So there I went, on my way back to the Netherlands. I ordered new materials from Thailand and spent 10 days fixing everything that needed to be fixed! My friends from Garage Schoot were the kindest and offered me a place to stay, a place to work on my tuktuk and all their good advices. Couldn’t have fixed it all without them! 

So on March 1st, I went on my way again! New round, new chances! Friend (you might know him from the blue schoolbus that joined us on the road in Norway) Lorenzo joined me on his motorbike for a few days before I headed further to Germany! First stop: Cologne! It felt great being back again, with a tuktuk that was working perfectly fine! Again, some lovely friends of a friend hosted me and we celebrated Carnaval together. 

First mountains in sight!
After saying goodbye I made my way further east, where I experienced the first “mountains”. Yihaa! Tukkie was doing great, but of course, life would get boring without one or two breakdowns. So 10 days after leaving the Netherlands for the 2nd time and after driving over a 1000 KM’s in total, I had another breakdown! 

The nice thing about breakdowns is that everytime it happens I meet wonderful people that are offering me their help. This time, I was in the middle of nowhere, some really nice people stopped that actually had a V-string in their garage, which was exactly what I needed! With all the shops being closed it made me able to continue my way! 

Meeting up with my first guest
On March 13th, I arrived in Munich where I met up with Sas, my twin sister, who is joining me for 4-5 weeks! Funnily enough we could stay at a lovely family consisting of one twin and a triplet. I’ve never had so many triplets and twins in my tuktuk at the same time! 

After visiting the impressive Dachau concentration camp, we made our way further in the direction of Pakistan. Bumped into some camels, crossed the border to my third (!) country. We almost had to push it over the border haha because 500 meters before the border we lost power again! Luckily tukkie came back to life and we made it on three wheels to our lovely hosts in Salzburg! Hello Austria!! We spent our days at both Greg and Steffie & Dominique, we couldn’t have wished for better, more flexible and lovely hosts. 

Taking a bra(e)k(e)
Unfortunately, the brakes where still not working properly, so we ordered new ones from Thailand. We spent the time in between enjoying the lakes in the area, the city centre. When it turned out customs wasn’t going to give us the breaks anytime soon, we decided to visit some friends in Bramberg, just a 3 hour train ride away!

We had a great time and together with Remco, Anne, Bo and Harald, we enjoyed the mountains in our summer outfits, played padel with the local ladies and visited the Krimml waterfall. After saying goodbye. Our friend Vanessa, who has been coming to Krimml for 13 years now, decided last-minute to join us for a few days so she showed us the area on our snow-tuktuk’s! We had the pistes to ourselves and made the waiting for the brakes game really not a bad one! Of course, we didn’t miss out on a bit of apres ski before making our way back to Salzburg to pick up the brakes! 

Brakes for breakfast!
Yihaa! We picked up the brakes! I’ve tried to change everything on the old brakes, but apparently those were not the original ones. So I’m glad that my contact could deliver me the original ones from Thailand! The brakes were a bit old, rusty and different sizes than the previous ones, so it took me, Vanes and Sas 2 full days to fix it! Luckily we met these amazing people at a company called ‘Bremsen-Eder’ where we could park the tuktuk and that would help us whenever we needed advice. Fun fact: this company started as a brake specialist. 

Finally, after 10 days of standing still, we were on our way again! We now felt confident we could go over the mountains without having to worry about not being able to brake. Let’s see if we can conquer the Alps!  … to be continued!