I was actually only ever warned about a life like the one I live now. Well, my father always said: "Yes, you can do that, but you can do it when you have your pension." So that was always the idea, to ensure security somehow first and then you can try things out. With a network , so to speak . And I just don't believe in the safety net. [Music] I'm Theo and I live on a very small island in Portugal. Exactly, this is the newest addition here. If the water comes up, then of course the tent has to go. So the water comes up to the door here. But at the moment it's actually looking pretty good here, in terms of prospects and so on. Take a look. It's not really prepared for guests, but yes... Exactly, this is the Little Tower, which is particularly interesting in summer because you can open the roof and then sleep under the open roof. This is a wooden structure that I just... Here's the trailer roof. This is the original caravan roof. Then I basically built a tree house on top of it. You can actually see it better from the outside . This was a €25 caravan. Electricity is not a problem here at all. Firstly , because I don't use much. On the other hand, because the sun always shines. I have about 1000 amp hours of batteries that I charge with 500 wattpeak solar panels. And that's only because I also need it for watering. Otherwise I would have much less. Well, at the beginning, here, I had one or two truck batteries. So given the amount of electricity I need, that was enough. That wasn't an issue at all. I hardly do any heating here. So I do have gas ovens, also for guests and so on. Or when my son was little, getting dressed in the morning or something like that. So that the caravan rolls over a bit in winter, but that's it. And otherwise now. So when I'm alone, there's always some fruit or vegetables in the garden. I basically don't buy anything there. What I buy are potatoes, rice, lentils , beans, pasta. So the basics. That's completely okay for me too. I usually find this in organic quality and it's not super expensive either. Right here we have the kitchen. That's also... That was the first building between the caravans, because in the winter it was very difficult to cook outside because of the wind. Otherwise, rain or cold is not an issue here, but when the wind blows constantly, it is very difficult to either keep a gas fire going, or very dangerous to operate a normal fire safely. Exactly. I set up a small oven here. The one I primarily use when I have larger quantities to cook or preserve or whatever is available. Exactly. There's a little loophole here. This is new and this is our lounge, where you can light a fire in winter or, yes, where the dogs lie down. In the summer we don't spend much time here at all. This is the back wall of the other trailer I'll show you in a moment. Everything was integrated here, wood paring and yes... Exactly, I tried to camouflage it as best as possible. So this is a caravan now. This is my trailer that we just saw from inside. And we can look at this one now. He looks like this. It's almost 50 years old and originally belonged to a silk dancer. Yes, I mean, it's completely complete, with a wooden floor and wood upstairs. It was just a very simple Dutch Kip caravan. And here we can see part of the garden. That was just the be-all and end-all for me here, from watering and creating a garden. So I live here without having any greenery around me. I think the desert-like landscape here is very beautiful, but back then it was mostly roses of ten and musk roses. Exactly, in the summer it's super cool, in the truest sense of the word. So if you just ... Exactly. You can then just lie down and go out the window in the morning. Then you have the sunrise. I had a mild obsession with self-sufficiency. So I had in that In earlier lives the goal was to live absolutely self-sufficiently. Without money, largely without machines and so on and immediately. That was 6 years on the farm in the southern Vorses, France. The farm was an ancient ruin and the first thing we did was disconnect the electricity, disconnect the tap water and yes, I just cooked on an open fire for three years. So that it gets really nice and rough. And yes, we really went in there to sow wheat by hand. And threshing and harvesting by hand with a sickle, of course. And then the bread in the hand mill, we had no electricity. Painting the grain and things like that. Really from start to finish. I come from a farmer/winemaker family, where everything was still self-sufficient when I was a child. I grew up so much and then the trend was to say: Oh, why are we still doing this? Why do we have a cow, why do we have a pig, why do we have chickens? We'd better grow a few more hectares of wine and then we'll have money and then we won't need any of that anymore and will make our lives easier. Sometimes we get off work, sometimes we have a weekend where we can go away. Not just between milking times. I felt like it was a great loss , actually. And actually wanted to get there. Yes, to the stories that I knew, from my grandparents and my parents. Then... On the one hand, they wanted modern times, but on the other hand, when it came to that, they didn't want to say that everything was better in the old days. Actually, that was exactly what it was about, because of how nice it was. The simple life and yes, and I just wanted to have that. I felt cheated about it. That's why it was very important in France. In the six years, however, I have seen that this can very easily become a real dogma, at least for people like me. A real obsession. And fewer and fewer things were possible. Everything had to be done by yourself. And at some point it almost became a religion. It was no longer healthy. And that was something I decided that I wouldn't want to have that anymore later on. When I started here, this kind of self-sufficiency was no longer desired. So what was clear to me was what I also like because of offgrid. I'll take care of everything myself now. Wonderful! It's not a problem here either . In this climate here, this kind of life is now compared to what I had back in northeastern France. That's golden! I spent so much time, for example, sawing wood, bringing it home, splitting it up, chopping it up for a stove. And then also to supply the ovens in winter and so on. And we were never particularly warm. Had a room that was heated. This takes an enormous amount of time and energy. And that was one of the things I never wanted to get into again. Also because I saw in my family how people systematically ruined themselves with farming. So I like a simple life and so on, but I have no interest in ruining my health because of it. The farmer who allowed me to live here also owns the land over there. So about 3000 hectares. And for him it was easy because he received compensation for the country when the dam was built. It still belongs to him, but the rights of use now lie with the Spanish state as long as the dam exists. And for him it's completely worthless. He said: My cows can't swim. If you want to live there. The whole thing here is basically just a big boulder. So thanks to the irrigation and also because I got a lot of compost and manure on it, it's even possible to plant something. So normally when you see the earth here. If you dig here, after a few centimeters... all you'll end up with is rock. So if you want to plant a tree here, you first have to dig a pit, fill it with compost and then Put the tree in. And for every tree and shrub you see here, you can think of about two more that didn't make it. So every year I replant trees that have died or burned due to sunlight. Yes, things that you don't even know from the north, but that are standard here. Yes, look, we have toilets here. Depending on size and needs. This is for my son and for other small children. This is the adult composting toilet. And what gets pooped in there usually goes mainly to my roses. For one thing, they like it. On the other hand, we don't eat them directly. That's such a good solution. Yes, I also had a washing machine once, but it did n't work well with the unfiltered water. So normally it works like this: I then fill a basin here with water, then I wash my laundry in it and then later it just doesn't get frozen out much, but is then put in clear water. Then it is drained, clear water comes in here, then it is rinsed a few times. And hung it up without wringing it out too much, because I don't have a shortage of water. And what I then dump out is then used to irrigate the Kanna here, the pomegranate tree here or the fattening bush. Yes, and then I don't just grow wild things, not just useful plants and so on here, but also here again and again, for example now a myurt, i.e. plants that are or were native to the surrounding area, but basically through overgrazing were virtually eradicated. And yes, to create such a refuge here, also for various cystoses. So I have four native types of cystoses here and have also brought in five more that grow around them. So the idea here is a bit of a yes, to create a healthy mixture that is also attractive to animals. And yes, not just vegetable gardens and as many fruit trees as possible. When I came here, in the summer, you basically never heard a bird in the morning at sunrise. So there were no birds here at all in the summer because there was no food. So as far as you can see around here, yeah, there are no gardens or anything. My nearest neighbor is 3 km away. Here we have my son's tree house, with a deer antler he found himself. This is one of David's favorite hobbies: finding anything in nature and he found a whole deer. We also took the deer down to the last bone. You can sometimes find it as a garden decoration. Water that's a that's a bigger deal. Although the lake is here, it provides drinking water for a large part of the Spanish coast. From Ayamonte to Cadiz. This is a very, very large area. The water is treated in whatever way. As it is now, I don't really want to drink it right now. So when it comes to drinking water quality in Portugal/Spain, it's still extremely good for the south, but well, the rainless winters of the last few years haven't helped to improve that. And it doesn't have to be that way. So I go to a spring here, one of the few springs that flows on their own and doesn't have any buckets hanging in it. The others have bucket brigades with rusty iron buckets. I don't really like it that much either. And the water at the source is good. You just have to wait until it runs out. Takes a while. One of my next projects for the next two years is, among other things, that I want to build a solar still so that I can distill the water from the lake. And then I'm no longer dependent on always having to drive to fetch water. I still dream of not needing a car one day. And at the moment I just need the car to fetch water and also to bring my son here every 10 days. And that's a much more difficult story because he lives over 100 km away. So I don't do that with a cargo bike. A crystal wow! Quartz wow! And it's nice! -Yes, I found one. And you installed the owl again. The harvest was there or not? Very good. Wow, that almost looks dangerous! That was good, I like that. -I hope so. I didn't know... When the island isn't an island, I don't use the boat as much. That's why I didn't empty it right now. This still has to happen now. In various parts of the world on Lake Chad, Lake Titicaca and so on, there are floating islands that people actually create out of papyrus and dead papyrus and at some point add earth to them and then at some point they are really big, and people even live on them in small houses, even cows and that just fascinated me, especially with the papyrus that grows directly in the water. I just wanted to try it out, which plants can you put directly into water, without soil. And it's just a mixture here of different types of papyrus, mints, different types of mint, yes. It's not a great thing now. It's just an attempt. So the house is again... Needs renovation again, but it works. So you can just build a raft like this using old insulation material or whatever you can find. Most of what was washed up here was Styrofoam. And now I just hung the papyrus on it, but of course the idea is that at some point the papyrus will actually help the island float. Well, very nice! This is drinking water, from the source. That's just... I always pour five canisters in and I leave one here so that it never happens to me that I want to put pasta water on and nothing comes out. Then I still have 15 l. And now I know: Okay, now it's time, tomorrow I have to get water. So normally it doesn't happen. But now, in the off-season, I'm getting a bit lazy. Well, very nice. Exactly, you have to put something in here so that something comes out of the tap. So, in the beginning the key was simply to use as little as possible. At the beginning I really started here, making jewelry and ... Really, I still had the magazines in my hand. I actually wrote down every single expense when I drank a coffee for 50 cents. And I saw that I was normally around €150 a month. It wasn't actually a problem getting it in. Later, when I met my son's mother. Yes, who then had a child with and so on. And making jewelry now, with children, was no longer my thing at all. I did that for 10 years and somehow I didn't have that much inspiration anymore. And that was a new phase of my life and I wanted to live it as such. My friend then had the idea that we could entertain guests here. And at the beginning I was like , I probably don't want that at all because I can imagine that a lot of people have problems with the living conditions here. And then when I imagine, they pay something for it. And then they complain about it and I get too much of it. Well, definitely. I then got involved and was actually very positively surprised. We have a bathroom here, look. Well, at least for us, guests who often have their own bathroom, but here you have everything you need, including a rear-view mirror and yes... When I first moved in here, I actually still have the bathtub, which is here now is. This is a bathtub and I arrived here with it. And I installed it downstairs right by the water. I filled it with ten buckets of water. And then a little fire underneath. And then you could have a nice swim in there. And now I have the thing so that I can make a fire down here. The water is now pumped up by the solar pump. Let's see right away. And yes, after an hour the water is warm. You can sit in and the bathing record is 7.5 hours. It doesn't get cold as long as you feed it a little underneath first. The By the way, something I would recommend to all people when they are traveling in a van is to consider simply putting an old bathtub on the roof. I traveled around in a caravan for three years. Living in the caravan and the bus. It's totally great! You're standing by some lake or river in winter. You put your bathtub down, light a fire under it and yes, and throw yourself in. This is our refrigerator. There's not much in there at the moment, apart from a few soda bottles. But in winter it is very important. The water that runs there now comes directly from the lake. Pretty deep out of the lake. That's why the temperature - summer and winter - is almost always constant at 17°. The pump is very deep under water, even now. When the lake is full, the water is 20 m deep. And such a high-tech solar pump. There are three solar panels standing here. They have been running this pump exclusively and have been doing so for 12 years now, without it ever breaking down or anything. So I'm very happy with the pump and, given the height difference, it delivers almost 20 liters per minute. That means on a nice summer day, you have more than 10,000 liters a day that the pump pumps up there. Directly without any batteries or anything. And then she manages to fill this pool over the course of a day. You can see that now, because of how much water comes out of there now. Even when the sky is overcast, it still works quite well. I don't know, maybe not everyone has to tune in. I believe that there are a lot of people who, deep down, are actually more satisfied with their everyday life than they convey to others or even believe themselves. I think a lot of people might be a bit like, "Oh, how beautiful Panama is." The little tiger and the little bear who set out to find the promising land and who then, after a long period of confusion and confusion, arrive right back at home , only with the difference that they suddenly appreciate what they had before. And I think that's true for almost all people. So first be really honest with yourself. So when everyone says: Ah, you know, oh, you work there every day and real life is in the Caribbean or Hawaii. And always just surfing... Yes, good! Sure, you can believe that. People have believed a lot of things over time. Yes, well, I mean, um... I sometimes find it very interesting when people today make fun of people in the Middle Ages and what they believed . “Hahahaha.” Yes, and today people believe things like that. But it's basically just as unreflective. Most people really think that way. No way: “Awesome as a surfer in Hawaii…”. The vast majority of them get bored out of their minds after a few weeks. So that the hot water doesn't get to the roots of the poor plants. In case you're wondering why I'm doing this. Better cups than anything. Okay, let's see. For me I Ken I know a lot of people. My grandma turned 91 and spent the last 10 years of her life saying it like a mantra every day: "I want to know why I'm still here? If only I could die..." Yes, I think I'm confusing quality and quantity. This is one of the biggest mistakes of our time. And that people aren't even aware of it, that they still think that the great thing is still coming somehow. If only... "If at 65 I only have enough money for a large motorhome or for great trips and then comes..." Nope! That's always yes, I think Janice Joplin once said it: "Tomorrow never happens". That never happens. These are all dreams and they will remain dreams if you are so afraid. It's the fear. And I don't want to be afraid anymore. Fear scares me much more than having to live without a pension. [Music music]
