Dear Family, Friends, and Other Interested Parties,

First, a note to those of our readers who may not be familiar with our letters.

In 2002, we shipped our RV to Europe. As we toured the European Continent, we e-mailed letters to friends and family. In 2003, the letters were e-mailed from the British Isles. This year the letters will be e-mailed and also posted on our web site (www.rv2europe.com) as we tour the continent again, describing our experiences. We are also planning to add new pictures to those already on the website.

As usual, we start out with vague plans for this trip, knowing that we will change them as we go along. Before we left, we thought about driving east to Berlin, Germany and then heading south to Dresden, where we could leave the RV and take a train to Prague, in the Czech Republic. After that we would head across Germany toward a stay in France before we left for Italy.

But now that we are concentrating on maps and guide-books we think we will head southeast to Germany, going obliquely south to Regansberg, and leave the RV there while we visit Prague. Then perhaps we will tour Munich before traveling "The Romantic Road" in Germany as we go toward France.

Our motorhome is a 22 foot Dolphin, Class C, 1987, built on a Toyota Pickup chassis, 4 cylinder gasoline engine. It is severely handicapped in the speed department, but we have accommodated to its problem by avoiding mountains as much as possible. Although old it is not yet infirm. Before we made our first RV trip in the US in 2001, we had the springs reinforced and the engine replaced. The RV has been stored in a greenhouse in Amstelveen, the Netherlands since the 2003 trip. We reunited with it on Monday afternoon. It was waiting for us expectantly, bright-eyed and bushy tailed and clean on the outside, thanks to Arendt and Ineka De Wit whose greenhouses used to grow roses but now store RV's and caravans when people are not using them.

This letter was begun in our favorite Amsterdam campground (let's hear a cheer for Gaaspar Camping!). We arrived in Amsterdam after an overnight stop in London's Heathrow Airport, where we had arranged for a very inexpensive hotel room very close to the airport. Fortunately, they stop flying at midnight. Otherwise the noise would be awful. This was our first daytime flight to Europe and we liked it. Got in at about 8:30 PM (3:30 PM in Mansfield Center). Since we had risen very early that morning, we were able to go to sleep on English time and get up at 6:30 a.m. London Time without much jet lag.

Before we left home, we arranged with the DeWits to pick us up when we had gotten through all the usual stops including customs and picking up our luggage in Shiphol airport. In twenty minutes Mr. DeWit picked us up, and brought us to our RV. He had charged and connected the battery the week before, and he knew it would run.

Not only the engine, but also the refrigerator, the stove and the electric system all in perfect order. We had been a little worried about mice getting in but there were no signs of them at all. Amazingly even most of the clothes we left on board still smelled of the laundry soap in which we had washed them so long ago.

For our first night in the Netherlands, we drove to a campground only about a mile and a half from the "stalling" place (stalling is Dutch for storing). We spent the rest of that day and the next cleaning up all hard interior surfaces and putting things away. We used soft duffel suitcases so that they could be folded up and stored when empty even in our limited space. We bought food for sandwiches and coffee - and just about collapsed. The next day after grocery shopping, we visited a MegaStore - I think that it is something like a discount operation for household goods. I was in dire need of some kind of system of drawers to put clothes in. Found the perfect thing that fit into our shower, which we use for storing things, and set off happily to get to a different part of Amsterdam to visit our favorite campground (see above). That's when we ran into a lot of trouble.

I won't bore you with the wrong turns and problems we had. Suffice it to say that we have never known a government agency to close an entire highway before - all exits for about a 6 or 7 mile stretch, including the exit we needed. But that's what the Dutch did. We only got here because we finally found the local road that would lead us to the campground and saw a big sign indicating a campground. That twenty minute ride took us two hours!

Today we were back in the city - going to our favorite street market. Did we need anything? No. Did we buy anything? Of course. We only had one kind of cheese, so we needed to buy more so that the cheese police don't get us. We already had flowers ($2.10 for a huge bunch of yellow chrysanthemums) so we didn't have to worry about the flower police finding our vase bare. But poor Ron had to deal with me drooling over the incredibly beautiful and inexpensive flowers at the market.

We had lunch there. Ron had his first but not his last "Nieuwe Haring" - a lightly salted skinned and boned fat-and-buttery herring served with onions and pickles, and an order of "gebaked kibbeling" small pieces of fried fish served with a remoulade sauce. Adelle had a delicious sandwich of roasted peppers, onions, eggplant and tomatoes.

Some of the people who will read this are serious RVers and will be interested in some details about the camping scene in Europe. Those of you who couldn't care less about camping, just skip this section.

Camping here is different in many respects. The spot you rent is called a pitch or a site. We have never rented a spot that had its own water spigot or its own grey-water disposal pipe. Both of these are common in the US. We have never had a problem with this. We take on water in our tank and use that for cleaning. Drinking water is kept in a large plastic container that we fill up at spigots placed near the pitch. Electric points are usually at each site, but the current varies. In Holland one can get 16 amps, which at 220 volts is the equivalent of 30 amps or so in the US. But in this campground we get 10 amps. Now that may not be enough to run an air-conditioner. However, one rarely needs an air-conditioner here. In fact, virtually all the motorhomes here, and there are many of them, have no air-conditioners on their roofs.

Prices for a pitch for a 24-hour stay are about the same as charges are in the U.S. This particular campground charged us 22.75 euros or $25.00 including the .75 euros for shower tokens that you need if you want hot water in the shower, and we do. A token gets you 5 minutes worth, which is adequate. That is about what a campsite costs in the US. But here we are a 5-minute walk to the Metro station and then a 15 minute ride to Central Station, the place in Amsterdam that connects easily to a lot of great things that are here and only here. Among our favorites are the Rijks and the Van Gogh museum, the Amsterdam Historical Museum and the Dutch Resistance Museum. And these just scratch the surface of things to visit here.

This campground has a nice little grocery that bakes its own bread and a restaurant/bar if you don't want to cook. If you do cook, there is a public sink area in which to wash dishes, another area for clothes washing, and a third area for people washing. You need to bring a token if you want hot water to do the dishes. We do a minimum of washing up in the RV and use the spotlessly clean public areas for our dishwashing and showers. The showers are in separate areas for men and women, and all have stalls with doors that lock, so privacy is maintained.

We stay in touch with current events in the US by occasionally buying either USA Today or The International Herald Tribune. We listen to the BBC World Service on our short wave. We try to call home once a week, and send and receive e-mails whenever we see an internet cafe or library. Adelle has a new T-Mobile GSM phone with world-wide service but so far we have not been able to use it. We are looking for a T-Mobile store to see what's wrong.

Finally, as is well known, fuel in Europe is much more expensive than in the US. We just paid 1.39 Euros per liter, which brings the price of a US gallon to the neighborhood of $5.25. That is about a 17 percent rise from what I recall we paid in 2002 here. So gasoline has not gone up as much percentage-wise here as it has in the US. But every time we fill up our 11 gallon tank it will cost over $50 dollars. That makes filling up a thrilling experience, let me tell you. However it is important to keep in mind that the distances one drives in Europe are small compared to driving in the US. We may drive 4000-5000 miles on this trip, much less than the 11,000 we drove when we toured the US in 2001 even though we were on the road for a comparable amount of time. The total costs for fuel on this trip will be about the same as the same kind of trip in the US.

We plan to stay a few days in the Netherlands. We spent a day in Amsterdam and are planning to visit the Zuiderzee Museum in the north of the country. It's quite far from Amsterdam by European standards - 40 miles. Then we'll be off to visit some friends in the south of the country - another 80 miles - before we leave the Netherlands - a very small, friendly slightly exotic country where nearly everyone speaks English and you only have to learn to say "Ja", "Nay" and "G'dank" (or something like that) to get along.

If anyone reading our letters wants to contact us - to comment on our letters or to ask question - send us an e-mail message. Our address is milavsky@rv2europe.com. We will answer as soon as we can.

Adelle and Ron Milavsky, Authors

Take Your RV to Europe, The Low-Cost Route to Long-Term Touring

For more about the Milavsky's adventures, go to:

http://travelwithachallenge.com/RV-Vacations-Europe.htm

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