Mission possible

(First published in Issue 4, February 2022)

We are Silvia and Borislav from Bulgaria, and we are traveling together with our two girls – Stella (age 4) and Zara (age 2) – in a Renault Espace. In the summer of 2021, we started our adventures in June, and by September, we had spent a total of 65 nights in our Renault. Our longest trip so far was 28 days, spanning over 2,000 km across Bulgaria. We are not new to van life; when we met 10 years ago, we started traveling in an old Volkswagen Passat. Later on, we owned an old Renault Trafic van, which eventually broke down completely, and finally, we bought our Renault Espace when Zara was born.

We have been looking for a bigger van for a while but have not been able to find something that fits our budget and layout wishes. So, currently, we make do with what we have. Our beloved Renault Espace does not have the comfort of a real campervan, but it fits both of us, our two children, and a kitchen. Well, alright, it’s a camping gas stove and some utensils. There are two sleeping areas on two levels – we sleep together with our 2-year-old on the floor in the back, and our 4-year-old sleeps on the "second floor," i.e., above the trunk. We pile up the two car seats from the back, along with the two child seats, compactly on the front passenger seat so that the back of the Renault is completely empty. It is time-consuming to convert the space for sleeping and then back to a space for traveling, but we do sleep quite comfortably. The main problem is that we are dependent on the weather, as we cook and eat outside. Unfortunately, this means that we can only travel during the summer.

Most people’s reaction to our way of travel is that they find it too difficult with two small kids. We cannot deny that van life with a toddler and a kindergartener can be quite challenging. However, oftentimes it is not much more challenging than being at home with them. Ever since we became parents, we have made it a priority to spend as much time in nature with our children as possible, and we believe that van life is the best means to achieve that. Through our travels, our children have had the opportunity to breathe the fresh air of the mountains and the salty breeze of the sea. We can see that they are gradually becoming strong, agile, and resilient by hiking, swimming, jumping on rocks, climbing trees, picking wild berries, playing in the sand and mud, and more.

Somewhere along our parenting journey, we decided we wanted to spend more time with our children, so we actually reduced our working hours to the minimum. With this comes a reduced budget, but we are quite happy to live a more minimalistic and sustainable life. In this way, we have time to travel and spend much more time together as a family. I (Silvia) speak four languages, so I work as a freelance translator and media analyst. I easily do this work on the road, especially considering the fact that the workload is less during the summer than it is in the winter (when we don’t travel anyway).

People often ask us how we entertain our children while traveling. When we are outside in nature, they actually entertain themselves pretty well, whether it’s playing in the sand at the seaside, gathering pine cones in the forest, playing with an old ladle found on the bank of a dam, or whatever else they find in nature. However, the difficult bits are when it is raining or when we are driving from one place to another. There are a couple of items that have really helped us keep our girls busy at such times, so we never leave on a trip without them. These are storybooks, markers and coloring books, and a Bluetooth speaker with a MicroSD card full of fairy tales.