Meet Duke, Our Temporary Camper in Europe

Surprise!

No, this is not a Vario. But it will be our home until we find one – and build it out!

When you don’t have a residency anywhere and you’re in between travel chapters, life can get tricky. Especially when you sold your last camper in South America after a three-year journey. We never planned to ship Thirsty Bella to Europe – where we intend to spend the next few years exploring – because it would be too expensive and it was not the right vehicle for that continent.

As many of you know by now, Mark and I are looking for a particular camper, van, or chassis truck to turn into our “forever” overlanding vehicle. Indirectly and directly, we have been looking for this 4×4 Mercedes Vario truck for over a year, first in Chile, then worldwide, and now in Europe. We never thought it would take this long to find anything suitable.

And there was a very unfortunate turn of events during our search, which made us lose a lot of time and develop Plan B. But more about that in a future blog.

Another intricate matter is Mark’s immigration status. He can only stay in my home country of Belgium (where we arrived at the end of April) for 90 out of every 180 days. His annual health check-ups in the US take place in early August and Brussels would be the best city for him to fly out of, because I want to stay in my parents’ little house in Belgium with Maya during his absence. This meant that we needed a decent buffer out of those 90 days for him to return to Belgium. Therefore, we needed to leave the country for a few weeks in July.

Can you still follow?

But, how to leave Belgium and stay away for a while without a vehicle? Traveling by train with a dog and our belongings wasn’t the easiest of solutions, as we’d experienced in Portugal, Spain, and France this past winter. But, more importantly, how could we keep checking out potential Varios throughout Europe without our own transport?

So, in early June – since we needed time for all the red tape concerning vehicle purchases in Belgium – we had to start our search. Should we purchase a car (easier, more convenient, cheaper in gas, and the most affordable solution, but we’d need to rent homes again for who knew how many months) or a temporary camper (a hassle to purchase, expensive, poorer fuel economy and pricier diesel, and using funds needed for our Vario, but we’d have a home again and could hopefully save money on accommodation)? Which option would you pick?

That discussion didn’t take too long for us and soon we found ourselves scouring the web for second-hand campervans. I had always thought we’d go for something small and not too expensive. We did jump on an ad about a grey Fiat Ducato Chausson, borrowed my parents’ car for the hour-long drive, and checked out this low-quality build with a rusty engine block. Mark couldn’t stand upright in the van and the living space felt super tight. Yup, we got pretty spoiled with our roomy, well-prepared, and “condo-like” Bella in South America.

(As always, hover over or click on the photos in galleries to read their captions.)

We looked for something slightly bigger and I contacted an owner during our 12-hour wasted drive to Germany the following day, to check out another rusty Vario chassis. My questions were answered by 9pm that night and I found out there was urgency to looking at this van. A phone call was in order at 9:30pm, exhausted as I was from the long car journey that day.

Non-European residents can’t buy, register, and insure a European car, except in Germany. This will be the route we take with our phantom Vario, but for this temporary solution, we involved my dad to deal with the Belgian logistics.

So, that Sunday evening, you can imagine the look on the sellers’ faces when, at their front door, appeared a woman, her husband who didn’t speak Dutch, a big dog who was addressed in English, and a dad… ready to look at their camper.

Our eclectic group made it to the storage area of this attractive Fiat Ducato with a Burstner Ixeo Time it 586 build. The current owners had bought a new RV and were going to trade this one in, or sell it to us privately, by the following evening. R and C were a friendly couple, willing to help where needed, and the van was in great shape. It also came at a reasonable price, being from 2017 with less than 35,000 km (22,000 miles). Mark and I liked what we saw and purchased it.

What followed was one week of waiting for the guys to get the van inspected, a couple of hour-long trips to their province for paperwork and the takeover of the Burstner, and dealing with administrative tasks. Since the camper was totally empty – in stark contrast to us leaving Bella completely equipped and ready to go for the new owners – we also had to start buying cooking utensils, camping gear, tools, and bedding.

There was one awkward moment during the pick-up, when the sellers had stripped the camper even more than expected. We understood the vehicle was completely empty as they needed many of its contents for their new camper (like the gas bottles, a better battery and chargers, camping gear, …), but they went a bit overboard when they had removed parts that had been present during the viewing. Caught! Luckily, we were all adults about the situation and departed on good terms.

The camper had to be registered and needed new license plates, we arranged insurance and an extra plate (only one is provided by the authorities), and we had to get the vehicle weighed again to receive an official document stating that number and what we could add in personal belongings and food. Our campervan is allowed to weigh 3.5 tons, everything included. By then, another heatwave had announced itself in Belgium. It would be fun to improve, clean, fill, and organize our new home in 95/35-degree weather…

After all those administrative steps, we could officially drive the Burstner and give it a name. We used Temp already for a previous temporary camper in the year of T&T (Thirsty and Temp), when we needed a truck camper for Thirsty to not be homeless during Covid. That was a fancy one as well, hence we swapped it for the South America journey. Calling our current van Temp Two sounded weird.

Our first trip with it – since this was our car now – was to visit our friends Rosy, Peter, and daughter Yanou in Merelbeke. We shared stories and revealed the name of our new family member: Duke. After its model Ducato and because our new home appears very regal.

When we were about to leave our friends after a nice but hot afternoon, a neighbor showed up at the front door, forehead and nose bleeding profusely. She’d been looking at her smartphone while running and had – literally – run into the back of our camper, that giant white obstacle along the rural street. I swear, you can’t make this stuff up!!!

Not one day goes by without drama (I spared you the details of some other events this month) … Luckily, the woman was alright, but the mood had turned. Then, we discussed naming our camper after her, Pat, since she – literally – had christened our camper with her own blood. Eventually, we decided against that name change and stuck with Duke.

This last week, we have been sweating profusely to prepare Duke for the road. He is my 7^th camper (not all of them had names), Mark’s 5^th, and Maya’s 4^th. 🙂

Let the new adventures begin and the Vario search continue!

Next up: Our second month in Belgium was an eventful one!

Curious about a previous ten-year chapter in our nomadic lives, which includes eight years aboard a 35-foot sailboat in the tropics with dogs? Check out my compelling, inspiring, and refreshingly honest travel memoir: