I'm preparing for a very long trip for august and I'd like you guys to give me some tips about preparing my car for it. I'm planning to start in Poland, where I live, and go around Europe through Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, France again (this time through the riviera), Italy, Switzerland, Czech Republic and back home.
I plan this trip to take about a month. Most of you will notice how diverse the climate changes might be at times and just how long the trip will be.
There will be five of us travelling in a not-so-reliable 1996 Deawoo Espero (hey, gotta use what life throws at you
) and we'll be camping for the whole trip. I'm looking for some tips regarding the following issues:
1. Preparing the car - I've already had the engine maintenance done, and it's running like brand new. I'm also looking to fix the suspension any day now. What other things should I look into? I might add at this time that we will be driving a lot in a very hot climate - Spain and Portugal.
2. Since Deawoo is not a very popular car company in Europe, can someone give me an insight on how Deawoo car parts availability stands in their country?
3. Just in case, which car parts are most likely to fail during such a long trip? I'm looking forward to purchasing some extra car parts just in case for the trip and learning to fix the basic things in the car - so what should I learn and buy?
4. Here's the real kicker - my car runs on LPG gas and I heard it's not widely available in all European countries. Can you guys tell me how this looks in your country or what experiences you had?
5. I'm sure many of you have travelled like this - can you give me tips - any tips - about how not to kill each other after the first week and what to look out for? I'm talking about everything - pick pockets and natural disasters.
6. Finally, there's more travel guides than I could possibly ever read or even afford. Here is an outline of the planned journey - I hope you can give me advice on interesting places to visit on the way. We're talking budget travelling here, so no fancy hotels and restaurants for us
!
Warsaw (that's where we start!)
Berlin
Hamburg
Amsterdam
Brussels
Paris
Bordeaux
Bilbao
Lisbon
Madrid
Barcelona
Cannes
Monaco
Milan
Some-city-in-Switzerland-I-can't-remeber-now,-but-I'm-sure anything-on-the-way-between-Italy-and-the-Czech-republic-via Germany-will-do-just-fine
Prague
Simplified slighty, but you get the idea.
Phew. I know that I'm expecting a lot of answers from Tilters, but then it's all about challenges, isn't it
? Thanks for your help!