Day No. 198 - Back to the roots - Back to Cologne

There is relatively little to report from today. We wake up with mixed feelings. This is the last day of a long journey, our journey to happiness. - Exactly 198 days Torgit and I are now on the road with our faithful companion Hector, our VW T5 California. - We started in Cologne, it went to the Netherlands 🇳🇱, via Belgium 🇧🇪, France 🇫🇷 , Spain 🇪🇸 , Portugal 🇵🇹 , again Spain 🇪🇸 , France 🇫🇷, finally back to Germany 🇩🇪 - We had many wonderful moments, moments of happiness 🍀, we have experienced challenges. But in the end, did we find what we were looking for? - Have we found our happiness?

Yes, yes and yes again! - The trip has changed us, we are no longer the same. But we are very, very happy. - We have found happiness in many different places. Mostly where we didn't expect it. Most of all in ourselves. Our tips for the GLÜCKsMUSKEL have been confirmed. - That's why we want to keep training it. 

Is this now the end of our journey? - No, certainly not. Our journey is that of a sailor. We are now spending some time in our home port of Cologne. We all have other tasks now. Now it is time to slow down. We will make the best of it. But one way or another, we will be back on the road by the beginning of August at the latest. Because for us is certain. - After this trip, nothing will be the same. - We are part of the WAGENVOLK.

Today is not every day. We'll be back, no question.

Torgit: I'm back here in Cologne in our bunker. Our subtenants move out tomorrow, then we are alone again. Alone on 169sqm and a big garden in Cologne's Südstadt. And it all feels very wrong. I have not yet arrived in the here and now. The switch from 8sqm to 169sqm is strangely harder for me than the other way around. My head is still on the beach of Benirras, I hear the drums to the sunset. And I have such a longing. I want to go there again and just be happy.

Instead, here I am, opening the door to the office and starting to catch up on 7 months. I am facing our current tasks and challenges. We're dissolving our apartment in the coming weeks and moving all the way into the van. Into the new SpaceCamper that we hope to get in a few weeks. All of our belongings need to be photographed and sold on Ebay, as we want to store as little as possible. Other than a few personal items, everything is to go. Selling, of course, is not easy given the C crisis. Who's in the mood to buy now? Who's going to buy a car they can't register? But that doesn't change our plans. We will lose a lot of money. But what does money mean compared to the happiness we experienced on our trip? This was the happiest winter of my life.