France in winter with my motorhome

The #motorhome prepare for our first longer journey in the #winter - Oh! Of course, I've already forgotten how to do it all. Fill fresh water, but the drain cap must be closed. Filling and replacing gas cylinders. Our expensive lightweight bottle is hardly available in France, so we replace it with a French bottle. Pack clothes, food and laptop and then finally get out of here.

A little late, but with a moving house that's no problem at all. We can stay anywhere. Yet we still want to be out of Belgium today. Metz is our goal and we get there despite the poor weather with temperatures around freezing and slightly snowy landscapes in the Ardennes. Fortunately, the roads are accessible thanks to the environmentally unfriendly salt.

December 26th. Metz in winter

In Metz, we easily find the official motorhome parking. A beautiful place by the water, within walking distance of the center. One more Burstner camper with exuberant Christmas decorations on its acrylic windows keeps us company. First we eat the leftovers of our Christmas meal (cold salmon fillet, vegetarian rice pies, bread) and then we walk to the center on an unexpectedly smooth footpath. There was supposed to be Christmas market here all month, but it's just closed on Christmas Eve on Christmas Eve. We'll have a Gordon beer in the Comédiecafé. Three euros for 25cc, that's how we feel at home in our expensive France.

Still December 26th at night. It's hard to get to sleep. Occasionally moving cars, people who stop and leave after a few minutes. Dates, shady business, drug trafficking, or are they coming to steal from us? We automatically begin to fantasize ourselves. But in the end we fall into a not too deep sleep.

December 27th. Christmas market and snow traffic jams

We wake up in a white landscape. Hymer snow. Nice but also a little disturbing. The French weather and road reports refer to alert phase 3 in Lorraine, Ardennes and others. So also the region where we are. Still in the city. Now the different Christmas markets are open. It starts to snow and so the artificial snow on the nativity scenes is covered with the real stuff. It is frosty cold, we do not really shop. Yet we quickly buy a strange massage machine to excite the scalp, drink another café-cream and then walk back to our Hymer.

Alert Phase 3

Despite the weather forecasts, we decide to leave anyway. Let's see if the French do not exaggerate and indeed, they did not exaggerate. We also get into emergency phase 3, so we decide to stay overnight in a parking lot in Nancy center. Unfortunately, many parking lots are not suitable, too short boxes, paying or too full, and to make matters worse, the motorhome also starts to slip on a silly slope. Maneuvering backwards, we can still get away. We flee out of the city and end up on the motorway to Lunéville to stand there for about 4 hours in traffic jam. From the rain in the drop so. 27 km rows from 4 to 8. Now yes driving, walking would go faster. Eventually we flee to a crowded parking lot, where we spend the night among the truckers. One #Hymer on Earth. Let's hope for less adventure for tomorrow.
Note: the other side of the motorway was strangely empty. The cause became clear at the end of our traffic jam. Dozens of trucks couldn't climb the ramp and blocked the whole road. Hundreds of trucks were trapped, with some pathetic cars here and there and even a spreader truck in between. That will certainly be overnight for those drivers on the motorway. Of course, in a motorhome that would not be a problem. But still we are happy to drive on the other side. Happy with our four-hour traffic!
Hymer-problems: Cutting the windshield (anti-damp wipes do not help at all) and ice deposits on the windscreen wipers.