First trip to the Alps in the van

Lads, get a van!!. That's all I can say. There is something unique about having the ability to live off the grid for a few days while you go into the wilderness looking for adventure.

We bought a van recently and didn't have much time to do anything to it before we took it out on this trip. We brought everything we needed, a table, gas stove, sleeping bags, cutlery, stuff like that and packed it away neatly in the back. The plan was to sleep on the floor of the van and cook on the table outside. Overall everything worked out well.

We started in Berlin after work and made our way south, stopping just past Nuremberg for the first night's sleep. The next day we found ourselves right at the bottom of Germany, in a place called Berchtesgaden. We managed to hike Wanderung-zur-halsalm.

From there, we went into the heart of Austria and hiked what turned out to be the best hike on the trip in Wandervorschlag Rosennock. The views from the top of this mountain were amazing.

We chose northern Italy for the next destination and made our way there. As soon as you cross the border you can feel the difference. For one thing, their coffee and olives are way better. Seriously, in Austra and Germany, you would pay 3.50 for a cappuccino that could have been made by Satan himself. In Italy, you would pay 2 euro for a cappuccino that could have been made by Jesus himself. The olives also were amazing. Go into a Lidl and by some of the olives. Absolutely delicious. Also, the climate changed as soon as we got passed the Alps. It felt like it was still summer there.

By this stage in the trip, we realised that we needed a few extra things so we made our way to Udine to pick up a few things. This was prob the worst part of the trip. Driving into cities is always not the best but we needed to do it.

We decided to stay in northern Italy and one issue we had was that we didn't have access to a toilet or shower. This was turning into a big issue. One evening we were in a free camping platz in northern Italy, a mountain to our back, a river just in front of us and at either side a lot of camper vans. There was nowhere to go to the bathroom in peace. This was annoying.

While we were in Northern Italy though, we hiked monte-malvueric-basso](https://www.ogham-stone.com/route/monte-malvueric-basso).

All during the trip, we kept an eye on the weather and we knew we didn't have too much time left. There was a big storm coming in the next few days so we felt like slowly making our way back to Berlin. For this reason, we decided to hit up Austria for 2 more hikes.

One of the stupidest things I did on this trip, if not this year, happened on a campsite in Austria. We had a cable plugged into the electrical grid in the campsite and I needed to go into town. I didn't sleep great the night before and completely forgot to unplug. As I drove out of the campsite, the owner was jumping up and down waving at me. Crazy man I thought. I drove 1 km with a 50-meter cable dangling from the back of the van. Not the brightest thing to do. Thankfully no one was injured. The only thing hurt was my pride.

We did manage to get in what turned out to be the last hike of the trip, malteiner-wasserspiele-im-maltatal. Again, a fantastic hike, but I hurt my knee on this hike, a reoccurrence of an old injury. That was it for me, I knew I couldn't do any more hiking for a while as I knew I needed to rest my leg. As the weather was getting a lot worse of the next days, and the fact that my knee was in bits, we decided to get back to Berlin.

Overall, it was a very good trip. The Alps are amazing, really amazing. There is so much stuff to do, so much nature. Just checkout out some of the pics of this blog to get an idea.

This trip has given me something to aim for over the next few months. I need to sort of this old injury I have, I want to do something like this again next year but obviously I don't want to hurt myself again, so I'm concentrating over the next few months to get my leg in shape.

Secondly, after being in need of a toilet/shower and seeing all the other camper vans, I realise that I need to have a vehicle that has the ability to go off the grid for a few days. It's going to be an interesting few months fixing up the van.

Lastly, I think I'm going to get a dog.