MADRID - KÖLN ROADTRIP
A couple of months after living in Germany, I took a plane to Madrid to pick up our car and drive, with my cameras as my sole companion, 1765,5 km to Köln. I crossed Spain’s upper half, entered France to stop at Hossegor and hug my beloved sis and Erik, then to Poitiers and off to Paris, where I stopped to enjoy Paris Photo. The next day from Paris to Köln, crossing Belgium and for a couple of minutes The Netherlands.
Before the move, I spent 5 months with infinite to-do lists to be ready for “the day”. We decided to take the car with us to Köln, so that was one of the items on my lists, but whenever that it came up, I would write “Roadtrip, ETC.” It was how I would address that a trip needed to be planned: km. stages, hotels, meals, a budget, etc.
Everything else on those lists was sorted out, some items well executed, others not so much. But this specific one… it stayed as 'roadtrip, ETC.' every single time I came across it. As it meant to me the final goodbye, I never managed to plan the trip. I procrastinated every time until the day came to leave Madrid, driving with the only certainty that the final destination would be Köln.
Roadtrips and travel notebooks go together, right? I definitely believe so.
I was crossing four countries with my cameras and a notebook, which ended up containing disorganized ramblings, a mix of ideas for new projects, and emotions I could not talk about but somehow made sense when written down.
I thought I would stop whenever something caught my attention and use my cameras as tools to narrate such an emotional trip, but instead, it was the notebook. I prepared thoroughly to photograph but could only find peace in writing.
I felt frustrated and spent a lot of time beating myself up for my lack of discipline and my inability to produce the images I had dreamt about. In my mind, it was the perfect setting: alone, not knowing where I would sleep, and conquering new territories as most of those roads were unfamiliar to me. What else could I ask for? I never found the answer to that question, but during that unproductive road trip, I decided that sharing the road with photographers would be my next project. And here we are, three years later. I guess, after all, I always had my answer; I just wasn’t able to see it back then.
In August 2021, we closed our home in Madrid, the one where our children grew up and where all the memories that shaped us over the past 23 years happened.
293 boxes labeled with yellow stickers contained our belongings. I remember feeling, as I looked at them in the truck, as if my life was in those boxes. The minute the truck left, I felt relieved because I let go of the heavy weight and understood that my life was not there but ahead of us. Those were 'only' the objects that contained our memories. Important, but not our lives. I also remember making peace with the idea of never seeing them again in case of a fire or something similar.
An empty living room, the last minutes the two sisters spent at their home on Juan Bravo Street
The boxes arrived five months after the move. That is the time it took us to find an apartment to live in Köln and the time we lived with what was contained in one suitcase for each of us, including changes of seasons. We rented five different temporary apartments.
Welcome to Roadtrip, ETC. See you down the road 🤘🏼
