“Dreams Do Come True!”

May 29, 2019

Just the other day, parked up in our camping car at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in southern Spain, I noticed a small cross-stitch hanging on the wall of a fellow camping car. It read “Dreams Do Come True!”. The owners of the camping car, a young-ish couple from the Netherlands, were nearing the end of a yearlong adventure camping and site seeing tour around Europe. As we’re halfway into our second year doing the same, reading the cross-stitch, I couldn’t agree more. You only live once, make the adventure of your dreams a reality!

What, on the face of it, seems to be a pretty straightforward dream is indeed quite a bit more complicated. We liked the idea of buying a RV and touring Europe with our dog for an extended duration, at least a year and maybe more. But, as Americans without European residency there are really only a few viable ways to do this. Never mind the whole hassle of the Schengen Zone. The buying part isn’t so difficult, it’s the proper European registration and the all-important insurance that can be a real issue. To this end, and to the best of our research, Phill and his crew are the only way to go.

To cut to the chase, Phill and Hannah were great to work with and that should be music to your ears. We would definitely work with them again. In our case, everything went as it should have, hopefully you have the same experience. A year and a half into this adventure they still are a great help with storing our vehicle so we could return to the US for the holidays.

We spent a lot of time researching camping cars and buying options on the internet as well as reading other bloggers as prep for this adventure. Hopefully our due diligence will help you make your decision as well.

As I said, I would absolutely recommend working with Phill and Hannah. Our experience is a little different in that we bought the vehicle in Germany and not through Phill. Our requirements were an automatic transmission and that is very hard to find in France. Phill did look for us in his network but there just weren’t any viable options. This complicated things quite a bit.

As our situation was more complicated, Phill still understood what we would need for the registration in France and guided us in getting the correct paperwork from Germany. Buying a French vehicle from Phill would be a much simpler affair but as it was it took us about a week to get the required tasks completed with Phill and get our French plates. If you buy a vehicle outside of France it is very critical to get the proper paperwork so that needs to be a consideration. Phill was an incredible resource for us in this regard. We also chose a reputable dealer in Germany that has vast experience with the export process and saved ourselves some potential headaches. (As a side note, with current French regulation changes, we think you actually have to buy the vehicle in France now.)

With all of our complications I feel Phill under promised and over delivered. Everything went off exactly as it should have and we were able to get on the road relatively quickly. He very much wanted to temper our expectations should some of the bureaucracy slow us down in our quest. At the end of the day it all went off without a hitch, but as they say, “Your mileage may vary.”.

We’ve now been in our rig for 1 ½ years. We’ve been south to Gibraltar and Greece, west to Portugal, east to the Black Sea and all the way up to Nordkapp at the top of Norway. 30 countries, 25,000 miles and counting! All thanks in part to Phill and his great crew. Thanks again guys, dreams do come true!

If you’re interested in checking out some of our adventures, check out our blog www.dontwastelife.com. We’re a bit behind, but working on catching up between escapades!

~ Todd and Sharni