Iveco Daily Campervan Conversion

Our first trip to Rome didn’t end up well.  We parked in a busy park and ride located just a few miles out of the centre with rail links.  Since the van’s so huge we’re usually limited to parking in two passes straight through or a place where we can put the overhang over a pavement.

This hopefully explains why the van’s at the back of the small car park. When we left the van early in the morning there were cars either side of the camper and with two cameras pointing at the van, we thought we’d be ok.

The van was broken into and in total we had over £1000 worth of computers, gadgets and tools stolen.. this wasn’t the best way to end a trip but I guess it will certainly make us more security concious in the future.  Both the side and rear barrel locks were forced.

Here’s a few photos of what the van looked like after we returned from what would otherwise have been a great day.

When we left in the morning, we didn't really notice the abandoned building behind it

All the kitchen was gone through, including the fride. Front panel ripped off

Light covered pulled off, Camper ransacked

When we arrived in Berlin without a plan or any idea where to park, as usual — we eventually resorted to connecting to the Internet with our phones to figure out the best camp sites to park at.  When you’re driving around Berlin’s busy afternoon traffic in torrential rain, it doesn’t take long before you’re wishing you were somewhere else, some place with a plan!

Eventually after rolling into a camp site in the evening, we arrived at the camp site.  This would have been our second camp site stay of the trip.  With a brochure in hand, it seemed it would cost us around 30 Euro for the night and we’d have to leave by 11:00 am the next day or per another 30 Euro! Since we wanted to spend a couple of days in Berlin, this wasn’t something we wanted to do.  We soon stumbled across another nearby camp site with similar prices, this got us to the conclusion that Berlin just wasn’t cheap!

With a stroke of luck and with the light going down, we found ourselves some an awesome wild camping spot.  It was just a mile away from the other camp sites we’d been looking at at a marina.  We hoped that since it was a pretty rich area (so it seemed) and with lots of parking and activity, our van would be safe.  [Coordinates 52° 27' 7.2" N 13° 8' 52.8" E]

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With our accommodation sorted, we were nice and close to Berlin city centre, all for free!   The bus into the centre took around 30 minutes and on both days we visited we had a free ride.  The the bus drivers couldn’t understand a word we were saying and waved us on!

Despite the initially hassle of finding some where to park, Berlin was certainly my favourite city that we visited.  With plenty of history, there was a wealth of museums and historic attractions to be seen as well as all the sports cars litered  wherever you looked.

Our view from where we wild camped

There's some strange stuff in Berlin!

World War 2 Bunker Tour

Lamborghini Shop

You don't see these around every day

A good alternative to van living

Arriving in the port of Rostock, Germany

Having had an awesome time visiting friends in Sweden and taking in some of the beautiful landscapes, it was time to move to our next destination.  We were heading to Berlin.  Initially we’d planned to travel through Denmark on our return journey from Sweden, this was one of the reasons we didn’t spend much time there on our first time passing through.

We decided that it would be more cost effective instead of travelling all the way back through Denmark and paying £150 of tolls, to instead spent £150 on a boat that would take us from Treleborg , Sweden to Rostok, Germany.  Since we’d only been on a very short 20 minute “boat trip” with the camper up until now, we thought it would be cool to see some sea!  Our £150 ocean trip took us around 9 hours which certainly felt like a bargain compared to the 20 minute £95 trip we’d previously taken.

The trip was uneventful and pleasant and we were glad we’d had the foresight to bring our gadgets and some food and drink supplies along with us when leaving the camper.  About 15 minutes into the journey the main access doors to the vehicle storage floor were locked and we were unable to return to the camper until we arrived in Germany, this is something to keep in mind!

We rolled up off the boat and into Germany towards the end of an evening,  our first mission was to find a place to refuel and then a place to stay before heading off to Berlin the following morning.

Although we had a jerry can in the boot, our fuel tank was pretty low.  We’d been trying our best to avoid buying fuel in Sweden as we had exhausted our supply of Swedish Cronors and didn’t want to get ripped off with the currency exchange (spending Euro’s in Sweden).  It’s also worth mentioning that Sweden had the cheapest Diesel fuel that we’d come across up to this point at £1.22 per litre (August 2011).