We’re kidding. We’re kidding. We aren’t actually glad that climate change exists. Don’t hate us. We aren’t thrilled that the earth is warming at an alarming pace. Or, are we? No. We can’t be happy that the summers are growing longer and the days are getting hotter. Or…no.

Okay, let us explain.

When we decided to start traveling our eyes gazed towards the conventional directions of South East Asia, South America or maybe even Africa. That’s where you go when you want to travel the ‘world’. No matter if you only reach and see one of those (sub)continents, you’re traversing the globe when you go to these places.

We dreamed of far away lands and exotic people.

That is, until three couples we knew got engaged and planned the dates for their marriage. In the same week. Meaning we had three weddings to go to when we planned to had our asses firmly planted on a beach somewhere. Okay, so scratch Asia, or America. We’re known to make dumb decisions from time to time, but even we weren’t going to fly halfway across the world just to have to come back two months later for the weddings. So, change of plans.

We decided to stay a little bit closer to home for the first leg of our journey. That’s when the €50 car crossed our path and we thought about driving it through Europe.

Now, before we go on you have to know something.

In December last year Ellis started with a new job, she became a bike messenger. For people who’ve been a bike messenger this is obvious, but for the rest of you: December is the worst time to start delivering packages. On. A. Bike. It’s cold, it rains and if you’re unlucky it does more than that. And Ellis, she was unlucky. The worst day of all she had three shifts (that’s around 8 hours of pedalling) and on that day it didn’t just rain, it also didn’t just snow and it didn’t just hail. It did all three.

After 8 hours of weather you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy Ellis arrived home, broke down and made a promise to herself then and there: “I will not see winter next year.”

So, Ellis had vowed not to live through the next winter, in essence saying that she would not be cold for an entire year and now we decided to travel Europe. Where we would go? Warm France? Blazing Spain? Scorching Greece? We decided to discover Scandinavia.

Imagine this for a second.

Ellis has just told you she wants to not be cold for an entire year. Wonderful plan! So, where are you guys going? Norway!? We planned to go to a part of the world where there are  notorious amounts of rain, where there’s an insanely low amount of sun hours and where a part of the country has zero sun for three months in the year. Wow, great plan guys. And it wasn’t a great plan. But the world had a trick up its sleeve.

Enter global warming.

Because thanks to global warming this was Europe’s hottest year ever. And while we were traveling through Norway, Sweden, Finland and Estonia, these countries experienced an amazing summer. While we were there both Norway and Estonia reached 50 sun days in one year. 50! These countries normally have trouble reaching 10.

And the crazy thing is: going to Scandinavia was the best possible decision. Because, Ellis might love the sun and heat and sweat and yuck, but I sure don’t. And while Scandinavia was exactly right for me, the Netherlands was reaching temperaturs in which I would’ve surely passed out or burned up to a crisp.

So no, we don’t actually like global warming. We think it should be on the top of political AND personal agendas around the world. But this summer was amazing. Our time because of it was amazing. So we can’t do anything else than thank global warming for the wonderful summer we had, but we do it with a bitter after taste. We do it knowing full well that if this continues the temperatures are going to rise and rise until, wherever we go, I will pass out. And eventually Ellis. And you. And everyone we know.‍