It’s been a few weeks since we last wrote anything here, so this entry may read a little bit more like a diary than some of our other blogs. Then, by the end of it, all you interested people will know what we’ve been up to, what we’re currently doing and a little outline of our onward plan!
So, as we said at the end of our last blog, we drove to Slovenia. We found a really lovely spot to park up for a couple of days before we navigated our way to the next work project. We’re getting bettter at finding free parking/camping as we go along, which we’ve decided it a really useful skill to hone since the hobo life is not one full of disposable income. We use a handy app for this most of the time, called Campercontact for anyone that’s interested. After some failed attempts at using this to find parking, here’s our tip for fellow campers/van dwellers that might want to give it a go: check the review sections of any potential parking spot. If there are no reviews from the past year/few months, chances are the place doesn’t exist any more, keep on searching! Likewise, if there’s a contact number offered, it’s always worth trying that, at least to see if the number is still in service.
Anyway! This time the app found us a cracking spot and we enjoyed some relaxation. Then, undertook the journey into the Slovenian wine country (read: extremely small roads, steep hills, hairpin bends and vertical drops along the sides. One of us did not manage to keep her eyes open for the whole drive) to arrive at our hosts’ place. We found this job using Work Away, which specialises in work-for-food arrangements for people travelling around on a budget. Hosts write a description about themselves and the work they can offer, and potential volunteers can search by country and see if there is something appealing. There is every kind of work advertised here, from dog-sitting to construction, so with a bit of time taken you can do some research and find a project to suit.
The work here was physically challenging to say the least. We’re both used to hard work, but the terrain of the vineyards and temperatures above 35 degrees made for tough conditions! With a lot of effort and many litres of sweat lost, we were able to do a huge amount of land-clearing work here that was desperately needed to turn a bit of a waste land back into a useable garden again (well, useable if you enjoy walking around an incredibly steep hill… which the humans didn’t really seem to but there were 6 dogs that appreciated it!). It was a two week effort, after which we bid farewell to the project and decided to return to Austria a little earlier than originally planned. 
On the journey back, we made what was possibly the best diversion of our trip/lives so far and headed to a tiny village called Thal bei Graz to visit the most important museum in all of Austria – Arnie’s childhood home! It’s impossible to describe how epic this was, so suffice to say that you should all just go there. 
September is the month we have been waiting for. It is the time of reckoning for our beloved home, as the MOT is due. But with some time to kill before then, we lined up some more work to do! By fortune, after sending out a couple of messages and not really expecting to find a ‘proper project’ that we could sink our teeth into for 2-3 weeks, we managed to land exactly that. An old friend had some rennovation work planned and a contractor that had just cancelled on her, so we were able to step in and take the job!
We were tasked with the re-painting of one room of a huge, old house – all walls, plus indoor and outdoor windows – with a side project of turning a massive old set of doors into a shabby/chic table. We’ve had our own private field in which to park up and turn into our current home and generally feel like we totally landed on our feet after changing plans a bit last minute. Everything worked out pretty perfectly – and we can now add ‘painters and decorators’ to our CVs. And ‘door rennovators’? ‘Table-makers’? ‘Furniture restorers’? Maybe we’ll stick with ‘Jack-of-all-trades’.
We’ve a few more jobs lined up in Austria, plus THE MOT as previously mentioned. Perhaps the next blog will be an update on the state of our van… please keep all your fingers crossed for us and send our old timer all your best thoughts for smooth running, minimal rust and no total breakdowns. And of course, follow our Instagram feed for little updates in the meantime!