Tag Archives: France

Trucking Across Europe

Last month we went on a road trip across Europe – not quite what we’re used to, but the idea was to be in Poznan for the new truck to be moved from the truck factory to the fitting-out shop. It also happened to coincide with Vegan Summerfest in Berlin, the 47th IVU Vegfest, and having guests to try out the whole overland concept on – albeit in Vanya (my rather old Mercedes Sprinter campervan) rather than Katy, the new truck. So here’s what happened when Me, Mikey, Vanya and Charley went East…

The Road to Poznan

We set out from the South of France in the rain…so there’s no photos of our drive through the Massif Central. There were some beautiful views, if only we could have seen them. The teenagers played distracting word games which I soon opted out of to avoid driving into the back of trucks. It rained. They got to choose the music – from the collection of CDs I provided 😉 We drove through clouds and Vanya passed 170,000 miles on the clock – with a working turbo since I got the actuator replaced a couple of days before we headed off, which was nice, and made hills possible. We stopped at a boulangerie and got soaked crossing the road with a surprisingly dense loaf of bread. But in the evening we passed Chamonix and crossed out of France into Switzerland and headed for the campsite we stopped at on night 2 of our first Cape Town adventure. Then we went to one that actually had food nearby and ate some good pizza before sleep. It was a bit nicer in the morning, so we took a train trip with Vanya under the Furka Pass.

I always like driving through the alps, though Vanya’s power steering was making clicking noises and getting a bit heavy on the hairpins, so in some ways it was a relief when we hit the autobahns and began a long afternoon of driving til I’d had enough in the general direction of Leipzig. We didn’t get there, but did find a nice random bit of picturesque Germany to camp in in time for beer, chips and salad – that old time vegan fallback! It was even prettier in the morning.

The original plan had been to take another day before getting to Poznan, but a saga involving a pizza oven not being delivered from Portugal because apparently French logistics companies can’t dial non-French mobile phone numbers (while their Portuguese office has no such trouble) intervened. This has nothing to do with the truck – sorry, we are not having a pizza oven on board! 😀 Anyway, we were going to go via Prague but were delayed by non-delivery of oven, so headed straight to the truck factory in Poznan. The original plan was that the box would be done and the truck would be at the outfitters. The plan by the time we arrived was that the box would be done, mounted on the truck and I could have a look around it and get some cool photos. As you can see…things turned out to be not so advanced, and it took some persuasion for me to be allowed to even see the box. But at least Mikey got to play truck driver…

We did get some photos of the box, and since then they have finished it, added the rear-wheel carrier and put it all together, but I am glad we still had Berlin to visit or it would have been a very, very long pointless journey. As I write, the truck is due to be moved to the aircon guy to have the mechanicals fitted to the engine, so its still not at the fitting out stage.

Anyway, after an hour or so at Plandex we were free to do whatever we wanted so headed towards Berlin on the lookout for a campsite. More vegan pizza ensued, followed by a visit to a micro-brewery with no beer – and no customers. These things could be connected, but the campsite by the lake also had a bar so I was OK. Next morning we headed to Berlin for Vegan Summerfest / IVU Vegfest!

Vegfest / Vegan Summerfest Berlin

I’ve been to Berlin once before – in 1990, by coach from London just after the wall came down for ‘The Wall’ concert staged on the site of the Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate. That was also the last time I knowingly ate meat (everything was closed and only one place would serve us anything, which was their lunchtime leftovers). It was good to be back then, visiting one of Europe’s biggest vegan events and seeing the huge growth of vegan choices. It was also great to eat all sorts of things that weren’t pizza, chips and salad for a few days! Oh and of course being in Germany the beer was good, and vegan! Vegan Summerfest took over Alexanderplatz for the weekend and was well attended (too well in some cases as the queues for the food stalls were very long!).

Before leaving Berlin, we took a vegan tour of the city organised by our hosts ProVeg International. For me, visiting the old Stasi remand prison was a little creepy, bringing my 2 visits to the city full circle – history is not that old. Or maybe I am! 🙂

It was great to meet up with some old friends and make new ones (this was my second IVU Vegfest after Nairobi last year). We also had some good conversations with people from vegan organisations around the world. Fingers crossed we’ll have some news soon about a launch event for the Vegan Without Frontiers first Expedition!

Base Camp

It has been a fairly slow week – while the trip has officially begun, it has so far been more of a personal preparation for the real adventure. The house in Chippenham has been emptied and cleaned since this time round I’m selling up and moving on. Whilst lots of accumulated ‘stuff’ has been freecycled and recycled, there’s still a big pile of boxes and crates filling half the house here in St Michel, and the week has been spent sorting out the things I’ll need on the road for the next few months.

It was also a slow journey down from Le Havre – and not without incident! Having bought a shiny new set of door mirrors for Troopy, one of them just fell off back in the UK on my way down to Wales for a friend’s birthday camping trip. The second mirror made it as far as Clermont Ferrand before it too succumbed to the wind and snapped off – but thanks to the first incident I had already ordered a new (stronger) pair which were delivered here at ‘base camp’. Driving Troopy with no rear view is fine in the middle of the Sahara, but I wouldn’t fancy it on European motorways or negotiating Casablanca! Fingers crossed for the replacements.

Troopy at 'Base Camp'
Troopy at ‘Base Camp’

Winter is still hanging on here on the Causse du Larzac – some days it wins and I’m very glad of the log fire, some days the sunshine and early flowers remind me of years past when we came to enjoy the Spring in the space and peace of this unique landscape. Part of me just wants to stay here and quietly pass the time, away from the rest of the world. But I have another journey ahead, and even here it is not possible to disconnect from the global human network – for better or worse what we do each day now has an impact around the world. On this journey, I hope to find many positives but in honesty fear that the negative effects of human activity might be more than I expect. Perhaps the fact that I’m writing this on a day that the grey skies are winning affects my mood – I am definitely looking forward to a warmer climate further South!

Luxuries of Home
Luxuries of Home

So on Tuesday I’ll be leaving behind familiar surroundings and heading for Barcelona with the aim of getting some visas – another sort of familiarity from the last trip – and easing my way into the routine whilst still in Europe. On Friday, Pete will be flying in to Almeria before we make the crossing to Melilla and the real adventure begins. Whilst looking forward to the heat of the Sahara, it is going to be a while yet – and I just saw a friend’s photographs on Facebook from last week’s cycling tour in Morocco – there’s lots of snow in the Atlas mountains and rain is forecast lower down. Brrr…Troopy is not fitted with a log fire!

Vegan meals: Europe

The biggest misconception about vegan travel is that as a vegan you won’t find anything to eat in a foreign country and therefore starve. Vegan Without Frontiers is desperately fighting that misconception by traveling, eating out or in, and not starving. I think it is time we wrote a post about food, seeing as how that is one of the main concepts associated with veganism. We have just left the European continent and it is our third day in Turkey. It is about time to reflect upon our meals that we have been having for the past month.

The luxury of Tibits being in Switzerland is that we had some!
The luxury of Tibits being in Switzerland is that we had some!

Firstly let me start with eating out because that is usually the biggest “problem”. Having left the comforts of London, we stopped in France for about a week, then we drove through Switzerland into Italy. All of those places had easy access to “comfort” food: pizza sans fromage (without cheese). Many people think of pizza as a gooey cheesy meat platter on thin crust, but go to even the smallest restaurant that serves pizza and politely ask for a vegetarian pizza without cheese and they will serve it to you with tomato sauce and grilled (or sadly canned) vegetables. The same goes for pasta: there are four options, either spaghetti aglio olio e peperoncino, spaghetti all’arrabiata, spaghetti carrettiera, or just spaghetti with tomato sauce and no cheese or meat.

Pizza okay, pasta had some meaty flakes for some reason
Pizza okay, pasta had some meaty flakes for some reason

With pizza we have had more luck, even though sometimes we get the puzzled questions “why no cheese” or the downright dirty look of “you don’t know what you are missing out” from waiters. Spaghetti was a different story, sometimes we got a delicious plate of slightly spicy deliciously saucy pasta, and sometimes we had problems. In a restaurant at one campsite we asked for a plate of oily spicy spaghetti, and we got badly cooked pale plate of pasta with oil and garlic, and a few flecks of meat, probably from another cooked meal or an unwashed pan. Right before crossing into Albania from Montenegro, Jonathan got a plate of spaghetti with bacon pieces on top. He didn’t even touch it, and when the waiter asked why, we explained that we are “vegetarian”. The waiter was confused, because he thought the meal was vegetarian, but then as we pointed out the bacon he just shrugged. Clearly the reaction there was “why wouldn’t you eat this pasta with extra bits” not “I gave them a meal they didn’t want even after being asked if there was anything else in the pasta”. The whole notion that people just don’t eat certain things and rely on menu descriptions for details on listed items simply doesn’t come across once you leave the comforts of London. We tried a different approach as well, by asking the waiters what exactly is in certain foods. Most of the time this has helped a lot and worked in our favor, but one time it didn’t.

Ljubljana camp "salad"
Ljubljana camp “salad”

When we camped outside Ljubljana, and went to eat lunch at the camp restaurant, there wasn’t much on the menu that we could have. There was a salad of vegetables from this season, so I asked the waiter whether it had anything else in it. She shook her head, and told us it was only vegetables. I made double-sure: “No cheese?”. She said “No cheese!”. What came out was a bowl of soggy vegetables covered in a creamy sauce. I half-heartedly tried to take out the creamy bits but gave up. When the waiter came to clear the table, I pointed out that I don’t eat “creamy things” and she apologized but again, no other reaction. Maybe I am slightly spoiled by America, where if you barely touch your dish, the waiter will ask if it can be replaced. Here they just shrug and probably put you down as a weirdo. And by “here” I mean outside of London, Chicago or Prague, the three places I know so well.

Random Italian restaurant with a custom meal for us
Random Italian restaurant with a custom meal for us

As we moved further, and travelled through Greece, we discovered there are more menu options for vegans, despite the actual menus being rarely translated into English (or any language comprehensible to us). While we were in Italy, we stopped at a random place for lunch, and speaking no Italian managed to get ourselves a custom meal of potatoes and beans, grilled vegetables and a massive bowl of salad. Similar things started happening recently: a staple for eating out now is a salad, and to go with it some vegetables, either grilled, or stuffed with rice, and once in a while French fries, which are getting less fried and more oven-baked as we move further away from western Europe. Once we had a bizarre meal consisting of an enormous plate of olives and another enormous plate of salad, and even though the olives were good, it put us off olives for a while.

Standard meal out
Standard meal out

The main thing is not to forget to eat regularly, so snacks are becoming more and more important. We have in the fridge hazelnuts and chocolate, and in the front seat we have random snacks we buy at gas stations, and sweets. Still, the more you travel into unknown lands, the less important “meals” have become. I am not going to lie, sometimes we skip breakfast, sometimes we skip lunch, and once in a while, if we drive a long way in the evening and camp very late, our “dinner” ends up being beer and conversation. When you are that tired, having driven a long distance on an empty stomach, sweating profusely and feeling really hot, once you camp for the night, all you want is a cold drink and a relaxed chat in the crappy outside chairs we bought and keep carrying around. After that it’s bed time and hopes of a hearty breakfast, which never follows anyway.

One of our many snacks, on a train to Florence
One of our many snacks, on a train to Florence

The easiest way to stay vegan and enjoy your food is to cook all of the meals yourself. We have been cooking a lot, and in some countries (where language is more of a barrier than other places, where camping wild is a better option than anything else) we have only eaten “home”-cooked meals.

Fried rice with cabbage, cold leftovers for lunch
Fried rice with cabbage, cold leftovers for lunch

We started out nicely in the south of France: barbecued vegetables and local wine! But as we moved along, we seem to be juggling spaghetti days with couscous or rice days and then once in a while something weird like potatoes or packet soup. It is quite easy to cook in the car, we have a fridge, stored food and spices, and a cooker. The problem is, sometimes we really are too tired, or sometimes the vegetables (usually mushrooms) go off too quickly, so if we end up buying mushrooms, we have to eat them within about two days. Cabbage, as we have discovered, lasts forever in the fridge, even when it has been cut. Jonathan makes very good spaghetti of all sorts, mostly olive oil, tomato and chilly related. I make whatever is left in the fridge, or whatever I crave at that particular moment, soup or salad or fried rice.

Lunch after a swim: bread, marmite, ajvar, veggies and fruit
Lunch after a swim: bread, marmite, ajvar, veggies and fruit

We try and not eat out too much, but sometimes driving all day we end up having to eat out or having to go “raw vegan” just off the main road. Our “raw vegan” usually means cut up vegetables, bread and something to go on the bread, such as Marmite, Ajvar or olive paste. And don’t forget all of the ripe peaches, cherries and watermelon we have been eating at certain times as well.

Ajvar, salad, bread
Ajvar, salad, bread

It is in people’s nature to think that a country’s cuisine is mostly filled with meat, fish and dairy products. Sadly, so far it does seem to be the case. However, that doesn’t mean you cannot enjoy the tasty wonders of certain places, because I have been enjoying olives and massive juicy tomatoes all throughout Europe, so telling vegans that traveling for us is hard because we will certainly starve is just not true in any shape or form. Ask questions and be creative is my advice.

Today's meal: potato warm salad, lettuce radish cold salad
Today’s meal: potato warm salad, lettuce radish cold salad