BOA ANNO!
Given I’ve been going through a lot of images the past couple of weekends (more on that later), and this post is not about any particular trip we’ve taken, so there aren’t any images to “show,” I decided to grab an image from each of the past few years just to give you a periodic visual break from words.
Ann and I are hoping that 2022 will be the first “normal” year we have here in Portugal. Yes, I know that’s the pony boy in me talking (if you don’t know my “pony boy” joke, ask me the next time you see me), but Europe is generally doing a better job of figuring out what the new normal needs to be like for life to resemble “normal.” In that case, it means traveling in our rig and photographing, all the while socially distancing and wearing masks when around others. Folks here (particularly in Portugal) are much better than in the US about accepting those types of restrictions, so hopefully the continent can keep on moving forward on that front.
One of the things that has been in the works these past few months is a new web site. I’ve referred to it, but haven’t said much about it so now is the time to put us on the hook. It’s coming, I promise. Not only is it a revamp of the site to make it more contemporary in its appearance, we’ve definitely updated the images to include many from the past few years (other than the blog posts, we’d been a bit negligent in that respect). There will be a lot more images organized in a lot of different ways for you to see what type of photographs Ann and I have been making. We think you’ll enjoy exploring the site when it goes live.
Ann’s doing the heavy lifting with the website (of course). I’m up to my 2021 images and the Madeira trip (which I still have a hard time looking at, nonetheless decide which ones to develop), and I have a bit of writing to do for the site. Then we’ll have to give it a good run-through before it goes lives, but you’ll hear about it when its ready! With any luck, that won’t be too long from now, because we’ve got a lot that’s supposed to happen this year.
The obvious big event for 2022 is the conclusion of the 2-year wait for the Bimobil. Not only was it twice as long as our wait to pick up Beast from Sportsmobile, the wait was just as grueling. We are ready to start traveling and photographing the way we prefer. Pick-up is still scheduled for the two week period from the last week in February to the first week in March.
But before that happens, we’ll have a few bureaucratic hoops to jump through. We need to (finally) get our Portuguese drivers licenses approved. That’s been a months-long process that is a lesson in patience. It also means that, when the time is right, we’ll have to try to get our vehicle license and registration done . . . hopefully before pickup, if not, then after pickup. Once the vehicle is completed and certified by the German DMV, we’ve got to walk that paperwork through the Portugal DMV to actually register our vehicle and get our tags. Otherwise, we’ll be stuck with temporary German tags that will require us to take the short way home. As you will see, our plan does not include a mad dash back to Portugal to register the bimobil.
Before-hand, we get to plan a trip from Oberframmern, Germany, just to the east of Munich, to Braga, Portugal. A long trip. The rough game plan is to head over to the Black Forest in Germany for a few days to break the vehicle in and to be close enough to bimobil to return if we need to in the event something isn’t quite right. Then we’re going to take a fairly slow and winding route through southern France. I’d originally not thought much about France, but Ann and I have seen a few videos about different areas that have led us to think otherwise. So a big part of the return trip will be taking our time exploring France. Of course we also have to go through Spain and we have a few locations lined up there (in the north) that we want to photograph as well. Braga is just a hop-skip-and-a-jump from Galicia, Spain. Now, we have to dig into the details of the trip to figure out places we want to photograph, where can we camp/park near those locations, what routes we want to take and, this is a big variable, will we have to plan for COVID testing before crossing borders. My hope is that (except for the ever-evolving COVID situation) is that it’s not much more complicated than any of the big US trips we’ve planned before.
Naturally, the COVID situation is something we’ll have to keep our eyes on and carefully track. I’m hoping that the EU will continue its practice of allowing vaccinated EU citizens/residents to cross borders under “similar” standards shared by each of the member states. That should mean relatively free movement with some restrictions and hurdles. Generally, we’ll have to be vaccinated (we are, with our EU digital certificates as proof, and we’re also boosted, with proof of that as well), but may still need to test to cross a border. Planning wise, that will mean getting near the border, finding a pharmacy and hanging around a day or so (gotta find a good location for photography) for test results before crossing the border. A bit of extra cost, a bit of route and time planning, but no real big deal (there’s that pony boy speaking again).
Before we head out, we’re also planning to ship a pallet of “stuff” to bimobil for us to be able to actually live in the vehicle for the 3 or so weeks we want to take on the way back to Portugal. Although most of the hard-core off road stuff will remain at home, there is still a base set of tools we should have with us, bedding, kitchen stuff, first aid gear and minimal recovery gear (knowing me, if I see a dirt road I can go down . . . I may not be able to help myself) that will allow us to actually live out of the bimobil during the trip. So we have to organize that and decide what we need to ship and what we’ll keep at home and add when we actually get back home in Braga.
The other big event we know about, for sure, is a long needed trip back to the US. I hope not to jinx things, but right now we’re looking at April-May for quite a few weeks. It’s been way too long and we really do need to visit family and friends. I’ll probably have to work while I’m back, but if that means we can be in the US longer, I’ll be glad to do it. We’re restricted to that time frame because we have to be back by June for a couple of reasons.
Hopefully in 2022 we will see our first visitors. When we planned our move way back in 2019-20 everyone kept asking, “When can I come visit?” Well, after being here year and a half, the answer is nobody. Not that people didn’t try. COVID put a nix to hard plans by my buddy John from Texas and Mark, and probably discouraged a few others from even considering a trip. Mark is hoping for a March rescheduling (fingers crossed that we’ll be back from our bimobil pick-up trip), and Korenza and Soleis are planning a short stay (as part of a grander Europe trip) in June (thus the reason we need to be back by June). Anyone else want to schedule a stay at Casa Terrell?
In early July, Ann and I need to renew our residency permits. It should be a mere formality, but . . . hopefully it is.
This summer we hope to be making a lot of weekend trips. Many smaller towns have city parking areas where folks can spend the night for free, and we plan on taking full advantage of that. With any luck, that will give us the opportunity to make many wonderful images we can share on the new website. We’re also hoping that COVID settles into a pattern where it dies down for the summer, so we’re not constantly jumping through hoops if we want to have dinner at a restaurant, or we want to hop across the border into Spain. If it doesn’t, we’re willing to stay away from people (isn’t that what we do anyway), as long as we can get out and about. Hopefully, Portugal can avoid having to go into full lock down. All indications is that everyone is willing to do what it takes not to go through that again!
The big unanswered question, and the one likely to be the topic of discussion on many of our morning walks, is what will we be doing in the fall. Once we pick up our bimobil, we are determined to resume our longer spring and fall trips. Ann and I already have a long list of locations we want to see in Europe. That list continues to grow. The question is which will be the first location we plan a trip to? My money would be on a trip to Norway. Then again, there is Scotland, or perhaps a trip to Italy (which would give us another shot at southern France). Face it, it’s having these types of dilemmas that made us decide to move to Europe! Now if we can get COVID to comply.
As you can tell, 2020 stands to be a busy and exciting year for us. That’s the way we had planned it, even before COVID. We knew from the get-go that we were going to have to wait awhile before we would have a vehicle that would let us explore as we like to do. We just hadn’t planned on COVID messing things up in the interim, which kept folks from visiting us and helped put a squash to us traveling around much to do the first round of scouting out great photography locations Portugal. As for the latter, I guess we’ll just have to do that in the bimobil!
With that, we wish everyone a very healthy and exciting new year. Boa anno!