My year 2020

The first month of 2020 I was working on a cruise ship as a photographer in a lovely team. We were sailing around the Canary Islands and had the best time of our lives entertaining guest and taking thousands of pictures. My contract ended in Februari. Before I could hop on my next adventure at sea I had to attend a training in Germany to learn about the basic safety duties on board. This was a one week training in Rostock where we learned how to prevent and act in case of emergencies. We had lots of fun during this one week training, at the end of the week I received my certificate and was now fully ready for my next contract working on board of literary cruise ships. 

For the fist time I was placed on one of the more luxury cruise ships. I just started my 5 month long contract, supposed to be sailing on the MS Europa 2 around Europe but only 7 days into the journey we got the announcement that the cruise got cancelled. Reason? COVID. Most ports wouldn’t allow cruise ships anymore to dock into the harbour and we ended up making a few detours before finally finding a port that would accept us to disembark all passengers and most of the crew on board. 

We spend a couple of days on board without guest in Honfleur, France. These days were really nice since all the food that had been prepared for the guest was now coming our way and we had a nice gathering with all of the crew in one of the restaurants on board. After 4 days of being on board without guests the company I worked for arranged my ticket home back to the Netherlands. There I was, home not knowing what to do and how this situation was going to develop. As maybe most of the people at that time I was thinking, and hoping, that probably with a couple of months against the summertime the ship would start sailing again and all of this would be over. But unfortunately as you might guess and know, this wasn’t the case. 

Since summer already started and the pandemic didn’t seem to come to an end, I decided to continue my dream of traveling and exploring the world. Working on ships wasn’t an option anymore and I had to find other work on land. However, this wasn't easy since most plans got cancelled last minute and the regulations were only getting stricter and stricter. Luckily I found a place to work abroad. I got hired and only a coupe of days later I found myself sitting in a train making my way to Austria. For the next 7 weeks I was working on a camping surrounded by mountains. It was a beautiful place with incredible views. Working on a camping might not have been the fanciest job of my journey but at least I could spend some time abroad, explore a new place and earn a little bit of money to save up for future travels.

During my time there we did hikes almost daily and also got the chance to go on a few half day tours around the place. I can assure you, hiking in-between the mountains is one of the best things to do when visiting Austria. 

Take a look at some of the vlogs I posted on YouTube 

https://youtu.be/agGWESKZZK0

https://youtu.be/rheMit2fODk

https://youtu.be/sNZK0Img0iQ

7 week later and my time in Austria had came to an end.  Not to worry I had already planned my next adventure and after a long train ride back home due to some delays I only had one week to repack my suitcase and head towards my next destination: Iceland.

Going to Iceland has been one of the best decisions I ever made.  For someone who really loves the nature,  this is the place to go to. Since it was still during the time of the pandemic most things in town were closed. Luckily that didn’t make a difference for me, I have always been more of the nature person than visiting the city person.  The main reason that there were hardly any tourist visiting Iceland at that time is because there was a quarantine requirement upon entering Iceland. This stopped a lot of people to visit Iceland and therefore with almost  every 'touristic' place I visited in Iceland I had the privilege of being all by myself, something that would never happen again if you ask me. Long story short I had the best time exploring Iceland and its surroundings, living with a lovely family, seeing the Northern Lights and meeting some amazing people.