"Button Down the Hatches!" Part II

Coming to you from a very rainy Denmark, we're back with Part II of our tour of our not-so-wee-little-motorhome.  And next up is the bathroom: the "wet bath" with a twist (which includes twisting the body slightly in order to gain entry):

The wet bath: as you can see, the toilet, the sink, the shower and the shower drain all share the same cozy space...along with some cupboards and some shelves that are visible in this photo.

Now this is a space-saving feature to be sure, but one that raises some legitimate questions such as "where the heck do I put my towel?" since everything not tucked away in cupboards or drawers during a shower will get wet.

Here's where the twist comes in ("twist" meaning "surprise" in this case).  I'm sure other RV manufacturers have come up with various solutions to the wet bath dilemma, but the manufacturer of our camper van (Defflepps in Germany) has devised what we feel is a rather ingenious one:  a folding shower INSIDE the bath.

Here's how it works:

First, unfold the REAR panel until its magnetic catch secures it in place (in front of the toilet and the cupboards around the toilet, thereby blocking the water spray from reaching anything in that area):

You can just see the "ghost" of the toilet behind the shower panel.

Next, unfold the FRONT panel until its magnetic catch secures it in place (behind the sink, its cupboard and the sink's counter):

You now have a shower booth that will hold you and the shower, while all surfaces that you would prefer to stay dry actually do:

"Mr. Bates, is that you?"

Clever, convenient and yes, cozy.  But whereas we have become accustomed to showering in our little wet bath "cage," there is what we consider a MAJOR design flaw in the construction of the shower: there is no - I repeat NO - shut-off valve right at the shower head. 

And as you can see in the following picture, the handle to turn on the shower is situated exactly right (or wrong) and can be way too easily bumped (thereby turning the shower on) while one is sitting down and...um...conducting one's business.  Or it is way too easily snagged by a short sleeve on a shirt.  Or it is just simply in the way when one is drying one's self off after a shower (this being the least offensive of the various scenarios since one is already somewhat damp…but it is still terribly annoying):

We have tried various methods to prevent this accidental bumping, but we've also wanted to leave the handle still  somewhat easily accessible.  So duct-taping the whole blasted thing was out of the question.  We even positioned and secured the shower head to the floor so that when we did accidentally bump the on/off lever, the resulting water would simply head down the drain.  But instead, the hose would escape its bonds and skitter across the bathroom floor like a wild snake, resulting in wet shoes.

And since this RV is a rental, Art was not allowed to do what he wanted to do (which was to install the much needed on/off switch on the shower head, like we have in our RV at home).  So we decided we just had to learn to live with the darn thing.  We do have a towel permanently draped over the shower head to minimize any "water damage" during accidental bumps, and during the course of our now almost six weeks in the rental motorhome, we have been able to train ourselves to keep a wary eye on the handle.  But it’s really challenging in the middle of the night when one sleepily staggers into the bathroom to remember to keep one's distance from the stupid thing. 

But in spite of the shower wand, there's nothing like having your own shower in your rig.  Right, Gene and Sally?  ;-D

Finally, we conclude our tour by sharing with you some of the other features of our little European home-away-from-home that we have become so fond of.  No doubt these features are available on some American-made RVs as well (we hope so), but we have not had the opportunity to see them.

The very easy to clean looks-like-wood floors

The built-in fan shades for the front, driver and passenger windows...see the following sequence of photos

 

Now the sequence for the front window...

And we really like the clever and easy to use pull-down or built-in screens and opaque shades that are on all the windows, the sun roof and the vents (except for the bathroom vent):

Start with a window...

...then pull down the built-in screen.

For privacy, pull down the built-in opaque shade.

Here's the open sun roof.

You can deploy the built-in screen over the open sun roof...

...or pull out the built-in opaque shade.

Here's the coach door, closed.  Notice all those bins and shelves...RV heaven!  But...

...here's the door open with the built-in screen partially deployed.  Hey!  Where are all my bins and shelves?  Outside?  Okay, that's...um...interesting.  But useful, too, I guess...depending upon what you put in those bins and shelves.

Now the screen door is fully deployed.

And finally, the reason for the subtitle of these tour posts: all the drawers and about half the cupboards have a press-in button that basically locks the drawer or cupboard in place during transit.  We have loved this "button down the hatches" approach:

One more final note (the final final one): as happy as we have been with the camper van, we have been disappointed with how poorly equipped it was by the rental company with the stuff one needs to live in an RV. For example, we had to buy a butane lighter to light the three-burner stove!  Wouldn't you think that might be included?  Also, whereas two bags of deodorant tablets for the black tank were included, we had to buy our own toilet paper.  Couldn’t they at least have given us a starter roll?  And in an earlier post, I mentioned that we had to stop at an IKEA to buy, among other things, a broom, a good kitchen knife, and some dish drying towels.  We've since added a thermal coffee carafe, a couple of coffee mugs, a cheese grater/slicer, a knife sharpener and a decent sauté pan.  If we’d only been renting the rig for a week or two, or if we had planned to eat out more, we would’ve tried to get by with what the rental company provided.  But six weeks in a European camper van is simply too long to go without a decent knife or sauté pan!

But even though we’ve been disappointed with the rental company, we really have been very, very happy with the RV itself (despite the shower wand from hell).  And when it comes time to replace our beloved Lazy Daze (and that day will come, but not for some time yet), I am hoping that we'll be able to find something similar to this in the states.  Maybe Lazy Daze will get back to building a small rig with a permanent bed?  One can always hope!


P.S.  To our friend Jon who had some questions about what he called “guy” stuff: the camper van is made by a German company called Dethleffs on a Fiat chassis.  It has a manual transmission and Art has not yet calculated the MPG (or the KPL…kilometers per liter!).  And I forgot to mention that it came with a wonderful back-up camera.  At first we didn’t think we would really need to use it, but at the time, we weren’t thinking about how handy it would be on all those narrow streets in Europe!

If anyone has any questions about our "not-so-wee-little-motorhome" please send them along.

A Tour of Our "Wee Little Motorhome" or "Button Down the Hatches!"

Family and friends have written wondering what our "wee little motorhome" looks like and how it compares to our beloved Lazy Daze rig back in Solvang.  It has been such a major part of our trip that I thought it deserved its own blog posting.

And actually, it will need to be covered in two postings, which was not the original plan.  I was just about to post the whole thing last night when the last part of it (the tour of the "very interesting" bathroom and then some photos of miscellaneous features that we've really enjoyed) disappeared.  I don't know if it was something I did or if the blog server was at fault or if it was the nissemen (mischievous little Danish elves) messing with us, but it was gone.  So here's the first part and I hope to post the second part in the next several days.  Fortunately, I tend to write offline, so the remainder is already written and just needs to be transferred to the blog website.  But I do have to insert all the photos all over again and that will take a bit of time.  In addition, we've been really surprised at how many campgrounds in Scandinavia do NOT offer Internet access.  Peculiar for such a high-tech region.

Ah, enough of my computer troubles...let the tour begin!


But first, a clarification...

I've been referring to our rental motorhome here as our "wee little motorhome."  But it hasn't felt all that small to us, and in truth, we recently discovered (when we needed an exact length for ferry purposes), that it is a whopping 21 feet!  That's only 5 1/2 feet shorter than our Lazy Daze, so it is not nearly as "wee" as we had thought!

Secondly, a little back story...

When Art and I decided to head to Scandinavia to explore the land of his ancestors, it didn't take us long to also decide that we would rent a motorhome from which to conduct our explorations.  A motorhome is, after all, our usual mode of travel, and we're not only comfortable with it, we love it.

After much research, we selected what might be called a Class B+ in the states (it seems to us like a slightly bigger Class B with some extra goodies).  I was delighted that it had a permanent bed as we've always been curious about how devoting that much space in the already limited space of an RV would impact our daily RVing.  And it also features a "wet bath" but not quite exactly your traditional "wet bath" where your toilet, sink, shower and shower drain all share the same space (a photographic explanation will be given later in this post).  We were curious to see how the wet bath would compare to the bathroom in our Lazy Daze (with its separate shower).

We picked up the rental rig (called a camper van here in Europe) on Tuesday, June 14th.  My first reaction upon seeing it was "Oh, that's cute!"  My reaction now, after living in it for five weeks?  "Can we take it home with us?"

Picking up the RV in Hamburg, Germany

I still LOVE our Lazy Daze motorhome, but this little home-away-from-home has been ideal for us on this trip.  Let me show you around...

Among my favorite features are the driver and passenger seats.  Not only is the passenger seat more comfortable than the one in our Lazy Daze (easier on the back AND more leg room), but both seats swivel to face the rear (at legal opportunities) and can recline quite far if one is so inclined.  They make for wonderful reading chairs.

Next up is the dinette that can seat up to six people: two in those swiveling front seats, two in the bench on the passenger side of the rig, and two in the main dinette bench:

In addition, the dinette has a 12-inch extension that pops up from the bottom of the dinette table.  Easy to  extend, easy to put away...I like that.

Now even though we may no longer refer to our European camper van as our "wee little motorhome," it does have a wee little kitchen.  If not for the sections of tempered glass that can cover the three-burner propane stove in various configurations, there would be virtually no work space.  Add in the fact that we have NO oven and NO microwave oven...well, needless to say, the kitchen has NOT been a big hit with us since we're accustomed to doing a lot of cooking in our Lazy Daze.  I humbly ask that you humor me as I bombard you with photos of the various stove top configurations...I've got to get SOME fun out of this cooktop!

As compensation, there's a tremendous amount of kitchen storage, and the lighting is very well done.  But that's small consolation when you only have three burners to work with.  I do realize that one can do plenty of cooking using just the stove top, but sometimes a gal just wants (NEEDS!) to bake some brownies.  :-D

Continuing our tour, we come to perhaps my favorite part of our European camper van:  the permanent bed.

Double bed with nice firm mattress and great reading lights.

With the less-than-happy backs that both Art and I occasionally suffer from, we know there will come a day (sooner rather than later) when we will no longer want to or be able to perform the contortions necessary to pull the two sofas in the back of our Lazy Daze together to make the bed.  Yes, we do know there are other options in the Lazy Daze for sleeping, but those options are not for us.

Another plus for the bed is that it's been so helpful to be able to go and lie down during the day when I've felt the day catching up with me.

So having a permanent bed, cozy and tucked out of the way of the daily living space of the RV, has been one of the very best things about our not-so-wee-little-motorhome.

And so ends Part I of the tour.  Coming in Part II:  the "wet bath" with a twist, the much detested shower wand and the answer to why the subtitle of these posts has been "Button Down the Hatches!"

Scandinavia - Observations, Impressions and Reflections, Part I

Dear Family and Friends ---

At some point, I will blog a bit more about our two weeks on the National Geographic Explorer.  But right now I have some other things that I’d like to share with you all.

Art and I have been on our Scandinavian Adventure for over a month now, and so we have had plenty of time to make some observations, gather some impressions and do a considerable amount of reflecting upon the three fascinating countries that make up Scandinavia:  Denmark, Sweden and Norway (much to the surprise of many folks, Finland - while a Nordic country - is not a Scandinavian one).

Following are some of the things that have captured our attention and our imaginations while we have been traveling around Sweden specifically.  After I wrote them all down, I realized they have a common theme: families.

And that then led to this reflection:  we had heard and we had read and we then experienced for ourselves that the Swedish people are very reserved with other people they are not familiar with (even with other Swedes).  But their love for their families is obvious, and for a reserved people, delightfully very public.  It’s been a fascinating cultural aspect of Sweden that we have enjoyed seeing in person.

So here are some of our observations, impressions and reflections upon Swedish family life...

- Sweden's population is growing.  And one does not need to refer to their latest census to figure that out.  All one has to do is try to not trip over all the baby strollers...strollers on the sidewalks, strollers at the museums, at the restaurants, on the subways and on the water taxis. And the number of double strollers holding adorable little twin Swedes is staggering.  There must be something in those Swedish meatballs.

- Staying with the stroller observation, we saw more men pushing baby strollers than women.  That's no doubt thanks to Sweden's very progressive and generous shared parental leave.  Since I made a promise to Art that I would not write any dissertations in this blog, I’ll have to leave it to you (if you’re interested) to look up the particulars about the Swedish parental leave, but believe me, they're astounding (and well worth googling).

- Camping is very popular in Sweden and the emphasis is on the children.  Every campground entry in our Swedish camping guide lists that the campground is either "family friendly" or "child friendly."  To be honest, if we were here in Sweden to relax, we might be a bit put out at some of the less-than-peaceful campgrounds we've stayed in.  But we're not here to relax and get away from it all; we're here to visit Sweden and its people (which includes its children) and to absorb its family-oriented culture.  Hearing families having fun together has been fun for us.

- In a country that must endure a long and dark winter, it is only reasonable that the Swedes would celebrate the longest day of sunshine.  And celebrate they do, gathering their families together for a very special day.  Midsummer Day is a national holiday here in Sweden and legislation has decreed that it be celebrated on the Friday nearest Midsummer (what we would call Summer Solstice), thereby giving Swedes a three-day weekend (that certainly sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).

So on June 24^th, Art and I took the ferry and headed over to Stockholm's Skansen Park, a huge open-air historical museum and zoo.  We had heard Skansen was a popular place for Swedish families to celebrate Midsummer and so that was where we wanted to be, too.  It was packed with people (and strollers, of course) and it was easy to get caught up in the high spirits that surrounded us as we strolled around the park.

We noticed a crowd gathering and decided they knew something we didn’t.  Within minutes of our joining them, we were watching a lively procession.

The beginning of the parade of people that will raise the traditional Maypole

Fiddlers!  You gotta have fiddlers!

And children...it's not Midsummer Day without the kids!

Let the dancing begin!

I am sure that all cultures love a good picnic, but the Swedes seem to take picnicking to a higher level.

Look closely...this couple has everything needed for a successful picnic!

And Skansen Park is ideal for picnicking, with grassy meadows and fields everywhere.  

Would you like a little view with your picnic?

Cozy family picnicking at Skansen

After a truly wonderful day of celebrating Midsummer at Skansen Park with a couple hundred thousand of our new Swedish friends, we began to find our way out of the park.  While strolling through the Children's Zoo, we came upon a very colorful “decoration” draped over a fence.  Upon closer inspection, we discovered that it was a loop of pacifiers.  Absolutely needing to know what was going on here, we asked and found out that the Skansen Petting Zoo has entered into a “partnership” of sorts with Swedish parents.  When it is deemed appropriate by parents for a child to give up his or her pacifier (which, naturally, the kids do not want to do), the child – along with the beloved pacifier – is taken to the Skansen Petting Zoo.  There, the children are introduced to a bunch of adorable kittens (are there any other kind?), and the children are then told that these kittens sure could use a pacifier.

Shameless, yes.  But it works!

Next up, a tour of our "wee little motorhome."