Bonjour! After a long break, it´s me again ;). So much has happened in the last three weeks that I, unfortunately, haven’t found the time to give an update… But here it is.

We had to leave Karen and Tom early after a week (actually we were planning to stay a total of three weeks). During our week there, we painted doors, almost finished painting one of their rooms, cleaned out the chickens and the rabbit, and realized that we’re not big fans of soap operas.

Since our departure on Thursday, February 3rd, was quite spontaneous, we didn’t book our next accommodation until we were on the train. We spent the next three days in a beautiful bed and breakfast in Limoges. Unfortunately, we didn’t check the location of the accommodation, when we booked…

So we walked 50 minutes through Limoges – at least in the sunshine – with our luggage, much to the surprise of the host, who apparently never had guests walking from the train station to his place.

Around 2:30 p.m. we wanted to drop off our luggage – unannounced – because we somehow didn’t realize that the accommodation was run by a single person. Anyway, we arrived and rang the bell, whereupon a quite surprised man, who was only dressed in a towel, appeared. After all, check-in was planned for 5 p.m. It turned out that the host was about to take a bath and didn’t expect us. So we waited patiently and were finally able to leave our luggage and head back towards the city. After a little stroll through Limoges, we returned and after about 1.5 hours of waiting, we were finally able to move into our room.

Waiting was definitely worth it! The house, which has been owned by the current owner’s family for several generations and was renovated by him until the middle of last year, was very beautiful. So if you happen to end up in Limoges, I can only recommend the accommodation „Edouard & Louise – Chambres d’hôtes“. Now the only question left is, why you should visit this area. Honestly, I don’t know. The Limousin region (which seems to have officially been part of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region since 2015) is very beautiful (at least the part that we saw). But what is definitely true is that there really isn’t much going on. Limoges has a cute little center which is definitely worth checking out, but I probably wouldn’t go there just for visiting Limoges. But I can well imagine that the landscape is very beautiful for cycling and hiking. Right next to our accommodation there was a small, free animal park and a really great park with very beautiful nature. But there is certainly more to discover.

Our next stop was Lille, a city in the north of France, as we wanted to visit Donna and Nik again for 10 days afterwards. To break up the long journey a bit, we spent another night in Paris. We thought we would be clever to book the cheapest hostel with a kitchen instead of a hotel room (for a similar price but with a better rating), as we really wanted to cook. And yes, we cooked. But we didn’t use the beds… It was just totally dirty and we felt very uncomfortable. So we left after an hour… The best excuse I could come up with for our early departure was of course: „We have to leave Paris today, because of an emergency at home“. When the receptionist asked what the emergency was, I quickly replied that my grandmother was seriously ill. Not exactly my best improvisation, but whatever… I hope both of my grannies are doing well, by the way ;). Luckily our friends Clèlie and Priscille had time to host and safe us, otherwise we probably would have spent the night in the hostel with the bed bugs, as we later read in one of the reviews.

After a good night we went to Lille. We spent the night there in Laureline’s shared apartment and had a nice evening with her and her friends with pizza, very tasty lentil salad and very interesting and also somehow spooky travel stories. Since we were both pretty exhausted from the last few days, we decided to move on to Donna and Nik’s one evening earlier.

Traveling can also be very tiring. That’s another lesson I’ve learned on our journey so far. In fact, in my opinion, this realization is not that easy to come by, as I consider it an incredible privilege to have the opportunity to discover the world, or in our case Europe, so easily. However, I don’t think it’s wrong to acknowledge the negative aspects of traveling. In the last two months, I’ve realized how good it is to be able to stay in one place for a longer period of time and not have to pack your things again after a few days. Constantly moving from place A to B to C;D and F is really tiring with the luggage we’re traveling with. On the one hand, because you always carry all your belongings with you and constantly have to organize new accommodation, trains, etc., and on the other hand, because your head sometimes needs some time to process what you have experienced and to recharge your batteries.

And the 10 days with Donna and Nik were perfect for that. Since Donna had a knee surgery a few weeks ago and was therefore always at the rehabilitation center in the mornings, we didn’t have too much work to do. Basically we helped her around the house, we cleaned the house, helped cleaning their B&B room, helped with the cooking, when the weather got better we painted the house wall with limewash and otherwise we tried to distract Donna from her pain by playing cards and talking about different stuff. In our free time we read a lot, played Yahtzee, learned Italian and went on walks with the dog Icon.

Traveling with new friends to Luxembourg

After 10 days of gathering strength, we moved on again to my absolute favorite city (I hope you hear or read the irony ;)) Paris. During our very first stay in Paris, we met Lola and Maria through Host a Sister. The two are also 18 and are currently doing an au pair year in Strasbourg. Since we got along very well right away and they had the weekends free to travel, we had arranged to go on a trip to Luxembourg together. Actually we should still be with Karen and Tom, so we had booked the train from Paris to Luxembourg, which is why we now had to return there. In Paris we already met up with Maria, who had just been in Amsterdam for a week, and stayed the night with a family with two children who had contacted us on Couchsurfing. They lived in a small house in the backyard of another house and welcomed us warmly with delicious, home-cooked Japanese food. In the evening the three of us went out and were therefore very motivated to get up the next morning to catch our train to Luxembourg on time…

Arrived in Luxembourg, we waited for Lola and then went together to the accommodation, where we cooked together in the evening and fell into bed very tired. It’s really crazy that it feels like we’ve known them for years, even though we were complete strangers before our trip to Luxembourg.

On Saturday we explored the city with a free guided tour. Luxembourg is very interesting. Did you know, for example, that the entire state has only about 600,000 inhabitants, about half of them are foreigners and most of the foreigners Portuguese? For this reason most of the locals speak 5-6 languages: on the one hand, of course, Luxembourgish (yes, this small country has its own language), then German and French are usually added in primary school, later English and then often Spanish or Portuguese. It is also interesting that Luxembourg was once much larger, but had to give up many of its areas and it now only takes about 1.5 hours by car from north to south.

The capital Luxembourg is definitely worth seeing. Although it is (like every big city) quite expensive, public transport is free and the city is easy to visit on foot and by bus. The free tours, which are carried out by locals for a tip, are also highly recommended.

A surprise visit at home

After an eventful weekend in Luxembourg, our original plan was to spend the week with Lola and Maria in their host families in Strasbourg. Both Lina and I were longing for our families, which is why we only stayed one night with Lola’s host family and went home on Monday evening. After a 3-hour stay in Stuttgart in the middle of the night and a 6-hour almost sleepless train ride, my walk home from the train station on Tuesday morning was surprisingly very euphoric. My mom and my siblings had no idea about my return, they still thought we would meet in Nuremberg on Thursday. So my mom was all even happier when I just sat on the sofa when they came back from fishing ;).

The days at home were really nice, except that I got a cold on Thursday and therefore couldn’t go to Regensburg to visit our friends Hannah and Matti on Friday as planned, but stayed at home until this morning. But now I’m feeling better and I’m on the train to Graz, where I’ll meet up with Lina again and we’ll visit Jan and Emily (my dad’s cousin and his girlfriend).

After Graz, we want to meet up again with Lola and Maria in Venice at the weekend, before we go to a vineyard for our first workaway in Italy on Monday, which I’m looking forward to, but I’m also a bit nervous about the very hard work that has been announced ;)).

So that’s it from me again! See you!