SURVIVING 5 DAYS Living in a CAR with my Teenage Brother
I'm Eva, and I've spent the last three years of my life traveling solo to some of the world's most remote and off-beat places. From horse trekking alone in Mongolia, to living in Pakistan for a year and spending the first three months of the pandemic stuck on a remote island off the coast of Yemen before making my way back home on a cargo ship, it's been one hell of an adventure, but recently I decided it's time for a change. I've been dreaming of being completely free and independent with a little nest of my own, so I bought my dream truck, a Land Rover Defender, and started converting it into an off-road overlander slash mini camper.
It's a bit fresh out here. So I'm in the mountains of Albania right now, and I really want to show you guys this place, it's so beautiful. So in a couple of weeks, I'm going to come back here, do a proper hike and show you around, but for now, I've got a really urgent, really important mission to accomplish because right now I'm headed to the airport to pick up someone very special who's going to travel with me for the next five days. Our plan was to spend five days road-tripping across Albania, north to south, and camping all along the way. I don't see him just yet. This is my brother Thomas or Tomek.
He was born when I was 15, and he was so cute when he was little, but since we're technically half-siblings and I left home when he was a toddler, we never really got to spend much time together. This summer, for the first time, I invited him to join me on one of my trips and, needless to say, threw him in at the deep end right away. Boot camp session number one, make your own home for the night.
How long do you think it's going to take you? Ten minutes. - It is now half-past... - Half-past, it's 33... It's been seven minutes. The last ones doesn't count. - Yeah, it does! - No, it doesn't.
Yeah, I made it extra hard to do the ladder because the last time I used it, it was sandy, there was sand everywhere. Where is it? - Oh, there we go, yeah. - Yeah, nice. Cool, and now you have to pull the ladder down and out but make sure your fingers don't get stuck. Done. It's very good, ten minutes for a beginner, not bad.
Because I'm such a good sister, I decided to set up my spare tent and sleep on the ground just so my brother would be comfortable. I'm Tomek. I'm Eva's younger brother. I was born in 2006, and I'm exceptionally tired.
What are your expectations of this trip? To have memories, to have fun and to come back to Germany with something to talk about and to provide her with views. - Yeah, of course. - Yeah, of course. So, what's your views on your sister being a YouTuber? I don't know, I had no clue that she would get this big, especially in like three years, right. After her first video, I was a bit skeptical. I was trying to be nice about the editing skills, but it wasn't tip-top.
She got a lot better now, thank god. She's actually able to make a living out of it, somehow. - Somehow. - Somehow people watch this. We don't know why but they do. So have you camped before? Yeah, I have camped in Switzerland. - It's a bit different. - It sounds posh.
Yeah, it was posh, it was posh camping, imagine that. Glamping! I think the car is way better than that Ford that Eva had. - Stefan. - Stefan was a disappointment.
I'm gonna be honest, this car I saw it I was like, whoa, I did not expect it to be this cool in person, it was better in person than the pictures, right. When a 15-year-old says that your car is cool, I guess it must be cool. Now how was your experience with me? Oh my god, where do I begin? It's good so far, so good. I wasn't sure what to expect because this is our first serious trip together, but so far, you've been proving your adventurous spirit by getting up at 5AM today, flying all the way here to Albania, and then setting up your own tent, which is very good. How perfect of a 15-year-old traveler am I? Absolutely incredibly perfect.
When am I going to be allowed to drive your car? - Am I not allowed to drive your car? - You can't even drive stick. No, I would have let you drive Stefan, but Odyssey... I'm a very good driver. Maybe at the end of this trip, we'll develop a trusting relationship where I might let you drive it under my careful surveillance. When are we gonna have the watermelon? - She's sitting there kind of lonely, right? - Yeah, you know.
- Do you want to have it now? - Yeah. Look at the size of this knife, look at the size of the watermelon. You can do it. I thought you were strong. Just spin that. - Nice, see, creativity, ingenuity. - It's just intelligence. How was your first night in that roof tent? Awful, I don't like camping.
So it's great that we have five nights of camping planned ahead. I wanted to think he was just kidding about the camping thing. Anyway, the next day started out beautifully, and I was feeling generous, so I decided to make one of Tomek's wishes come true. Here we go, boot camp session number two, how to drive stick. Before you put it in first gear, in order to put it in first gear, what you need to do? - I have no clue. - Because you can't just shift it into first gear, right? - Yeah, yeah, touch... - Yeah, exactly, and now first gear, and now what?
I don't... This is why I don't know. Once you've got, once you're in first gear and the clutch is like, and you've got the clutch pressed, in order to start moving the car, you have to gently start pressing on the gas. So, pressing on the gas as like while letting go of the clutch simultaneously. All right, watch this. That's the motion.
Like, add gas while letting go of the clutch, like make the motion parallel but opposite. - Why does this keep happening? - Put the clutch in, clutch, clutch. Let me switch, let me show you what I mean. - Here and watching? - Yeah. A bit more gas than clutch until that's moving like this. Seat belt. Well done.
Don't go any faster. It's too fast for the first gear. - Try switching the second? - We'll do that tomorrow. - What, I can do it! - No. And we're going back. Don't use your phone while driving. - Give it to me! - No! Oh my god, focus on the road! Guys, that was like the worst mistake ever.
I just reminded there's water there, and I don't want us to drive into it. Okay, clutch and brake. Boot camp session number three, how to fly a drone and help your sister with her work. Today we're learning many things, including how to drive a manual car as well as how to fly a manual drone.
Flying over water. Are you recording this? Recording your own work, commemorate it forever. There we go, beautiful. Very nice.
Can I go stalk the other people? Like, fly the drone really close. They would be terrified. So how would you, how would you summarize today? I drove a car. I drove a manual Land Rover.
It was awful, but I'm a very good driver now, I didn't stall the car. No, not at all, not once, no. - And then you drove another machine. - Did I? In the air. I drove a drone. I had a drone. She lied to me about that if I turn the drone or put it down or up too fast, it'll drop out the sky, so I was maneuvering the drone really, really slowly.
Because I had no idea, haven't flown like this high-level drone, and when birds started flying close to it, I started panicking, so then as the birds was like start attacking, the drone fall out. Luckily all those involved survived. What was more difficult, flying the drone or driving the car? - Driving the car. - Yeah? - Flying a drone is like driving an automatic car, right? - Yeah. Let's go pedal, slow pedal. Oh, I also want swimming.
- So, expectations for tomorrow? - To be a long driving and then a good dinner. Interesting start to the morning. We're about to get on a ferry with the Defender, and it seems like it's total chaos. We're in a tunnel waiting for the boat. There's cars moving around trying to reverse in the tunnel.
Oh no, no, no! This seems like too tight space for us. - Oh my god. - And our car is huge! I'm a little bit apprehensive about later on when we have to get off the boat because we're going to go in like this, and we're going to have to get off going back.
We're on the boat, we're on the boat. Tight squeeze, tight, tight. Hug, hug the way car. We are done, we are parked, that's an achievement.
We literally just towed the small boat to the big boat while both boats are moving. It makes me wonder why that's something that couldn't be done before. This ferry was meant to carry us across a mountain range where going by water is the only option because there are no roads here. So this is why I usually prefer to do the things that are a little bit less touristy because when you do the touristy things, often times you end up sitting next to the bin quite literally, but at the same time I wanted to see what this ferry in Albania was all about and it is quite beautiful, the views are amazing. We've arrived, we've arrived.
Actually, I think I need this sticker in my life so that people stop calling my car a Jeep. Today we've come out for a little organized activity. We're going rafting with the guys behind us, with Albania rafting. Never done rafting before, any of us, so this is going to be fun, but first of all, I just need to submerge myself in this water, because is so hot, I'm about to die.
So, we're going to be rafting today in what is Albania's last wild river. I believe it's called Vjosë. No more reason to be afraid of cows. The first five minutes, and I already feel like an adventurer... Left, left, left.
We're taking a quick and well-deserved break. My arms are starting to hurt, as embarrassing as that is after 10 minutes, but this water here in this beautiful wild river is so nice. Oh my god, watch him. I think he's about to jump. Are you gonna do it? Am I gonna do it? What, really? Go! He's gonna do it, he's gonna do it.
Actually, my brother is an extremely good swimmer, and he's now gonna jump into the wild river. Go, Tomek! All right, one level higher. All right. I'm gonna tell you a little secret, I'm really not very confident with things like cliff jumping.
I don't think I've ever really done it before so actually jumping off this little cliff, like four meters, five meters max felt like an actual accomplishment, like I broke through some sort of barrier, and I definitely have Tomek to thank because he encouraged me to do it almost bullied me into doing it. Well, who do you think did it better? Let me know in the comments. The plan for today is to drive down an off-road track.
I got the coordinates from some people that I met up in the north of Albania. Let's see, I don't have much experience off-roading, but it shouldn't be too much of a difficult one, of course, experience is... - Key. - Best teacher. - Have you ever been off-roading? - Yeah.
- Really? - Yeah, with you. Oh yeah, I took my brother off-roading. All these drone shots were taken by my brother after just one lesson, I was so impressed. Right now, we are on an off-road track somewhere in the mountains of southern Albania.
We're taking the scenic route, basically. That's the idea of this holiday right, take it slow but explore, experience, immerse, all that jazz. Over the last few days, do you feel like you have gotten to know your sister better? - No. - Really? Same old, same old.
- Anything surprising at all about the trip? - Oh my god, where do I start? It's Albania. It's so different. It's so different from anywhere else. In the middle of nowhere, going to just campsites driving around and actually embracing the culture, which is not something I would do, you know, a 15-year-old kid I live in Germany with middle-class parents is not what I would normally do, right. Normal travel lookouts in the south of France before this, a lovely place, we had a really nice view but like everything's already there and it's the same every single day you wake up, go for a swim, have your nice breakfast, stay in the house some days, I don't know, but here I'm doing something new every day, right driving somewhere new, meeting new people. How would you compare this kind of trip to like being in a resort in Egypt? Better, better, well, it depends what kind of person you are, if you're some stuck-up tourist yeah, you will enjoy a resort right, but you don't really embrace a new culture there, you just stay in your own little family or couple whatever, whoever you're traveling with, but here everyone's super friendly.
How were the past few days? Yeah, it's been really interesting, traveling with your family, or your especially your younger siblings is definitely a very different kind of experience to like traveling alone. She means it's a lot better. You know, like you, you're like the responsible one, you gotta organize some stuff and have some sort of plan at least so that people don't get like too bored or... How amazing was I at putting down the roof tent? Actually, yes, you've been amazing at putting up the roof tent, taking it down.
You learned super fast and saved me a lot of work, so thank you very much. I'll miss having all this help around. Right now, we are headed towards our last destination for the trip, which is a beach side town, and we're going to be staying at a hotel. I think actually we're both quite excited about it because we'll get to have proper power, and internet, and showers and warm water.
And after that, I go back to my little tory village in Germany. Yeah, and tomorrow, yeah, tomorrow already. I have my big bedroom, my computer, my wi-fi, my water on demand.
Yeah! And that's how our five-day road trip across Albania came to an end in what seemed like the blink of an eye. - So you're about to leave? - Yeah. How has it been? I like that it really opened my eyes into how the actual world was. I'm a bit of a harsh Western European kid.
I haven't been to a place like this. I haven't been able to experience culture like this, right. So would you come on a holiday with me again? Yeah. - Oh yeah? - Oh yeah. Well, I have to say, it suddenly feels a lot more quiet in here. I don't want to use the word lonely because I hate using that word, but it's definitely very different. It's much more quiet, it's new once again.
Let's go. No more babysitting! Freedom! Sorry Tomek, just kidding, I love you. So, it's kind of hard to believe that my trip with my teenage brother has come to an end.
It really flew by, and I feel like we both learned a lot from this time. I totally went outside of my comfort zone. I mean, I know it may not seem like the most extreme adventure, but I never hang out with kids or teenagers ever. I really don't like them, it's true, I'm sorry, I don't.
So hanging out with my brother and organizing all this travel for him was a new kind of challenge for me as well and I kind of enjoyed it, actually. It was fun. I got to know him quite a lot better, and I have to say that I'm really proud of him because towards the end of the trip, he told me that he, thanks to the trip, began to really appreciate the small luxuries that he has back home like running hot water under the shower and you know that's a simple thing, but it's also quite profound, and I'm really impressed with him for saying that and for feeling that way. Anyway, that was fun, sister and brother road tripping, and I really hope that we get to do it again next year. All right, Tomek is on his way back to Germany right now. He's on the plane.
Meanwhile, I'm going back to my old routine, so I guess I'll see you in the next episode of my adventures around Albania.
2021-08-23 06:10
