1.620 Euros, 30 hours of practice, 8 months in the making. Overall a lot of stress, a cult of driving, and many profit-driven attitudes.

Before I begin let me tell you that I filmed some stuff in these months, took notes, screenshots, and what-not, and all of these will result into a video about this situation but also about why tests in general may be a terrible idea. I’d suggest subscribing to our TROM Peertube channel because it will be posted there.

This is me in mid-december 2023, almost a year ago, with the driving manual trying to learn for my driving exam:

I was clueless about what was awaiting me for the next months.

I am in my mid 30s and never had a driving license. When I was at the ripe age of getting one, my family had no money and I was also too depressed to care about it. Since then I never really needed a driving license but since we plan to buy a motorhome at the end of this year and live full time in-it, I need one.

I am originally from Romania but I’ve been living in Spain for more than a decade. Since I barely speak any Spanish, however I do understand quite a lot, I thought what if I can do the driving school in English here in Spain… My Reddit-Research told me that this is a terrible idea since the translations from Spanish to English are bollocks, and on top of that the driving school in Spain is an absolute pain.

Before that I was tempted to go for the exam without even going through a driving school. There are some companies that provide online materials and help. But of course it is nearly impossible to make an appointment for the real exam, and now I know way too well how you have no chances to get your driving license without getting “enrolled” in an “autoescuela” (driving school).

So autoescuela it is.

I went and asked a few driving schools if I can do it in English. All told me that in theory yes, but the translations are garbage and the practice lessons can only be done in Spanish. I said I wanted to give it a try. How bad can the English be!? I had to pay a few hundreds of euros to enroll. They gave me a bag with a manual in Spanish, a pen, and a calendar 🙂

They also gave me access to the online materials. They were all in Spanish but had a Google Translate widget to allow you to translate into English. Wow. I thought at least some human may have translated the books into English since they provide these courses in English, but no…Google-Fucking-Translator.

Laughable translations, insane amount of stuff to remember.

I have red the entire manual in this googlish english, trying to figure things out. Luckily there were many pictures and I also know a bit of Spanish, so I could decipher it. I also had a physical manual in Spanish that I could use from time to time.

But the amount of stuff in this manual was overwhelming regardless of the language. Many kinds of vehicles, many rules depending on the vehicles, depending on the road, on the circumstances.

If on a narrow road that has no priority signs a car with a trailer meets a moped, who has priority? How about a motorhome and a truck? An animal driven carriage and a car? Two trucks? A donkey or a sheep? Fuck me, these people are mental! How about if this narrow road is inclined? These are things you really have to know! Ok except the donkey vs sheep, but the rest are real questions for the exam.

And since this B license in Spain also allows you to drive some kind of motorcycles, you get to learn all about motorcycles including how much a load can hang laterally on a motorcycle, what kind of helmets or gloves are recommended, when do you have to go with it for the technical inspection, how to lube the exhaust pipe :), and a fuck ton more.

You’ll have to know what kind of drugs give you what symptoms, and since I never used drugs I got to now learn about them. Made me curious indeed! The irony is that someone who uses drugs would do better at answering these questions that could fail me…get it!?

You have to learn about a million signs that you’ll never get to see in reality…

It is an absolute madness. It was clear to me that I can only remember some of these temporarily to pass the exam. No brain can do more than that. I’ve heard that there are around 12.000 questions for the Spanish language and some 4.000 in English. For the theory exam you’ll get 30 questions and you are not allowed to make more than 3 mistakes.

The theory questions. An absolute gem of a fuckery.

So now that we have a mountain of information, most of which absolutely irrelevant, imagine compiling questions out of that mountain in the most fucked up English possible. There is no way they have used automated translators for these, since they are so bad it looks intentional. Let me show you, and mind you these are the official practice tests I got from the driving school.

Here are a few more:

This was shockingly bad. Imagine trying to memorize these!

I was doing loads of these tests a day, and in the first month I felt like I cannot do it anymore. But I powered through it and after 2 months of daily tests, I felt ready to go for the exam.

The theory exam.

Not much to say about that. I simply went with the driving instructor and a few other students to whatever place you have to take the exam, you sit in front of a computer in a class with a lot of people, and start the exam. Basically do one of those retarded tests and hope to not fail more than 3 questions. Honestly I was quite confident that I will pass it since I prepared for 2 months.

To my surprise the exam test was not terribly translated into English, but then I got 3 questions about signs for buses and trams, and I was unsure if I answered them correctly.

I came home unconvinced that I passed. Around 6pm I could check the results online. I PASSED! Just 1 wrong answer! Wow I was so happy and I thought that the hardest part is gone!

I was dead wrong! Like, fucking wrong!

Practice tests….when?

19 of February I passed the theory exam. Now I am told the practice will start at the end of May…. So crazy. More than 3 months to wait…

I practiced driving with Sasha for quite a bit. Luckily it was off season and we have plenty of offroad nearby to practice.

Sasha was a great instructor. She would even give me chocolate treats when I’ll drive well :).

I got the hang of it pretty fast. Change gears, control the car, reverse, and all that. But let me say this: manual transmission in cars is one of the most stupid inventions. You have to learn how to press the pedals, which ones, the intensity, to then change the gears, learn the sounds of the engine, look at the RPMs, and all that. You can’t just accelerate or brake, you have to do a sequence of things in order to get that car to start or stop. Automatic car transmissions should be the norm worldwide by now….

But anyway, I got the hang of it. Or so I thought.

The cult business of driving.

Beginning of June. My first driving lesson. I got to learn that I am doing everything wrong. I got “schooled” by the instructor about controlling the car. It does not matter if you know how to drive it matters to do so in the way they ask you to. The first 10 lessons I got to realize that very intensively. You can park perfectly fine, but they won’t let you so unless you do it the exact way they teach you how.

If you dare to drive over the straight middle line, even for a few cm on narrow streets where it’s virtually impossible to avoid that, they will make you feel as if you have killed 18 baby kangaroos and 3 koalas. Don’t you dare to not stop at a stop sign, even if you see it clearly that it is safe to continue at very low speeds. More to that, when you stop wait 3 seconds before you start. I kid you not I was scorned one time because I only stopped for 2 seconds instead of 3. And did you know that in Spain they have the doble-stopado :)? The double stop. You stop for 3 seconds at the stop line, then if not enough visibility move forward a bit and stop again for 3 more seconds. Needless to say that they can fail you if you do or not do the double stop depending on the situation. Or if you move too much forward and do it.

Example in the image bellow. You come from the right side in this intersection (the way you look at the image). You can continue forward or left. There is a stop sign for you. You stop at the first red line I drew in the image. But there is no visibility to your right side where cars are coming from. In the summer that part that I circled with red is full of cars. Can’t see a thing.

So the instructor wants me to do a second stop around the second red line then look through the cars’ windows for the upcoming traffic since that second stop is also sketchy! WTF

Trust me you cannot see….a car coming from the side where you are supposed to look for cars can’t even see you stopped at the second stop. This is what they will see:

Spain is full of these situations. You can so easily bump into another car. Plus they want you to not stop too much into the intersection to make the incoming vehicles change speed or direction.

Point is they want you to drive perfectly while you are faced with mostly imperfect situation like this. You never do anything right. You drive too slow, too fast, too much to the right, too much to the left, you change the gears too soon, too early, too fast, too slow….It seems like they are never satisfied. But I think it makes sense when they run a business and their incentive is for you to get more lessons. It is so obvious actually.

I kid you not she would force me to drive 2 km within the speed limit. Like if the speed limit is 50 drive between 48 and 52. If it is 90, drive 88 to 92. She was so keen about that I ended up looking at the speedometer too much for anyone’s safety.

30 years of driving, not enough!

One of the students was a 50 something years old from Cuba. I did 2 practice lessons with him. In our stupid society of papers it does not matter if you already know how to drive and have a driving license. If Spain does not recognize that piece of paper you have to do the entire ritual like any new driver. So if you come from USA, Cuba or so many other tribes, and wanna live in Spain, you have to do the practices and exams. Just like any new student. How insane!

So this guy had his driving license for 30 years. Drove a lot. And yet he “could not drive” according to the instructor. He struggled to unlearn how to drive and do it all the exact way the instructor dictates. He was so stressed…poor guy. Many like him come from poor countries to work in Spain and they probably need a driving license for their job. To treat them so badly, make them lose all confidence….it is terrible.

This is a video with him under the pressure of driving – (all english subtitles are auto-translated but I checked them and are mainly accurate):

The guy took several lessons and then never came back. I remember when he last left….he took his seat-belt off, got out of the car, slightly smashed the door, and left saying nothing. I was sure he won’t come back.

Everyone was under a tremendous amount of stress. This is a girl who eventually failed the exam. She too looked so lost while driving because of the pressure the instructor puts on you.

I was calling the instructor “the Bear” since she looked kinda rough and tough 🙂 and her voice always felt heavy on you somehow :D. The Bear would grab your steering wheel at times in a very aggressive manner, despite no one being in any danger. Just to “prove” a point. I caught a few on camera. This is another student:

See how she was screaming at students? It is a very uncomfortable situation since there isn’t much you can do. She was not always like that but for sure everyone was overly stressed because of her attitude.

I started to realize that the Bear won’t let me get away with just 10 lessons as I was hopping in the beginning. I thought in the worst case scenario I’ll do 20 hours. But I ended up with 30 hours of practice because it was never good in her pockets eyes the way I or anyone else was driving. All other students were clocking easily over 40-50 lessons already.

I also tried at times to poke at the Bear and say the obvious, in my almost non-existent spanish. Here I was trying to say that it is impossible to drive the way she asks us to:

Of course she said it is impossible to drive perfectly but trust me she would ask us to do so….

Here I was trying to say how difficult this driving school is compared to other schools:

But yah, at the end of the day it is a business. She jokingly mentioned at times about how bad other people drive and how no one respects the rules, including her past students that now have driving licenses. What sane human would continue to “teach” others how to drive when you know the day after they get the license they’ll never drive the way you taught them!? But when this is “your job”, you get the cash, go buy some stuff. What else matters!?

This is the trade-society we live in. We do stuff not for the sake of the stuff we are doing, but to trade for something else we need or are made to want. Terrible incentive and end result.

Anyway…

30 hours of practice, the lower end of the spectrum.

I settled for 30 hours of practice maximum. I explained to the Bear that I cannot afford more. She was not that happy. We practiced more, and most of the time I’d come home super tired and with big headaches. I was taking a stomach pill before the practice and a headache pill after. One to not shit myself, and one to be able to sleep :))).

Here’s me waiting for the Bear Practices:

I can’t emphasize to you how stressful this entire thing was for me. I could barely sleep the night before the lessons, I thought nonstop about this fucking driving, and when driving I felt like doing an exam for 2 hours. We drove 2 hours, and 2 more hours sitting in the back observing the other student (I called the students rabbits). The Rabbits were terrified, the Bear furious and ready to eat you alive.

The Bear was a very bad teacher overall. If you read this, I am sorry but this is the truth. She would put you in sketchy situations to fail you, then tell you how bad you failed. “The signs are not visible here” I say. “You are right” she said, “but you need more practice to learn these routes, memorize them.”. She was spitting Euro signs while talking. At one point I directly told her that she is there to help me not to trick me. So, please, help me. She was a bit more helpful after I said that. Like wtf she should be there not to criticize you and fail you, but to actively teach you how to safely drive….

To be fair she taught me some good things too. And at times we could have sane and relaxed conversations. But overall the situation was super stressful and I consider her a bad teacher.

A language issue. Big one.

Spanish, English, Catalan!?

My theory exam was in english, but now the entire practice was in spanish. I understand some spanish, but not that well. Now imagine you are in traffic and she gives you a command saying “park in the left side behind the blue car”, but all you can understand is “park/stop in the left/right side behind/in front of the whatever the color she means car”. So I would not know what to do. By the time I tried to ask what she meant, and her to explain, I would fail the command. She did try to help a lot, I’ll give her that.

So for me it was way more difficult than it was for the others who spoke spanish. A lot lot lot more. Translating spanish “commands” while trying to control a car in traffic, is not an easy task at all for someone who never drove before.

What’sUpWithTheCatalans!? – WUWTC

Speaking of spanish, in this region people also speak catalan which is quite different from spanish. For the past years we felt a lot of anger coming from the “catalan people” towards anyone who does not speak catalan. A turmoil, a blanket of anger, a way to force the catalan language into survival mode by treating the rest with a lot of disrespect. I am currently writing an article/book about this situation and culture in general, but I’d say this:

Most of the time I would be in the car with another Rabbit who would refuse to speak spanish. They only spoke catalan despite telling them I only understand spanish. Mind you they all speak spanish perfectly fine. Since I had to spend 2 hours every practice day in the back of the car paying attention to the other Rabbit and signs and all that as the Bear instructed me to, the conversation between the Rabbits and the Bear was important. So speaking a language that not all understand despite being able to speak one that everyone does, is a sign of disrespect at best. I’d call it douchebaggery. But we kinda got used to this attitude from the “catalans” so we try to ignore “them”. Sorry for the generalization I am sure there are many nice “catalans” out there and I understand there is a cultural frustration among them. But this is fucked up regardless.

So overall the language situation was very difficult for me. You wonder….everyone in Spain learns english in school for many years, how come no one knows english here!? Hm…is school that useless? I guess so.

The Business. The EXAM!

Speaking of school and how useless it is. A few days before the exam the Bear was informed about what routes we will take for the exam day. It is like in school when they give you 50 main subjects to learn from for the exam, only to tell you 3 days before the exam day what subject you’ll be examined from.

So we practiced those routes a few days before the exam. We were also told that the examiner would first ask us a question, like how to turn on the high beam, where are the car’s registration papers, what fruit are the tires tasting like? 🙂 So she explained us all of these a day before the exam and while we were driving to the exam, so to not forget them because she said that everyone forgets these so quickly that she has to tell the Rabbits shortly before the exam.

You wonder, again, what is this whole thing about? After all of those thousands of questions for the theory exam, after tens of hours of driving practice on so many different routes…and now this!

Who goes last?

We were 3 Rabbits that would go for the exam. One Rabbit failed 4 times already and had countless of driving practices under her belt. Less money under the same belt for sure. Probably she spent thousands considering an hour of practice is 40 Euros and the Bear wants you to do 40-50 hours before the exam. You do the math!

We had 3 possible routes. The failed Rabbit was asked to choose first. She wanted to be second in line. The other Rabbit wanted to be first to “get over with it”. I was last. Last for the day, last before the August summer break in Spain when all spaniards hibernate.

The day has come, I only slept some 3-4 hours. I was less nervous than I should have been. I was already 8 months into the torture, minus 1.600 Euros. It was time to give birth.

I knew that it is so easy to fail, for the smallest kind of mistake. We did several exam simulations with the Bear and we all failed them multiple times. I also asked the Bear if most students fail and she said yes, most fail on the first try. Something I’ve heard multiple times in Spain.

I also knew that if I fail I would have to wait 2-3 months before I can re-do the exam. Plus I would need more driving lessons. OF COURSE MISS EUROBEAR!

On top of this we would have to move at the end of November out of Spain or somewhere else in Spain.

So if I would fail, I would be totally fucked.

But I put in my mind that I will fail so to not be too destroyed if I do. I knew that statistically I am more likely yo fail. I already found a place in the south of Spain where Rabbits migrate to get the driving license with a saner “autoescela”. “Takes a week and costs 450 Euros” one of the Rabbit told me.

37 degrees outside and waiting for my turn.

A bunch of Rabbits under the pale shade of some trees, waiting in heat and fear. Honestly I was not that scared. I accepted that I will fail. My turn came, the examiner seemed like a nice guy.

How do you turn on the high beam he asked me? I showed him!

And we went! But fuck! The route I practice was not the one he gave me. There was a slight 10% change that my exam route would be different, the Bear told me. Fuck! We were going towards the center of the town. Bad bad bad!

I will tell you now briefly the “bad” mistakes I made, as explained to me after the exam was over.

When I started I stopped twice at this stop sign to go to the left:

I did that because I wanted to be sure… I was told it was not necessary…

Here is a badly marked intersection and I had to go to he left:

I first stopped where I put that red block because of the stop sign, and I was told I stopped too early. I stopped again closer to the intersection to make sure no car is coming from the left. So 2 stops in a badly, or not at all marked intersection.

I caused no inconvenience for anyone.

At a roundabout I entered from the left lane, totally legal, then switcher lanes in the roundabout to the right to then exit it. They said I did it a bit dangerously.

And in this situation I had to go to the left. There was a green light and I went:

All good but I was told I didn’t look in the left and right sides to see if I am ok to turn in case anything comes from those sides. In the right they had red, in the left was no one. Whatever. In the end I did it ok.

Lastly I had to do this left turn:

Someone was crossing the street so I stopped before the crosswalk. All good, but the examiner did not see the man crossing so he thought I just stopped for a bit… That’s on the examiner but it counts as a lost point.

After the exam the Bear was criticizing me a lot. She said she would not pass me. On the way back home she was insisting I get more driving lessons. I said let’s wait for the results and we talk after.

I had to wait till 6PM to see the results. I was checking the website every 10 minutes. Because of the Bear I thought I did not pass. Then I saw APTO! Meaning I passed!

I lost some 7 points out of 9. So I PASSED! Fuck you Bear! 🙂

That’s fucking it!

I was so happy that the torture is over and now I have this driving license for life. I also quickly got to realized that now I have to re-learn how to drive. Yah…. The car we used for the autoescela had all sorts of driving assist features, like if you are on a hill and want to start and drive, the car will help you out. Clutch in the middle, wait 3 seconds, and it starts. Try to do that with many other cars that have no such feature and you’ll slide backwards like a lubed turtle. That car also had no hand break…. So yah I had to re-learn how to drive now.

And in a typical spanish-slow-sloth manner they said I will get my driving license in 3 months :)). Hard to print a bloody plastic thing ha?! To my shock I have received it a few days ago, almost after 3 months of waiting. Shocking that it was not delayed further.

For the past months I was able to drive because I had a printed paper saying that I am waiting for the “real” license.

All in all this is a big bullshit ritual all because of money. In no sane society people would engage in this bullshit if they were to do it for the purpose of the work they do. Never.

Also, if we rely on cars for transportation, which is primitive, then at least all schools should teach children how to drive, for free.

Oh, and the first time I went out with the car after getting my license, I broke my middle finger while trying to Tarzan on a rope into a pool of water. I had to drive back with a hand and a half, for an hour.

My driving experience now is been like that. But I dedicate this broken finger to the autoescuela business!

Now that the bullshit is done, I do not want to hear about the driving rules and nonsense. I forgot 90% of all I learned from the driving school. I also suspect not too many people complain about this ridiculous situations since most Rabbits are young ones, freshly produced by a mandatory school with nonsense rules that you have learn to respect. They are used with respecting bullshit, so autoescuela is for them yet another thing they need to pass and then move on.

After a few months of driving now, I realize even deeper how bullshit the driving school is. You learn to drive, and learn the signs, while you are driving.

Now I am eager to drive a motorhome and start a new kind of life….

I will probably close the gofundme campaign for TROMhome soon. It was likely not a good idea and we are getting no support anyway. We are going to buy the motorhome ourselves and manage the money situation somehow. Problem is after we buy it we will have around 900 Euros all of our money and at best 400 Euros a month from then on. It is a mystery how we will move forward with that, but we’ve been in a lot of financial shit over the years so we will find a way. I hope.

The best support is the 200 for TROM https://www.tromsite.com/donate/ – just 5 Euros a month max per person, to distribute the financial pressure on people and make this sustainable. It is damn hard to reach any of these goals that are stretched at the extreme low end of the needed support, but at this point I am tired of it all, so I accept whatever it is. If we cannot support ourselves financially I may shut down some of the TROM.tf services and move the project to a cheaper server. Will see…

So I am bouncing around in my head these days between extreme excitement about the motorhome, and terrible concern about what we do after we buy it.

I am also very eager to create more stuff for TROM, content wise, but well these next months I will be busy with the motorhome life.

I am trying to not let these failures with the gofundme campaign or 200 for TROM destroy my thin layer of motivation that has been getting thinner and thinner over the years. In a way I feel like an old man retiring after many years of work. In the sense that TROM had a lot of traction in the beginning, then I pushed a lot with TVP, I made books, articles, videos, managed many “social” networks, whatever, and now for the past few years I got tired of being fucked by these “social” networks who won’t even show your posts to your followers, so I retreated myself into the fediverse. Friendica, Peertube, and the like. Losing even further the little reach we had. But I love these places, they are cozy and sane.

However I have no clue if anyone is still interested in TROM or these sort of projects. Even the few people who got to be active and involved and we became good friends because of TROM, got sucked into the system.

I have great friends now, super exciting plans with the motorhome, but I don’t have TROM that much. TROM is a side dish, after it was the main meal for many years between me and the people I got to know online.

As you can see, the “old man retiring” blabbing about the past. But in the thing is that TROM is as relevant as it was 10 years ago. The “trade as the origin of most problems” I think is one of the most important ideas out there. The content that we’ve made, the projects that are still alive, are all very relevant. It’s just that this society sucks everyone in. Jobs, netflix, wars, elections, money, stress, day to day bullshit, consume, ads….hard to focus on TROM-like things.

But anyway, I will let the TROMhome project become part of my life, or vice-versa, and I am not giving up on TROM anytime soon. I have a lot more to do, but at times it helps me vent, so I let my brain share bits of my frustration into the interweb, almost like a modern prayer 😀 – maybe someone is listening, or cares, or doesn’t. I certainly don’t care, it simply helps me to write :D. I used to keep an offline journal years ago for such reasons, and this is similar, but well….public since it has a lot to do with the many public projects I am doing.

Ok.

https://tromhome.com is now live! But what is it about?

This is the motorhome that we want:

I drew that in Inkscape from one of the motorhomes we are looking at to buy.

It is around 6 meters long, so a small one for a motorhome. I think the smallest you can find is 5 meters. But we want to have a proper bathroom with a separate shower, and another place in the back where we can make a desk/room. The inside layout is so important for us and I will share more about it soonish when I’ll make more videos about this new adventure.

But basically we are about to start something completely new and exciting. Maybe a bit concerning for me.

A Dog and a Wolf

All of my life I lived in 3 places. 2 in Romania and 1 in Spain for the past 14 or so years. I like stability and comfort. I want to have my own private place to hide from the rest of the world and do TROM-like projects, read and watch about the world, learn and stay away from normality. I need my room, my laptop, my internet connection, my privacy. I am a house dog….that’s the truth.

Yah I like to go out, but mostly, if not mainly, in nature. I hate crowds, big cities, “going for a drink”, and stuff like that. Sure I can do them thrice a month max, but anything else is causing me a mountain-weight of stress.

The thing is that unless I’d live by myself I cannot achieve this kind of life. Living with my parents or other people in the same place is not fun at all for me.

But for the past 4-5 years I’ve been sharing my room, my place, my privacy and my internet connection with Sasha :D. Surprisingly it worked and I quickly felt very comfortable with her around. But we had to move with our parents for the past few years since we were broke. So that sucked.

But Sasha is a wolf. She does not care as much about the “cage” she lives in. She wants the outside. Mountains, trees, waterfalls, surfing.

So how can a dog and a wolf live together?

A MOTORHOME. A home that we can take with us to different places. 🙂

This is my dream! To be able to have a comfortable and familiar “cage” (house), with a comfy bed, with a kitchen and a fridge where I have food, with a bathroom and a shower, with a little space for me to work on my computer. With an internet connection, power from the sun, and big enough inside to feel like small home, yet small from outside to feel like a big car when driving. This way we can go places, stop for a few days, work on my projects, feel safe and comfortable in this house on wheels, while also go out for some walks and hikes with the wolf to see some cool nature places. 🙂

That’s the dream!

If we are broke how can we to buy one?

A decent motorhome that is around 20-24 years old is some 20.000 Euros. We usually live month by month with very little money. But for the past two years thanks mostly to Sasha who worked a lot, we manage to save some money. Actually 2 years ago I would have not imagined that we would have the money to buy a motorhome. But sharing the living expenses with my parents helped a lot, plus the donations I got for TROM. Basically the donations helped us eat and maybe pay some bills, and Sasha’s money payed for the rent, around 230 Euros our part, and the rest we could save.

We were also able to get some unemployment money from the government for a few months.

We are really cheap people. We dont buy anything that’s not needed, we don’t go out almost at all, we rarely buy clothes, or I think never. Sasha gets all of her clothes from my sister who has more than she needs (right Georgi!?). On top of this my parents kindly gave us 2.000 Euros for the motorhome.

So we think that by the end of this year we would have around 20.000 Euros in savings. And that sounds like we are rich, but we will become poor very fast, again. This amount of money is unfortunately not enough and it is ALL of the money we would have.

Why not rent a place?

After working in Spain for 17 years my parents will retire and go back to Romania. Therefore I and Sasha need to move anyway. Renting a place somewhere is very expensive and it means we will have to make a lot of money constantly. Plus Sasha cannot stay in the same place anymore….the wolf needs to go. And I also want to try something new, to see other places.

Because of visas, documents and the bullshit paperworld, even if we wanted to move to cheaper place in other European countries, to rent something, it would not be very feasible. Probably impossible. Plus we really do not want that. And renting in Spain would cost you at least 400 or so Euros a month, plus water, electricity, gas, or other bills, it is expensive. And 400 Euros a month is a super cheap place that is hard to find in Spain.

The type and costs of a motorhome.

Currently we are eyeing 3 motorhomes. So to give you an idea…

This one is from 2003. It looked ok but had some water infiltration inside that was never fixed. This is not good. People say water infiltration for motorhomes is like cancer.

It costs 20.000, has one solar panel but not a great power system and we need one. The fridge didn’t seem to work that well and were other things that were kinda “meh”….

This is the one that I like the most, granted we didn’t see it in reality and that’s crucial. We will see it on Tuesday:

Costs around 20.000 but the price is negotiable. I am quite sure we could get it for 19.000, but would be excellent if we could for 18.000. It is from 2001 and it too had water infiltration but in the back from the bike-rack and they said they fixed it.

It has no solar panels and such, but I learned how to do it myself and I think with 1.000 Euros we can get a very good system in place. The owners had it since 2011 and that’s super important for me. You want to buy from some people who used the motorhome and took care of it.

This next one is expensive at 22.500:

From 2003. Price negotiable. Has a good power system in place with solar power and big batteries. But even in the photos it looks a bit messed up inside. We are yet to see this one. Did not have water infiltration the owner said. At very best you could probably get this for 21.000….but may not even drop it so low.

All of the three have a very similar layout because we really want this layout.

The bed on top of the driving seats:

It is a huge double bed. 2m long and 1.5m wide. As huge as the bed we have now. Granted Sasha takes 70% of it despite being 60% my size….

Having a bed on top like that frees a lot of space in the rest of the motorhome. I cannot accept a motorhome that does not have this. And it is not as tight as you may think…

Moving on, all have the dinette area like most motorhome do, where you can sit and eat, or whatever .. work on your computer. Feels like sitting in a nice train 🙂

These two features many motorhomes have, but the next not many. A bunk bed in the back:

They look like this:

We want to create an office out of this space. This is really important for us. But this office to also be able to convert into a bed because we want to take some friends with us too for a few days, whenever we all can :).

All of the motorhomes on our list have this layout.

So we think one of these could be ok for us. The price can be anywhere from 18.000 to 22.000. I think we cannot afford one that’s more than 20.000 tho…

Other costs.

If we buy the one without the solar panels and a power system, we need to invest at least 1.000 Euros into putting one. Even those that have it need at least more solar panels for our needs if we are to work on our computers. We also need Internet and that opens up a new set of can of worms…but let’s say it would cost us some 4-500 Euros as a one time antenna payment plus a monthly subscription.

We need to buy a new and different toilet that costs 900 Euros….yah….took me a year to convince myself about that. Crazy expensive….I won’t tell you more now, wait for the videos about it. It is worth it tho! Actually without it it would be really difficult to live full time in such a house on wheels.

We need insurance and since my driving license is so new it would cost a lot. I hope no more than 1.500 Euros.

We need to perhaps fix some stuff with the motorhome, buy new things, or what not. And on top of this have at least 1.000 Euros saved for emergency needs since with a car you NEED that.

In total.

18.000-20.000 Euros for the motorhome plus some 5.000 in extra spendings. As I said we may have 20.000 at the end of this year, but we need those extra things for sure. This is why we made a Gofundme campaign.

Why a Gofundme?

I really didn’t want to make any campaign anymore. I hate these already….for the past 10+ years I made several campaigns and for the last few years many failed to achieve their goal. Like when I tried to get the money to work on TROM II….and I understand. How much longer can people help you!?

But a few friends convinced me to make one, and since we really do not have enough for a motorhome but we are so close to that, I said why not…although I feel kinda terrible for making it.

I was settled for 5.000 for the campaign then decided to put 7.000 since I got scared about what we do after we buy the motorhome and all it needs. Now I put it to 5.000 and will leave it as such. Scared or not, even 5.000 is a lot of money that I do not think we will get anyway…

See the campaign here.

I do not think we will raise that much money to be honest, but if we do I would be over the moon happy. Even if we do not succeed with this campaign, we will buy a motorhome somehow. We will borrow money and will see….We have to.

Actually it is a big big mystery about what we do after we buy the motorhome. How do we survive on a daily basis?

So from my calculations to live in a motorhome it would cost us this much:

Parking is free, and Europe seems to be a paradise-land for the motorhome life. Plenty of free places to park. So what will we have to pay for?

Gas of course. But since we will move slowly I hope we won’t pay more than 100-150 Euros a month. Then food is like now, 300-350 Euros a month. Gas for cooking and heating around 30 a month. Internet between 50 to 80…it depends what solution we find. Laundry some 30 a month. Maybe add some extra 50 Euros more a month just in case. That’s some 650 Euros a month. Currently I make around 400 Euros a month, and I am always scared the Webape subscribers will cancel their subscription and/or the people who donate to TROM monthly would stop donating.

Therefore I have no idea how we will make it 😀 – maybe if we get the 5.000 from Gofundme and we find a motorhome at around 18.000 Euros, we can have some 2.000 left to use monthly….

TOTAL TOTAL

18.000-20.000 the motorhome. 5.000 extras. Around 1.500 insurance a year. 1.000-2.000 repairs a year. 650 euros a month minimum. Not cheap!

Now…we’ve always been at the limit and somehow we made it, so I hope that will happen again.

If we have the motorhome then this is our home. We don’t have to pay rent and most of the energy needs we can get from the Sun. In the worst case maybe we find a place to park and stay for a while, and hopefully have money for food and Internet. But at least we know we have a place to stay and we only need to make the minimum to pay for food, fuel, Internet and some repairs.

TROM

So far I talked about the “home” part, but this is called TROMhome for a reason. TROM is tattooed in my brain and I will continue to do things for this project(s). That’s why I need a space to work on TROM from. But this time maybe it will force us to take TROM on a different adventure.

You see we have a fuck ton of materials for TROM. Many books and videos, so much so it is overwhelming. And so many projects. And although I will create more content (still working on several books at the moment) would be fantastic to got to events and present TROM, organize meetings, and overall talk to people about it. I want to put a TROMhome sticker on the motorhome with the website, to “advertise” it everywhere we go.

We will make videos about our adventures, and although the first months would be a lot about how to live in a motorhome, I hope they will evolve into more TROM-like videos. TROM on the Road :). Maybe we can meet new organizations and volunteer for hem, maybe we do some presentations and so forth.

We will post them all on our Peertube.

My concerns.

Of course my main concern is always the money situation like I explained above, but on top of that I have some other slight concerns.

When you live in a motorhome you can’t just park somewhere and stay for like a month. For one you are not allowed, and second you need to empty your grey water (water stored from the kitchen and shower) but also fill up the tanks with fresh water. So we will have to move move move….every other day. And I am concerned to not start to feel like I cannot relax and have time to focus on some TROM stuff for longer periods of time.

Speaking of moving, you get to sleep in new places all the time. So what if you park in a sketchy area, noisy, windy, cold? I always struggled with my sleep and any little noise wakes me up. Would I be able to adapt to having the home be in a parking lot all of the time?

Also….what if things break and you need time to fix them? Thus less time for TROM. What if you have to send the motorhome to a repair shop? What do we do? Go rent a place to stay for a few nights? What about our stuff?

What if we go for a hike, come back, and notice that our motorhome was stolen or someone got in and stole our stuff?

Many concerns as you can see…BUT….

Life is short, give new things a try!

When I made TROM in 2011 I was 23 years old. Now I am 36. In the past 13 years I did so many projects. Wrote so much, made videos, projects. So busy. Nonstop most of the time. I also had kinda the same life: me at the computer doing things. You know you can get cancer, or get hit by a car, or go to sleep and never wake up. I would like to experience new things as well, and this motorhome life is something I’ve been dreaming for quite some time now.

Despite all of the concerns it is beyond FABULOUS to be able to look at the map and say: let’s go here. Then there. Then over there. And to know that it is a continuous adventure. I write that with a genuine smile on my face. There are amazing caves and mountains, great lakes and wonderful forests. I want to see them :).

In 2026 there will be a total solar eclipse visible in one part of Spain, imagine being able to go to the best spot with the motorhome and observe it. Or go to the darkest places in Europe to see the night sky. Go visit our TROM friends, take them with us for little adventures, meet new people…let things evolve and emerge out of these experiences.

We have a microscope and a telescope. Let’s look at the small and the big, from different parts of the world.

And let’s share our experiences with others. Maybe we will inspire. 🙂

Follow us

We will make a lot of videos about this TROMhome adventures and we will post on our lovely Peertube https://videos.trom.tf/c/tromhome/videos.

This Tuesday we go see some motorhomes and we will film some stuff. If we buy a motorhome before December then we can already start to do some work on it and make videos about it. If not we will buy a motorhome in January. In December we will be busy with some personal stuff – we will go to Romania to help my parents move and we may spend the entire month there before we start our adventures with the motorhome.

I am both excited and stressed. I am sure I will feel a lot of stress when I’ll see our bank accounts empty after we buy the motorhome. But maybe once we start living in it, the excitement can grow for both of us.

End.

Right now, while writing this article, I have my headphones on just to cancel the insane amount of noise coming from outside. My parents….as much as I care about them and I want them to live forever and be healthy, stress me out beyond belief. They are noisy, scream at each other frequently, and overall are these normal citizens that make me depressed to be around. Our neighbors scream, their dog barks non-stop. I feel so stressed. But that makes me so eager to fucking go go go. Fuck it. If you live in a motorhome and have noisy neighbors just drive somewhere else.

I really hope this new home would be a great home for us, and that TROM will continue to live through my actions, me, others.

At times I read my old blog posts out of curiosity to see how things have changed. I know Tio you will read this post in the future….where are you now? You happy? I hope so. I hope you have a great motorhome and got used to that lifestyle. I hope.

Two things scare me the most, personally. First is death or health related issues. It is normal, if I die I’m fucked for eternity :). I think this is easy to understand for many people.

Second thing that scares me so much is to slip back into the fantasy world that humans created and forget about the amazing reality discovered for the past hundreds of years. To become too normal, even if that can mean to laugh, have fun, enjoy. I am scared of this. I battled this for all of my life trying to inject myself with reality bits and info (atoms, galaxies, evolution, stars and everything real) in the hope that my brain can understand the value of reality. It is hard. It is so hard and it is something I feel not many, if any, understand. It is also something that you can lose very fast, when you “get it”.

I wanted to put a printed Hubble image of the Andromeda galaxy on the ceiling in my room when I was in college so that when I wake up it will remind me of how reality is mind blowing and the human invented one is a simplistic, myopic and colorless at best.

Most humans are today as they were 400, 1.000 , or more years ago. Let’s have a beer, a chat, get married, fuck, have kids, gossip, have fun or war. Not saying some of these are not good or reasonable, but isn’t it mindblowing that not much has changed in the core of our global society and the day to day life of humans for the past 400 years considering in this time we discovered cells, atoms, galaxies, evolution, and everything in between?

To me, this is so odd it creates a turmoil in my head. I think I have an explanation why this is the case tho: an aggressive trade-based society where everyone is a working ant. No time to even know about reality, let alone absorb it.

Reality is shocking, mind-blowing, fabulous, scary, infinitely complex and amazing.
Day to day life in this society is simplistic and almost parallel to reality.

If you don’t fee like losing your mind when you think about this contrast, I don’t think you understand.

#society #trade #capitalism #andromeda #science #TradeRuinsEverything

Unfortunately I may not be able to start any new video series for TROM anytime soon, due to the circumstances I am in. I have tried but it is kinda impossible.

Driving school madness.

For one I am too busy with the insane driving school – here in Spain it takes ages to do it and they are so draconian when it comes to these exams. You have to drive so perfect and the vast majority will fail the exam the first time. Funny part is NO ONE drives like that here or anywhere else in the world. And everyone knows that, but these people have jobs so they continue to teach you like this….as usual on this planet. Nothing surprising.

My instructor wants me to do more and more lessons, which means more time and money wasted. If she “thinks I am ready” for the exam, I will do it in July (next month). If not I’ll have to wait till September….and based on statistics I am more likely to fail it the first time. So I’ll probably have to wait a few more weeks after the first exam to try again.

This is so absurd it is hard to imagine how fucked up it is. If I knew I would have gone to Romania and get the driving license there in less than 2 months. Mind you I have started the driving school in Spain in December last year. Already some 7 months in…nuts!

I will make an article/video about the entire experience because there is a lot to learn from it. In a TROM-sense.

Summer madness

I live in a very small town that is 100% touristic. 3-4 months a year, from June/July to September tens of thousands of people come here and everything is a fucking mess. Noise, everything busy and kinda dirty, insanity. My family is working all day, they are stressed, they come and go, it is a terrible environment to be able to do anything creative. Add into the mix the extreme temperatures that are coming with the tourists, and it is really impossible to do anything like a video series.

For a video series I would have to first be motivated and have the space to “think” and come up with ideas. Write the scripts, fact check, etc.. Then to record – and when can I? I do not have the space/env to do that. And then to edit….Every summer is like that here, and every time I felt quite lethargic because of it.

Even while I write this article I have to put my headphones on with a white noise to be able to focus because I am sick to hear the noise coming from outside or inside the house. Every night I also put my speakers at maximum volume with an artificial thunderstorm, as loud as I can, to “cancel” the noise that comes from everyone getting up in the morning getting ready to work.

Else I could not sleep. I’ve been doing this for years now. Luckily it works. But this is not an environment that can allow me to do anything creative at all. I managed to do it somehow over the years but am too tired now….something needs to change, and it will!

Make money, buy a motorhome.

We will buy a small motorhome somewhere at the end of this year or beginning of the next. We want to live in it full time. One like the one in the photo.

But this puts a pressure on us to make more money now. Sasha is working a lot as a divemaster and I honestly do not do much. That makes me quite frustrated and depressed. I want to help in that regards but I was always terrible at making money. I can write books, make documentaries, and a lot of projects, but I am unable to make money.

I have tried with Webape.site but I cannot get any new “customer” who wants a website….

Unfortunately the donations I get from TROM are not enough at all to support my work. You know if the 200 for TROM campaign was successful and I knew we have enough money to survive, I could find a way to start a new video series for TROM and do more.

Unfortunately we are barely 40% funded. This is a constant struggle and a motivation killer for me after so many years of doing what am doing.

Motivation.

Speaking of getting support, it has become more and more difficult for me to keep myself motivated in this situation especially when you see that you can’t even get 200 people to support all of our projects with the bare minimum of contribution. It means whatever I do for TROM does not reach that many people. And that is true. So without a proper support how can I push it forward? Projects like TROM are quite impossible to survive in this society….

I’ve been active since 2007, that’s some 17 years. It is tough. But I am not giving up.

The best anyone can do now to help the project is to subscribe to our 200 for TROM campaign. 5 Euros a month, 200 people, make it sustainable. Unfortunately we need money else idk how I can work full time for TROM and keep this project relevant and alive.

Future?

I’ve said for months now that this year will be a bit insane for us. We need to move and do a lot of changes to our lives, make money, put up with a lot of stress and so forth.

The plan is this: suffer for the next few months and make money as much as we can. I have started to also sell some of our stuff that we do not need. And after the driving bullshit is done probably I’ll work some days in cleaning. I will also try to get myself motivated enough to perhaps write some articles for TROM since that can be easier than making videos. I just have to find some quiet place/time (say from 00:00 to 06:00 in the night when everyone is asleep) and write/do research. Maybe later I can transform them into videos.

I will also try to film some stuff with the tourism here and other things “incognito” to then later on make some videos about.

In October we have to plan and see what money we have. We will have to bring my parents to Romania in November, so we will drive their car from here with their stuff since they move back for good. They will retire. We will stay a little bit in Romania to try and solve some more paperwork bullshit if we can – imagine this: Sasha has a driving license from USA, but she is only allowed to drive in Spain for 6 months with it. After that she needs to change it into a Spanish driving license. Easy? NO! She would have to go through the same bullshit driving school and exam like I am now….imagine that shit! She already knows how to drive but she will be forced to do again the theoretical and practical exam and take “driving lessons”.

This world is such a load of nonsense it is not even funny anymore.

So we may try to see if we can exchange her driving license into a Romanian one, then exchange it for a Spanish one without doing the exam.

Hey Spain are you fucking mental?!

Anyway. We hope the madness will be over at the end of November. We will spend no more than a month in Romania (I hope). Then come back to Spain to buy a motorhome. Move into the motorhome and go fuckin away from the stupid parts of the world as much as we can.

We won’t have enough money to buy the motorhome + pay the monthly expenses…..so we will also make a campaign if anyone can help out considering all I am doing for TROM is free and the motorhome is a house for me as well, of course, so that’s a help for TROM basically. We will make the campaign towards the end of the year. We have the vast majority of the money we need to buy the motorhome already, but what do we do after we buy it when the only monthly support i get now is around 3-400 Euros?!

So it is going to be a bit rough for us to do the move.

The motorhome life.

Hopefully at the beginning of the next year we will be in our motorhome (TROMhome) and start a completely new life. We will make videos about our “adventures” and how it is to live in such a tiny mobile space with limited resources. Perhaps it is interesting for some. I want to put a big TROMhome logo on the motorhome, and to eventually go meet with interesting communities or projects and make videos about them.

In parallel I will keep our projects alive and relevant and I still hope to start a new video series whenever I can.

Ideally we would be able to travel and meet interesting projects and people and make videos about all of it, and also keep TROM relevant and alive and create new content. Meet our TROM friends, take them for a week or so with us, and try to live a very minimalistic life, enjoy it, and see where it goes.

Final thoughts.

I am terribly eager to make new content for TROM. I have a ton of ideas and notes. I feel quite depressed and frustrated to not be able to do that. But it is what it is. If it wasn’t such a struggle to live in this society, perhaps I’d be wrong about this society when I describe the awfulness of it through our TROM materials. That’s the paradox.

Maybe a miracle will happen and I would somehow start the video series soon, but I can’t see that to be very likely. It is a terrible situation to want for the time to pass by faster, considering that our life is so short, but that’s how I feel now: I want for these next months to be over! I want to see Sasha free and focusing on real important stuff not be trapped working 10-11 hours a day. I want us to not live in the same place anymore and be on our own. I want to start a video series that I can keep producing for the many years to come. I want us to keep on fighting but also have a relaxing life. And it is very doable!

This is a cake my family bought for my “birthday” recently haha. Me and Sasha, and TROMhome :). We will make this happen 😉

That’s all for now 🙂

This month a bunch of “trom” people visited us and we had such a wonderful time together.

We had an Amber party looking through the microscopes to 40 million years old creatures…

Something most people in this world probably consider as boring and “lame”. But if you understand the mind-blowing reality we live in, then you would understand why an amber party is a super fun and wonderful party :).

We also looked at the Moon through the telescope…

And we enjoyed the nature around, we had interesting discussions and a lot of fun.

I always hated to meet with “friends” because that usually meant lets get drunk or talk about boring shit, or brag about the stuff you have and all that. Or just eat and do nothing. Hated it. But now with these people I LOVE it. It feels natural and sane, and so much fun. And relaxing!

These are wonderful people who care about this world and have very interesting minds. And there are so many more like them. And I want to “harness” them all haha. We will organize a yearly event for sure and do more than just have a fun meetup. We will have fun but also do some important things for TROM and in general for pushing ahead with TROM-like ideas.

I am so happy that I have these creatures as my friends 🙂