A life of inspiration, hard work, and uncertainty

Hello everyone! A little message from the Bergueda Campsite again.

The weeks here seem to fly by and yet at the same time they’re so jam-packed that it feels like months ago since I (Jochem) wrote our last post. They’ve been amazing weeks and emotional weeks, we feel like we are in a rollercoaster with extremely high highs and depressingly low lows.

Lows & highs

Yes, you read that right. Lows! You thought we were living the dream?

While we wouldn’t trade where we are and what we are doing for anything else in the world, it’s a tough life too at times. We have zero economic certainty, as Alba will leave her job at the end of this month and we have no idea whether I will get a contract renewal at the end of September. Thus, we might both be jobless soon.

Then there’s the price of freedom. We have the whole world open to us right now. Don’t like where we are? We move! We have nothing binding us to any place at the moment. Sounds amazing? Most of the time it is. However, it also means that any idea or decision is open to discussion. Should we stay? Should we go?

Making plans with anyone or for anything is difficult. And trust me, it’s not always great for your relationship either: you constantly reassess whether you’re still aligned with each other’s hopes and dreams.

Fortunately – these kinds of issues have simple solutions. Keep on reading to find out more!

And, these low moments occur much less frequently than the high ones.

When we ride these highs together, does it feel great! From a stargazing astronomy night high up in the mountains, to going for drinks and a movie down in Barcelona. The variation and fun we are having these last few weeks as well as all the hours we’re putting into our jobs and our future plans are extremely fulfilling.

I’m slowly getting used to life here. The (semi-)remoteness, Spanish and Catalan, my new job, the nature…

It’s why I am so certain of this next step.

A New Wind: Settling in Bergueda (for now…)

We’ve been living in this caravan for just over six months now. And while we sincerely enjoy a lot of it, the idea of it was always that it would give us the flexibility to roam around while we could look for a location to realise our Mission (wow, just added this hyperlink and saw that I wrote this almost a year ago)!

However, we roamed, we explored, and there’s a reason why we got stuck here…

…No, it’s not just because our car can’t pull the caravan through these mountains! 😉

It’s because of all the reasons I mentioned before. The nature, the tranquility, the climate, the people… We want to try – for a moment – to see if we can realise our project here.

Something just came on our path. We were quite happy to go and see a rental house that we heard of through some new friendly connections here in the area. Personally I wasn’t very interested initially: we’re looking to buy, not to rent, I thought. Alba went to see it alone as I was very busy with work, and came back very happy. And hey, she convinced me to check it out as well.

The place isn’t very big and quite outdated: single pane windows without central heating while sitting at around 1200 meters above sea level… “Fun” winters ensured!

However, it is an easy way for us to test whether we really want to buy something here (experience winter and doing business!), make some more connections, and try out some of the many business ideas we have without requiring us to immediately invest all our savings. The place is small and not really well done, but it comes with furniture and a big (4 hectare) terrain of fields and forest that we are allowed to exploit commercially. So yes, I really like the idea now!

We signed the rental contract Monday last week and are moving in…
… tomorrow, Friday 18th of August!

Meet Cal Sort:

This house is called Cal Sort, which roughly translates to “Lucky House”. It’s an old building from 1870, about 5 minutes driving/cycling from the town of Vallcebre (pop. ±200) or about 15 minutes from our current campsite. So, not very far from us but still quite remote compared to what we could’ve ever found in the Netherlands!

Although it’s not like we bought anything yet, it still feels like a big step. We are – at least temporarily – leaving this digital nomad life behind us to try to live here.

Someone from the town – Vallcebre – is helping us to drag the caravan up the last few hundred meters, because there’s no way our car would pull that caravan up a dirt road. Believe me, we’ve tried (and failed!) before! 🙂

Our plan is to rent out the caravan for now via platforms like Airbnb, though we’d have to check permits first and make it look a little cosier as well. Hopefully we can start this process sooner rather than later!

And then, yeah, I guess this is my last blog post living in a caravan for now. Who knows what the future brings: will we stay just the winter, or longer? Will we be able to make this area our home? Or will we be reporting from the caravan again from some new place next year?

I’ll make sure you’ll read all about it here!