My life is travelling. If I could only do one more thing in life, it would be travelling. I was terrified that the most important part of my life would be over with the baby. I was also afraid that our attempt to combine my life and the baby would go wrong. My father simply thought our plan was crazy.
Our plan? Travelling to Tarifa in Spain by car for a month. That’s a nice 2,800 kilometres from Regensburg, including stopovers. Parents we know said that a maximum of four hours’ drive a day would be feasible with a baby. We didn’t book anything at all in advance and just went with how the baby was feeling. In the end, we came to two realisations: Our baby is the most stress-free and favourite child in the world. But travelling with a baby is still endlessly exhausting.
The first journey is just a small test. We drive a good hour and a half to our best friend at the Ammersee around midday. The little one sleeps almost the whole journey. In the afternoon, we go for a walk along the shore in the cold sunshine and enjoy the best ice cream. The baby is happy about every playground and dog along the way. I wonder what the one kiter is trying to prove in five knots at five degrees in front of the still snow-covered Alpine peaks. We go to bed early. The little one wakes up a little confused in the night and cries for a while. Everything is fine again in the morning.
In the last snowfall of the year, we set off the next morning to visit school friends in Geneva. We interrupt the five-and-a-half-hour journey for a baby exercise programme every two hours. She makes the most of it. Afterwards, the little one looks out of the window again with interest and flirts with the lorry drivers on the right-hand lane in the traffic jam around Zurich. She sleeps through a good part of the journey again. She grumbles for a few minutes, but her mum quickly gets her under control again with an entertainment programme. She performs incredibly funny dance routines in her child seat to some of the songs on the radio.
She loves the playground behind the garden in Geneva almost as much as the two house cats. She redecorates half the house and plays the piano. There’s not enough input. I am fascinated by her inquisitiveness, joy and open manner with everyone. After a lovely dinner with the family, it’s early to bed for the little one and much too late for us because of friends we haven’t seen for a long time. Just like at home, the little one wakes up around six or seven and is looked after by Steffi. In the meantime, I load a nice 100kg of luggage into and onto the car, spread over 15 pieces.
The next day takes us into the heart of France. As the motorway toll in France is outrageously expensive at up to €15 for 100 km, we take country roads for about 250 km. Only around Lyon does it drag on a bit. From the Massif Central onwards, the country roads are superbly developed, empty and almost on a par with the motorways. The last snow shines brightly from the highest peaks. Spring shines colourfully at 20 degrees over one of the most beautiful and deserted areas of France.
We arrive in Millau late in the afternoon. The good landlords of our first accommodation overload the baby with toys. Well-intentioned, but that always means stress. A short walk to the nearby Creissels waterfall brings the little one halfway down again. The excellent Gault Millau menu in the restaurant opposite tastes just as good to her as it does to us. But she immediately invests the energy she has gained a little too successfully in rather loud acoustic field tests. We sneak off to bed as the sun sets behind the Millau motorway bridge.
Today, for the first time on the journey, she shows the same problems as at home. Without enough input and with too little exercise, she keeps going full throttle for a very long time in the evening and can’t sleep. This is doubly hard for me. Firstly, because of the exhausting long journey plus working in the evening and much-needed sleep. Secondly, because despite similar behaviour at home, I wonder if it’s not the travelling and therefore my fault. As long as she is waking up loudly, I plan the route with stops and possible accommodation. I plan for a very long time.
The next day is the hardest of the journey with a journey time of over six and a half hours. The little one sleeps through almost two hours of this again. But the traffic on the country roads before the Spanish border is very heavy for a long time and takes a lot of energy. I refuel with too much coffee during the stops every two hours. From Spain onwards, almost all motorways are free again. Just after Barcelona, at the fourth stop of the journey, we get our first big reward.
Our accommodation is in a small town that is still completely in hibernation, just 300 metres from the beach. The little one goes completely crazy when she sees her first really appropriately sized sandpit. The water is still very cold, but she still wants to keep dipping her feet in the waves on the beach. The parents sip cava. Mum laughs. The little one chases pigeons on the beach. Only dinner goes wrong. All the restaurants are still closed and the frozen food from Lidl just sucks.
We reach our next destination for the day, Cartagena, almost without any problems after a good six-hour drive. The temperature in Andalusia briefly rises to over 30 degrees at midday. Unfortunately, these are precisely the moments when, after the winter, you realise that the air conditioning coolant has apparently been completely diluted once again. We make several stops at short intervals in the shade to cool the little one down.
The flat in the centre of Cartagena’s old town is huge and the pinchos in the evening delight the whole family. The little one sleeps quickly, long and well. Early in the morning, hundreds of purple Smurfs with plague caps suddenly wander through the alleyways right outside our flat. Road trips with a baby obviously steal almost everyone’s study time. If it weren’t for this, I would have already found out that Cartagena’s Easter parades are almost as bombastic and famous as those in Trapani, Sicily.
With police authorisation, we swing into the pedestrian zone in the car directly behind the procession and load up for the last stop of the trip. After a journey of just three and a half hours, we arrive in the cooler city of Granada, crossing mountain passes up to 1,400 metres high. This is where our A-levels trip took us 30 years ago. Seven heroes in a 13-year-old fire service bus. I only remember that our bus broke down at nearby Mulhacen. We travelled back to Germany by train.
So today I like to go and see the Alhambra again with my family. The little one can’t get enough of the water games in the parks. The last snow on the summit of Mulhacen shines into a clear spring day full of colourful flowers. Despite lots of input, little driving and lots of exercise, the little one spins her wheels for almost a whole hour in the evening. A faulty electronic lock on our hotel room door locked us out of our clothes and baby food several times today. I’m pretty much through.
The last part of the journey takes three and a half hours and a good 250 kilometres to our destination for the whole of April. When we finally drive through the hellishly heavy traffic from Malaga over the last hills before Tarifa, a huge weight falls from my shoulders. The feeling is reminiscent of “hooliganism with my parents at the age of five”. Pure happiness. Gratitude that everything went so well and that the little one and mum went along so well. The radio plays Arabic sounds from nearby Morocco. The sea boils in a strong wind. I stay tired for a whole week and don’t even manage to inform the mayor that his community is now harbouring the worm from Dune. He’ll realise when the whole beach has been eaten…
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.