well, i think this forum will be very nice an a lot of fun, even interesting @Yue_ 🙂
Camp fire story of Mare (normally i dont call my own name):
i was born in the Cantal, Auvergne, France (wich is why i speak French fluently), but both my parents are dutch (wich is the same reason that my passport is dutch and my native mother language is dutch). We were living on a farm, and we were doing homeschool, but lately they made it impossible for us to do home school, so we moved to a small village in the centre of Portugal because they said that in Portugal you are allowed to do homeschool. Though at the other side of our house there was a belgian woman (not @Fleurke😉) living, and she was very much thinking in the way of: children must go to school, so she called those people who are suppost to take care of children and they sended the police to our house. Those people even wanted my parents to sign that they were not feeding us well, my parents (luckily) avoided that paper. Then we dicided to go to France for a few months, and come back later to let everything callm down, meanwhile we would put a lawyer on it. When we were sitting in the vacation house (at that time it wasnt vacation) of dutch people we know, in a village called Le Luguet, the hole covid stuff came, lock down, vaccine etc. My parents first of all wanted to know what exactly we were dealing with if we were talking about covid, so they began to read everyhwhere, and suddenly they find out covid is just a normal grip, nothing to worry about, wich also means that the hole lockdown story was nonsense. We were only allowed to go to the nearest supermarket, with a paper of where we were living so the police (controlling on the road) could see how much distance you were from your home. We knew some people who were driving around with a hole package of such papers, so tey could go everywhere tey wanted 😛.
One day actually my mother blew up the motor of our well loved Renault Master (with a pink pyranja at one side, and a pink elephant at the other side 😆), the vehicle was towed to the garage, and from there (saidly, very saidly) to the junkyard. We knew we needed an other van, so we bought a double cap 7 places 3,5 tons 2005 Renault Mascott (old EDF vehicle, EDF: Electricité Du France). We made a camper out of it, and after a while serving for the house of a good friend of ours who was living nearby Pontaumur, we dicided to go to Romania, where we knew someone who we wanted to meet.
So we went on our way to Romania. Passing true Italy where we eat delicious icecream and we saw a very lot of Alfa Romeo's, Ferrari's and Lamborghini's (really amazing), we even once saw a Lamborghini Urus parked by a house. Then we went true Slovenia, and then i think true Kroatia, and finally we reached Romania. We met that guy in Bucharest, cuz his ex wife was living there (he had 1 son called Tudor), we slept 1 night in that house, and the next morning we drove to a small village in the region of Buzau (i was sitting next to that guy in his KIA Ceed)(that village was something like 1 hour drive from Bucharest). We stayd for 1 year in that small village called Rusavat. We worked for the guy, and we playd with the kids of the village (in and on the van, they knew exactly how to open van and trailer, but they never did). After that we dicided we also wanted to explore Harghita, the hungarian part of Romania. So we rented a car (at that time our van was standing in the garage) the car was a Dacia Lodgy, and with that car we drove to Harghita, where we went to see a wood cabin for rent in the forest. We dicided to rent a cabin and came back with our own van. The guy who rented the cabin to us introduced us to his brother, it was a rainy day and when we were trying to get our van uphill (a not asfalted muddy hill) we couldnt get the van up, it was the hole time slipping. So the brother of the renter happed in our van (my mother sitting right at the side of him) and he let the van role backwards for a while, till we couldnt see it anymore. Then he came back with a lot of speed an in its second gear, he came up, slipping and taking the hole road with the vehicle-body, but it came up. So we learned something new: does your van not come up? then put it in its second gear and drive up with a lot of speed. We rented the cabin for i think a few months, meanwhile we met someone with horses who spoke perfectly French, and he became a good friend of ours. After a few months the renter guy asked us his cabin back, but he showd us the house of his mother we could live in, so we moved to the old house of his mother (in the village Vacaresti). We also helped that french speaking guy with getting the hay from his fields (hanging his old trailer after our van cuz his own Suzuki Vitara was broken down). After a think quit a long time, the guy who let us live in the old house of his mother, told us that he sold it, so if it was possible that we could move away; it was possible, that french speaking guy talked with aguy who had a house much closer to Miercurea-Ciuc, from whom he was using the barn to storage the hay. Theguy said that we may live in that house for as long as we wanted(he was living somewhere else), but on 1 condition; we would keep everything clean. So we did that. Actually we wanted to buy a farm there, but land was far to expensive for us, we wanted to have atleast 10 hectare, but the price out there was even going up to 35€/square meter. So wecouldnt stay there. Me, my mother and my 3 brothers went to take a look in Bulgaria with our van, because we also had ducks (and i think even chickens) my father stayd at home. He wanted to rent a car by a company we knew, but an other friend of ours, who spoke dutch, got a bit mad about that and said that it would become much cheaper if he rented his car, so he rented his car, a Hyundai Accent.
In bulgaria we found nearby Veliko Tarnovo a plot of land we wanted to buy. So we payd first some money, so the plot couldnt get sold to someone else. Meanwhile we drove some more round Bulgaria, and we even helped an old guy getting his old GAZ Volga started again, cuz he was creating a file with it, and we werethe only one stopping forhim.
Then after a while we went back to Romania. We bought a second van (Ford Transit from 2001), to transport our stuff, and to make sure there wouldbe more room for 6 people (the Transit turned out to be the worst van weve ever bought).
But just before we wanted to move to bulgaria, we got a message that the owner of the land sold it to someone else without telling the real estate agent, gggggrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so we went back to bulgaria, to get our allready paidmoney back. Then we travlet furhter, true Serbia where we made a stop to change the front window of our Renault Mascott, and then further true Bosnia and Herzegovina where westayd a few months to change the motor of our Ford Transit. Thenwe went true Kroatia to find a garage who could do something about the Transit gearbox. We left him by a HAK garage and went further with our renault to Italy to meet a dutch familly of 6 people my motherwas in contact with. We stayd by that familly till we got a message that our van was ready. We went back to kroatia and got our transit back, we drove less then a kilometer with it, and then we found out there still was a problem with. We back to the garage, it seemed that they didnt repair what we asked them to do (idk anymore what they "repaird"), we went to be very angry about it, but when they refused to do something about it, we put something on the sencor of there gate so it wouldnt close yet, and we drove with both vans true the kroatian mountains. Lately we couldnt get the vehicle further then its first gear, so we parked it at fron of a house, told the house woner we were going to search for a garage, and went on our way to find an other garage. In a village not far from there we found a garage wit Pat&Mat (Buurman&Buurman) on the door, so we were allready trusted that it was a good garage. The guy came with us to pick up the transit, but his vehicle couldnt get the van up. So we asked him to guess what the weight of our transit was, he said: well, mine can easely tow up 3,5 ton, so this vehicle must weight 4/4,5 ton. Ooooppppssssss!!!!!!!!!!!! atleast a ton overloaded!!!!!!! so we had to bring the vehicle to the garage ourselfs. Meanwhile we stayd on a very small tiny camping (with maybe 5 stand places) till our van was ready. We went back, and yes this time heactually was repaird, the garage guy changed the gearbox (what we asked him to do) and he told us what the next problem wouldbe, but he dint do anything about it cuz we didnt ask for it. So we went further true Italy, where we found a plot of land we might wanted to buy, but first we wanted to take a look in spain, just to be sure we didnt want to live in spain. So we left the transit on a parking place nearby the border with france, and went to spain with our french van. Actually we liked it better in spain then in italy, so we stayd much longer then planned, and when we got back to italy, we luckily found our transit van exactly like we left it.
And then we bought this farm in Galicia, the north of Spain. Im gonna end this story here, cuz even if its missing some things, its getting allready veeeerrrryyyyyy long.
Why did you guys try to do homeschooling in france even if its illegal there? What do you expect?