I Drove to the Most Beautiful Country In Europe

This summer I'm going somewhere I've wanted to see my whole life. I left everything behind and started living on the road three years ago now and there is a chance that this might be the last summer I spent living like this. It's a strange feeling doing something for what could be the last time before another chapter starts. You start paying attention differently and you hold on to the small moments a little bit more tightly and I don't intend to waste a single one of them. This video was made possible by Quiberty. Good morning friends, I have made it to Sweden which is not my final destination on this summer road trip but I will be driving through here for the next few days and taking a break at this lake after a long journey from Italy to here. I think it was a thousand miles and the German motorways they just drag on and on and on because it's just driving in a straight line for hundreds of miles which is quite boring so yeah I need a bit of a break after that to recharge and just be in nature and have some peace and quiet. I am very excited to be in Scandinavia. It's my first time here in the camper van and my second time in total and the first time I was only really visiting the city so that doesn't really count. What has always drawn me to the northern European countries is that the rules around wild camping are very liberal here. There are so many places you can park up as long as you leave no trace of course and you don't park near residential homes. I was a bit anxious about going ahead with this trip. I planned it for a long time but as some of you will know I recently found a piece of land in Italy that I absolutely fell in love with and now I'm saving up for the deposit to hopefully buy it but then I arrive in Sweden and fuel is so cheap. It's like cheaper than it was in the UK before prices went up and I also feel like I spend a lot less money in places where wild camping is very easy because I tend to stay and park up for longer and visit less towns in between so hopefully that's gonna be the case because the country I am going to after Sweden is definitely more on the expensive side. Once I've recovered from the first leg of the journey I'm gonna drive up to central Sweden and join some summer solstice celebrations there. There's still quite a lot of pagan traditions here in Sweden and folk festivals in small towns so I'm really looking forward to that and I'm also pleased to report that I won't be traveling alone for about half of this summer trip and my travel companion is about to arrive at this park up in a few minutes so let's go meet him. What have you got in tow there? This is my boat, it's a sailing dinghy. It's a very small sailboat. It is a small sailboat but it's for me to basically get more practice sailing because I've only done a bit so I'm gonna take it around the fjords and lakes of Scandinavia. We are totally gonna fall into the It's treating me tonight. What are you treating me to babe? I'm treating you to southern fried cabbage which is kind of like an old classic. Yeah we do like southern fried cabbage and it's kind of like if you take the seasoning you would normally put on southern fried chicken and instead fried cabbage which sounds very vegan doesn't it? But it's super nice and American style pancakes and smoked tofu that will be sort of like really crispy so it'll be a little bit like smoked bacon but again quite quite vegan-y. And maple syrup. And maple syrup yeah. Oh yeah. Do you have maple syrup? I do have maple syrup. We've been taking a bit of a break from traveling by this lake. We were here for three nights and it's been so magical. We heard so many birds that we're unfamiliar with and we even think that we heard moose on two occasions but we're not 100% sure. It's time to continue our journey today and just to give you an idea of the scale of Sweden. The other day we drove three hours north and we barely made a dent in it. We're still very much in the south of Sweden and now we're going to drive seven hours over a couple of days to get to our next destination. So yeah it's a really big country. Risi has gone ahead and left a couple of hours ago because he's much slower than me with his trailer so I'm going to get ready and catch up with him. I've traveled through 10 different countries so far this year and one thing that is really important to me as someone who mostly travels solo is staying connected for safety, emergencies and staying in touch with my loved ones. Crossing borders and dealing with different phone providers can be a real pain when you're traveling but luckily I haven't had to deal with that in a long time thanks to today's sponsor Quiberty. Quiberty is the new face of esim.sm. They're the longest supporter of the channel and my travel data provider for more than a year now. It's exactly the same service and same quality as before just with a new look. Quiberty works in over 190 countries and the best thing about it is that everything is digital. There's no physical sim, no hunting for a phone shop in the nearest village and no contract. You just pick a plan, scan a QR code and you're connected in a couple of minutes. I'm on the global plan which covers 155 countries so whether I'm halfway up a valley, parked in the mountains or somewhere in between I'm not having to switch sims or lose connection at the border. And when you're somewhere remote reliable data isn't just convenient, it means having access to maps, the weather report and being able to message your loved ones if your plans change. If you want to try Quiberty you can get 15% off your travel esim with my code ROOTS15 and I'll also leave the link down in the video description. Normally we tend to avoid crowds of people and large events but it just so happened that the largest midsummer celebration in the world was happening en route to our destination. Every year around 30,000 people gather here in central Sweden to sing, dance and raise a 26 meter tall maple which takes about an hour because it's all done by hand the traditional way. At this point in summer it never truly gets dark in this area. The sun sets late at night and rises again at three in the morning with the hours in between lingering in a long blue twilight rather than full darkness. Our sleeping rhythm has been so wacky since we got to Sweden. Yeah I've been surprised by how much it's thrown me off. Yeah yeah it's just so light all night like it just doesn't get dark. Technically the sun goes down at like 11 and it comes up again at three but because that's just a few hours it just doesn't get dark at all. Yeah I've forgotten what the dark is like. There were a few times where like we were just hanging out and suddenly we look at the time and it's like 11 in the evening and it's still so light outside we think it's like seven in the evening and as a result we've just been going to bed super late and then waking up early as well and yeah it's definitely we're definitely getting used to it. It's nice though I feel like it gets easier every night to get used to the lack of darkness. Yeah if you were here for longer I guess you would sort of make more blackout blinds. Yeah your blinds are pretty gappy. Yeah I do need to get a sleep mask just to just to sleep through the night better but it is very magical. It is very cool to just like go outside at midnight and it's still light. Yeah. I am looking forward to driving further north and experiencing actual midnight sun. My favourite thing about summer is getting in the water and not getting cold shock anymore. It's still pretty cold though. Okay it's still pretty cold. I've been struggling a bit recently if I'm completely honest with you guys. I'm always quite tired when I do these long drives which is part of the reason we're taking our time and taking it very slow but also since we found our dream property we kind of said to ourselves we're going to work as hard as possible to save up the deposit and you know purchase that property which is our dream place and we could really see ourselves living there for the rest of our lives. So Rizzi is planning to increase his hours at work and I was planning to produce an extra video every month and let me tell you within the space of a week I got so incredibly overwhelmed and I had to realise that that just wasn't realistic for me and that I would have to sacrifice quality for the sake of quantity. For me my enjoyment of this creative work as well as my ability to create high quality videos really depends on my workload and I've just had to realise I'm not able to you know spend full-time hours creating these videos. I need space to breathe, I need space to feel inspired and witness the beauty all around me and that's really what inspires my work. And then I was feeling frustrated with myself because I can't put more work into pursuing our dream but I just have to trust that I'm doing the best I can and whatever happens will be the right thing to happen. I really don't subscribe to the productivity mindset and I really don't want to ruin this for myself because I find so much joy in documenting my life and sharing it with so many wonderful people. So I'm just gonna keep doing my weekly videos and just hope and trust in the process. And you know when you're already dealing with something and then a small little thing kind of tips you over and puts you in a bad mood and for me it's been the bloody mosquitoes here in Sweden. Sweden has so many insects, a lot of people always ask me how do you deal with insects living in a van. I don't actually feel like insects are a big problem, I don't get many but here in Sweden my goodness I guess they're so hardy because the are so cold they really come out in force during the summer. So that's been something we've had to deal with and it's just another thing you know. And I'm just so ready to continue our journey and drive very far north and also to a coastal area where there's less insects and spend the rest of the summer there. And I know once I keep moving I'm going to be in a much better mindset. So yeah just wanted to share because I'm not free of struggles and doubts and all of that kind of stuff but my way of dealing with these things is to just let myself feel the emotions you know and then move forward in a way that honours both my goals but also my physical and mental well-being. We had a few quiet days by the river which was much needed after all the driving we've been doing and now we're on our way to a waterfall. We're doing a hike in this national park I believe it's 10 kilometers and we're also visiting the world's oldest tree which I believe is 9 000 years old? Yeah something like that. Something like that. As we walked deeper into the woods we were joking about how much it reminded us of our old home in and how we had driven 20 hours just to end up in the same kind of landscape. But when you're actually standing in it it's unmistakably different. I have never breathed in such an intense forest smell before, the kind that fills your lungs completely and allows you to visualize the landscape with your eyes closed. Untamed forest for miles, waterfalls cascading over mossy rocks and ferns growing from the soft ground. Swedish waterfalls are home to a spirit called Nekken. Its Norwegian cousin the Fosse Kringman is a lot more famous. A young man who sits under the waterfall playing the music of the water and wind on a magic fiddle and teaching humans to play if they bring him an offering. The Nekken spirit in Sweden is more dangerous. A shapeshifter who lures people into the water and any tall Swedish waterfall is fair game for them. In Swedish folklore there is also a parallel invisible society living underground and alongside the human one and they are called Vittror. They are invisible most of the time and have their own cattle which are also invisible. They're distant and don't meddle in human affairs but they can be fearsome when enraged. You offend them by building too close to or on top of the homes disturbing the cattle or blocking the roads or by neglecting small courtesies like calling out a warning when you throw out hot water or relieve yourself in the woods so they have time to move out of the way. Even in modern times there are stories of people rebuilding or moving houses rather than blocking a Vittra way or leaving a house deemed a Vittraställe, a Vittra place, because of bad luck. One solution if you've built across their cattle path is to leave your doors and windows open at night so the Vittror can drive their herd straight through the house. But when they're treated well they're pretty generous. Vittror were said to borrow a farmer's cattle and return them able to give more milk as a sign of gratitude and if you stand in a Vittra pasture and listen closely during bad weather you can sometimes hear them talking and laughing. Look what we found! It's Heidi's favourite. Not wearing the right shoes for summer snow. Kind of small. So we have learned that it's not actually the tree that's 9 000 years old but the root system. So the tree is about 400 years old and when the tree dies it regrows from the root system which is just so magical. And scientists actually didn't know that it even existed until how many years ago? Like 20 years ago? And it's just been here peacefully sitting on this hill. Doesn't look like much but it's a very impressive being to behold. I think my favourite thing about travelling on land is that you end up in countries you wouldn't normally choose to visit. Not because there's anything wrong with them but because their neighbours just draw you in more. Sweden is definitely one of those countries for me and I'm so glad we got to spend some time here because it really is a fairyland even if the mosquitoes and horseflies tried their hardest to eat us alive. And after a couple of weeks it was finally time to move on to my real destination for the summer.