Like tumbling around in a washing machine

Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Wed 1 Jul 2015 00:39
Where to start?
Well lets do it backwards. We are in Katoomba up in the Blue Mountains. No ocean as far as the eyes can see. Not that we hate the ocean at all, it is more of a change.
Yesterday we came up here after driving through Sydney. First tourist attraction was the three systers, a great canyon with some "statues" made of erosion. Suddenly we were like other tourists, swarming around,
but we had no selfie stick. That is obviously the latest thing to carry with you on a journey. Take a picture of yourself in front of everything, or like a Chinese girl did, she was talking into her phone smiling and making all kinds of highs and cheers, all by herself. Finally we have the ultimate tool for narcissism. Maybe we should brand the "Narcistick".
As we are telling the story backwards we celebrated Erikas birthday here in Katoomba in the Campervan. To try to hide anything here is a joke. We have now moved from a 45 foot ship to a 15 foot van. Andreas calls it a transformer.
He is impressed by the ways it can transform from a dining "room" to a 4 bed bedroom, to a car...
It is cramped and we were far to optimistic about how many things we could bring along...
More about it later...
The night before yesterday we had moved into the van, totally exhausted we try to fit in to the van with millions of things that needed to be packed away. Time was 7 at night, totally dark and we were all hungry.
Well with a car we had new possibilities, lets drive to somewhere to eat! Of all places we ended up at Mac Donalds,
with a lot of hesitation we entered the place and as they had no vegetarian burger we settled for a fish burger.
No wonder they are doing so badly, that meal was the worse you can think of,
the buns were heated in the microwave until they were like some over ripe mushroom,
in there they had thrown a micro wave heated fish and some tartar-sauce, they said it was,
it could be tooth paste or shaving cream, who knows. The french fries were the same as usual, they are good and the coke-fine.
It was to late to go to a camping ground, the one closest we had called said we had to be there before 7pm.
So we used the lights at the parking lot by Mac Donalds to get everything out and start all over to pack the van so we could sleep.
It was close to 3-4 degrees, dark, and we just wanted to go to bed...
Finally prepared we went to the parking lot by the marina as we knew there was a toilet-
parked and went to sleep. The body akin after all the clean up and carrying.
Before that the day was a frustration, it started well with Jens picking me up and drove me to Juce were we would pick up the camper van,
all booked and ready close to the airport on the other side of Sidney.
He dropped me off and when I came in the room was full of people waiting and only two behind the desk.
Not only that they had to go out and go through every car with every renter. It took a 2 hour wait to get the car.
Once in the van, drive out on the left hand side and used the iphone as GPS to find the way (downloaded Navigon for AUS),
to a Brompton dealer who had a box for my bike so we can send it by air.
Found the place downtown Sydney, got to see the traffic for sure, it was not forgiving...
Out of the place, and next towards the boat were I knew Ellinor was struggling with getting the last things out and cleaned the rest of the boat.
Now the GPS did not make it or I misunderstood some guidance, but suddenly I was out of Sydney on the west side of it, another extra hour to drive!
Finally made it and found Ellinor far behind, things had not worked out so well for her either. We had to get out of the marina before 4 and we had to get the van out of the marina before 5 and we had to check in on the camping ground before 7.
It was almost panic (well I was, Ellinor is never).
Finally we got the van out, the boat out and David from DBY, the boat agency came out and picked us up from the mooring were we left Salsa in the dark. There was no time for any sentimental afterthoughts...
Now our life is in 27 boxes waiting t be shipped to Sweden- the rest should fit to be checked in by air...

So what is happing right now?
Well the fridge in the camper van does not work so we are waiting by a workshop for auto electrics and the electrician is waiting for authority from Juce to try to fix it...
There seem to be no end to challenges, and even if I do not have to fix them myself now, we have to wait....
No complains, we are privileged!