The difficulties of Blogging on the road

To start the article here, I’d like to summarise it with three statements:
First: It is much harder than I thought regarding securing the right kind of footage.
Second: Its frustrating from time to time.
Third: I never thought that the technical aspect of it would be so limited from time to time.

Getting the right kind of footage:
Believe me, when I tell you that what you see on the blog is just a tiny part of the things I have experienced during the journey so far. I am not traveling solo from time to time I have either company in my own car, and at the time I’m writing this I am with my sister and her boyfriend. So things are kinda logical here. When traveling with another van or person, I just cannot stop and take a stroll off to take some pictures of interesting things I see on the road. This would only be annoying as hell while traveling since the effort of finding the right place to stay can sometimes take hours in the evening.

Montenegro coastal road
Just, for example, we found a place on a Greek beach which seemed right, just some garbage on the floor as its always the case on the coastline. A single fisherman at the shore which we had a little chat with. We asked him if this is a good place to sleep in a car overnight and he plainly told us that during the day the place was beautiful but at night it’s a well-known spot for drugs and sex.
Knowing a little bit about both matters is that it’s not the most pleasant thing to be in the range of people doing their stuff. I’m perfectly fine with people smoking weed beside me since they are the last ones who are out for trouble. There’s a sentence I remember: Show me ten potheads, and I’ll show you ten people who will not be out for trouble. That being said tho I think everyone knows that not all substances work the same way and some will be just merely plain stupid, aggressive or some lousy mix. So after looking for a right spot we decided to move on again which will cost you precious time and can be challenging and exhausting.
Sometimes we just arrive at a reasonable spot when the sun is already set and the time is not enough to get both, stress relief and pictures.
Another perfect example of things to share and not being able to be the drive through Albania, Tirana in specific. And don’t get me wrong here, I don’t want to judge or pretend that I always stop, at each and every stop sign. But the traffic there was the most random thing I saw in my entire life. I must hasten to add that as an Austrian citizen the traffic I am used to is pretty straightforward: A few suckers and most drivers behave on the road. Like everywhere, at least I thought. Oh boy, was I wrong!

Tirana traffic

Tirana was basically the most stressful drive I’ve ever had. The rules are simple: The stronger one, or the one with more balls drives first. Markings on the ground are just for goodwill, but I drove through a road with three lanes marked on the ground. I drove in the forth of five actual alanes of cars. Scooters still made their way in S-lines through the cars which did their stop and go thingy. I would have liked to take pictures and videos of this carnage, but I was busy as hell. So without someone on the second seat, no footage, just experience.
My sister managed to get a few shots, but I don’t think the Impression you get from them can come somewhat close to the real deal.

The frustration:
It is between both things, not being able to get the footage I want from time to time and the technical aspect plays another part in the equation. Knowing, that you will not get to show some things while experiencing them is just one part of it. Like standing at the border from Montenegro to Albania. A little girl, I’d estimate on about seven years of age, walking from car to car begging for money. In my mirrors, I could see what I thought to be her father giving signs at which car to ask. After seeing her father collecting the loot from her, I did not want to give her money, which was all I had access to from the driver seat.
After the border, all the same with a wheelchair driver almost blocking the road. That scene, I will remember for a long time, not knowing the background of those people and if it was correct to turn them down. I’m not the richest person, but I am also not the neediest person when it comes to everyday money. I’m just careful since I gave a beggar a few euros once, who got a phone call he answered next to me on an iPhone 6, while the prepaid phone in my pocket at the time was a ten euro phone from a local supermarket.
I’m getting off topic here. It would be nice to stop, talk and help out a little while taking a few pictures and reporting the situation there. I merely didn’t, since a story can only be told if you have some facts in hand. Just uploading an image of a begging girl at the border would not do.
I think everyone will get the point by now even if I could sit here, writing a whole day about this kind of stuff.

On the road through Albania

The technical aspect:
Straightforward thought at first but wait, there’s more to it. I am a pretty nerdy guy and use my computer and phone a lot these days. From google maps to look for excellent locations and beaches over company websites to get the other spare part for the van to googling stuff and navigation tools while driving. So get a local sim card, create a hotspot, and you are fine. Well, in most cases.
Just to get you in the right kind of numbers here, I’d like to point out that I had an unlimited Internet sim card in Croatia which did cost me 11 Euros a week. I spend 65 GB of data in this week. Now, in Greece, I found that there’s no such thing as an unlimited data sim card. I have a card which provides me with 10 GB a month for 10 Euros. I can, however, top it up online but use 1,5 GB a day at most and the service is limited to 45 GB a month maximum. So it is expensive and defines the services I use severely.
So don’t use the Internet so much and…. blah blah blah – Oh shut up, will ya? These days new operating systems have been introduced to both my phone and my computer which directly translates to lots of GB worth of updates for each and every app, sometimes you just can’t use them until you bring them up to date. And as always they get patched and patched and patched. I never thought of this madness when I was in Austria or Ireland for that matter since I had unlimited Internet for reasonable prices in both countries, but now it’s a different kind of thing.
On top of that, I encountered a new thing on the blow, which I was not aware of. I was pretty much used to do regular work. Continuing where I left of and so on. But the moment you power up the PC, open the site and see, the two-hour article you prepared merely has vanished is a quite sour one.
It has been so far, that I did already think to myself about giving up the blog at some moments.

The final thoughts about this blog, however, are quite clear: I do get better as the time continues regarding expectations as well as the technical aspects. When you are prepared that the article will crash, for example, you save a draft on a document on your PC and things like that. More complicated but worth it in the end.
Seeing people read through it helps as well to motivate myself continuing the blog. I think it is, in fact, the main reason to keep the blog going besides the fact that I can somewhat get around the duty, to report my friends and family that I’m okay and have them be a part of the adventure as well.

Thank you for reading! Much appreciated!