack is now a formula 1 car we keep the speed more in good old pre turbo charger times numbers below 100 and drive more like formula 2 with low revs and high acceleration.

Remember my feelings about the place in France we decided to go and I was concerned? I calmed myself down with “if it’s the right place to go it will be a smooth way” that’s how I recognise a wrong path (thinking of the book the Alchemist if someone read it, I can warmly recommend this book to find back on your right path). And I’m so happy that suddenly I can feel this “being of the path” or “got taken care” feeling again, since I lost it/ or better probably ignored it in the last few years. Feels good to have it back!!!

Back to the track back to the road back to the feelings…. That nearly car crash, when we ALL have seen already the spot in the side road rail we will hit was clearly NOT a “smooth path” or an easy going way. Sooo you can all imagine how this made me even more concerned of going to the place to France we decided to go. Back with my feelings and struggling to not listen to them (also don’t want to make the others freak out and think I’m crazy) I again communicated the struggles also talked with a good friend back home long on the phone which helped me calm down (even though we all were still in deep shock stress after that nearly crash).

Found a nice quite place in the App park4night again in the end of a little town 10 minutes from the freeway which was not so free to drive on (because it has toll (Maut) on it).

How ironic after this nearly car crash the universe provided us a completely super spooky empty little town with very low light…not even cats where on the street and you can see rubbish at the street. The end of the town and the little turn of the road we had to take to get to the park4night spot led us directly to a …..graveyard. Thank you universe, I took the message: “if you continue this spooky path, I will lead you to the graveyard”….

Hahaha, of course I had to go out of the camper all by myself to find a place to pee in the complete darkness. And as any random hero in a very bad horror movie I had to walk alone for a while around the graveyard before I agreed to the place I felt “happy” to be the darkest place there was… hahaha.

So that is my answer to the universe at this point “even though I don’t listen to the signs you provide, even though I choose the spooky empty road with struggles, even though you will lead me to the graveyard even then…. I will not fear that you will always provide a safe passage to the place I want to go and guide me if I want to leave this place.” (more to leaving a place later :P yes everything is connected).

 

Back to the camper and the place we found. After some nice dinner we made and talking about the near car crash I guess we drunk all bottles of wine and beer we had and tried to find some sleep even though my brain was still showing me those pictures of the road rail or the truck we nearly hit….I think it was 2.28 am without any second of sleep when two “not so nice” “maybe very angry” “maybe very happy to chase us off” policemen knocked at our camper to tell us off. I don’t know what some humen being think what people do at 2.28 am when all lights are off? Maybe some illegal drugs? What the hell, why wake (or disturb my near crash experience thoughts) at 2.28 am in the morning? Are we allowed to be in Italy, YES?! Are we allowed to get the driver back to the driving condition with sleep or processing near crash experiences, YES?! Are we allowed to be in the country corona-wise, YES?! …..So what is the 2§$%§”ing problem??!!!

Guess those guys are happy guys, happy to chase us off and so they did. They said we had to leave by 6 am….. very happy guys… so I guess they were just stupid. Forcing a person to drive after driving the whole day after having few beers and wine (ok we didn’t mention that). Anyway by the time the alarm went off at 5.30 am I didn’t sleep a single second so I just drove off, decided to drive to the not so free freeway again and take the next parking place on the way and act like a truck….just stood there and slept.

…That worked, so I finally got some 3-4 hours sleep till the others (they slept before already 3-4 hours) were awake and yes small space shaky camper, if one gets up, everyone gets up!

Another big sign of “things are not running smoothly but ok Jan is not listening completely yet :D (more to this later).

 

Next stop after a very expensive hole in the mountains between Italy and France was a proper camping place (just wanted to have a safe sleep this night) in a very snowy valley place called Bramans.

Things went very smoothly here. Paid the night and had finally a good night sleep after I don’t know 16 hours of driving with 3 hours sleep.

Next day we made our way to Terre Rouge the magnificent place with the not so magnificent guy ….

 

But this is another story I will tell you guys next time  :D you have to be patient but here is a picture of Terre Rouge

 

 

…lovely :) but the story is another one…

 

  

What are you sharing…?

 

Yes that’s a reward after all this car(r)y things. Arrived well in Slovenia and was scared not to be able to get on one of the camping places. Unfortunately in Slovenia its not allowed to sleep in your van anywhere else than on camping places. You can read posts about fines 40€ p.p.p.n. (yes per person per night)  everywhere on the app park4night. So I found this awesome camping place which is supposed to be a rafting centre as well.

Jack made it all the way down the valley I was just like “oups hopefully he will make it all the way up later as well” :D

Arriving at this awesome place later at the day seeing a red and white construction site tape (not tight any more) laying on the ground made me first suspicious but I just sad, well if it’s not allowed, someone will tell me of, so I drove to a nice spot (I was the only one at this place) first line parking at the river and set up camp. Asking the next person I found if that’s ok… she was “well normally we are not allowed to have people at the moment due to COVID-19 but you can stay for 10€ per night. :) lucky me…

Later on, my workaway place wrote that most of the people will come on Monday so I don’t have to be there till Monday but I can also come and stay at their place on Friday (Saturday was the date everyone was supposed to come) already. But the problem in Slovenia is during this lockdown you are not allowed to travel from one municipal to the other. Bad for me because I have to travel through something like 15-20 (let’s say 17) of them :D. Fortunately it’s not a problem if you have to reach your destination but still it can be very annoying to get stopped by the police 17 times. Luckily I got a piece of paper from my workaway place which says I am working there so that is very helpful! Since I decided to stay 3 nights at that awesome place you can see at the pictures :D, I arrived on Sunday at Park Istra the charity place I am supposed to work on.

I was the first person to arrive and a barking dog (Ron) was greeting me, a running kid (Jan as well :D ) and Janez and Petra (both 38 yo) the parents of the kid and the kind of owner of this place. I got a really welcoming “hello” and a good feeling straight away. Petra showed me around: 

The place has one rabbit (had two just one day before :( …) a huge trampoline, a slackline, a volleyball field a basketball field and soccer field in one (paved), very nice view to the next valley... you can even see the see, a hammock, a big common room with piano, guitar, ukulele, kaechon, huge projector wall, table soccer desk, big kitchen an 2*6 beds, 2*4 beds (in another building) and 2*2 beds room and a little room on top of all other rooms :) very cool, it’s like a birds nest with windows in all directions. We even have matrasses there so we can sleep there chill out or do some yoga or mediation.

Here are some pictures my lovely new home for the next 5 weeks:

Main house with entrance from left

fire place :D

nice slakline

vegetable garten behind the house

fitness bars

nice view sitting area

compost and garden place

remember those two windows in top of the building :)

Entrence from right

 

thats our living room ;)

sleeping room with Phillip

Staircais

Windows in the sleeping room

corridor 2. level (you can see the stairs going to the very top section)

our lovely kitchen ;)

with Tim, Agnes and Phillip (on the camera)

did you remember the two windows from the picture above ? there are 4 of them in each direction of the house :D

 

Fortunately I was not alone for long when I arrived. A British girl named Gemma arrived with a taxi after having a long journey landing in Italy and struggling to cross the border since there is no border crossing from Italy to Slovenia thanks to COVID-19. Somehow she managed though and so we were the first persons to be here, had some nice chat where we discovered that we both are into climbing which turned out later she is much more and much better than I  :D. Well Sunday was not much on other than a nice welcome and some chats in the evening that’s when we decided to go climbing on the next day with the little scooter packed on the back of Jack.

… which we did…

this was climbing later with Phillip and Gemma

It was a really nice climb since it’s in the middle of a nice forest near an old small village and the weather was awesome. After the climb when we just arrived home with the little scooter (I didn’t name  it yet) there were some very strange people waiting for us :D (just kidding). And they were all from Sweden. There is a charity project called “European solidarity corps” they send people to all kind of charity projects and that’s the way the 5 persons from Sweden got here. They are called Agnes, Tim Kaspar, Olof and Phillip. They got their flight paid, the food cost paid and even paid some pocket money. It seems to be an interesting project if someone got interested you should have a look!

 

....It feels hard to write about everything since there is so much on every day this Blog entry took me 4 attempts to finish :D….

 

So we basically start our day at 7:45 o’clock with breakfast half an hour. Then 15 minutes to get ready for work and at 8.30 o’clock we start working or start driving to the place where we work. There is always one team of 2 people responsible to clean the common rooms and preparing break (tea and coffee maybe some cookies) at 11 o’clock and lunch at 1.30 pm.

Another team prepares breakfast half an hour earlier than everyone gets up. We manage kind of everything our self when it comes to what we need for the kitchen, who takes which shifts and does which work. Janez and Petra tell us what has to be done and Janez always is around working with us. Also there is a really nice funny Slovenian guy his name is Damian who is a well experienced worker who is often working with us :D he really likes folksmusic and so we often listen to Slovenian folksmusic in the radio catching him singing the songs together with the voice coming from the radio. He is such a nice and lovely guy and we are very happy to have him.

Since now we did all kinds of different tasks like smashing a lot of stones to get a smooth surface for a really beautiful looking stone path

Me working with Kasper and the two kids watching

Janez one of the two owners

just finishing of after leveling the sides of the path

finish...

Laying some stone tile for a place to have some chairs and tables…also some at the wall

Cutting wood with the chainsaw and stacking the pieces nice and neat

Of course there is always time to pet the animals around the working places

…this time we had to take down an old (asbestos) roof

Here we were cleaning an old overgrown paddock or better to say an old wine yard (it took us 2 days)

after two days that's the rewarding result!

Picking olives ….picking kakis

 

In the afternoons after cleaning the kitchen we have time outside till approximately 5 o’clock till the sun sets. Also every Sunday and Monday we are off work, so we can enjoy the nature around and sometimes make small trip to cities or beautiful places in nature (remember we are only allowed to travel in our municipal).

We had an awesome trip Piran:

 

 

Few little hikes around the house in the afternoon:

 

Had a nice hike to the next waterfall which is actual behind another municipal even in Italy :D glad we didn’t got checked by the police!!! Sad thing though we run often into old left backpacks, sleeping bags, sheets, towels and all different kind of cloths in this area. Since we are so close to the boarder to Italy there are many refugee tracks where they leave stuff behind so they seem to be people just “on a hike” with not many luggage before they enter the EU (that’s what they probably think). Well Slovenia is part of the EU but the social system in Slovenia is not as good as in other European countries so that’s why Italy, Germany, France, or Switzerland are more likely the countries refugees would travel to. ….but back to the waterfall hike (distant waterfall):

waterfall from far away :)

 

picture against the sun...hahaha can u tell :P

 

And if this waterfall is just so far in a distance for you guys :), we were doing a river/waterfall hike the other day which was amazing…..

no water at the biginning of the hike...

but soon it became difficult to walk without getting wet shoes :) so better to take them off sometimes...

the leaves made it look even more magical !!!

Difficult part through very nasty spiky bushes...

but the reward to see the next cascade was just always worth it :)

Hahaha and of course even it’s around 7 °C during the day and -1 °C during night, the water was freezing cold we even had ice at some places, we were hiking in kind of winter outfit….

…we had to go for a quick dip :D