I started my working career in April of 2019. I had just finished my master’s degree, thought the world was my oyster, and had very leftist political opinions. In hindsight I must say that I was unbelievably lucky to have graduated at this particular point in time. While I can’t recall the overall economic situation, at least in software the job market was great. Originally I had plans to go abroad for my first job as I didn’t have the chance (or if I had I missed them all) to spend time abroad during my studies. However, I wanted to go to an English-speaking country which didn’t just leave the EU and was close to home in case something would be happening to my grandparents. So basically I had narrowed down my options to Ireland. In addition to that, I wanted to find a job in compiler engineering. So even given the circumstances, it proved a bit hard to even find one position that matched these requirements. Time passed, and eventually even the 5 months I had given myself to transition from student life to working life were coming to an end. Long story short, at some point I dropped all my demands and just wanted to find something close to where I already lived, as long as it was at least in my favorite programming language of the time, C++. That turned out to be much easier, and after a short while I found myself being accepted at a huge corporation for an entry level position. The only catch was that this company had its offices in hicksville, 35 minutes train ride from the city I lived in. The audacity! Wasting almost 2 hours of my valuable lifetime each day just to get me to my day job was unacceptable. Buying a car - also unacceptable. I would not sell out on my values of a green lifestyle like that. So should I move to this small forsaken town? Absolutely inconceivable. None of my friends would live there. And given the size of the company I worked for it wouldn’t even be cheap as all my colleagues were competing for flats. Since I could live in my student dorm for a couple more month before the were going to kick me out I had some time still. But I had to come up with a plan. And so slowly an idea was forming within me. “Society is pampering car owners in this country so much anyways” I thought. Prime real estate given out for free everywhere just for people to place there private steel enclosures on for 90% of the day. Maybe I was stupid not to take advantage of this. As the newbie, I was placed in a 4-person office room together with my manager. One day I asked him if he thought it possible for me to just live in a van on one of my employer’s many parking lot. He thought I was joking and found the whole idea very funny. But he didn’t say no, or rather he said something like “don’t see why not”. That sure as hell was enough for me. It sounded genius on paper:
- I’d have zero commute
- Instead of paying rent I’d pay down on owning my van
- I’d be free to go wherever on the weekends
- I could use my employer’s bathrooms for all sanitary demands for free
- If need be, a gym-chain membership would also give me access to showers and bathrooms in different cities in the region
- Washing I could do at friends/family/laundromats
- I would trim down significantly on personal belongings, basically to just the essentials
Almost too perfect. People around me of course could come up with some aspects of my envisioned lifestyle that might be inconvenient. There were, however, no arguments that seemed grave enough to me to deter me from pursuing this plan. And so I put down a 20k€ down payment on a 57k€, 1 year old Volkswagen California Coast in July 2019. An enormous amount of money, very much absurd to be honest. The reasoning behind me going with such a fancy car, however, were these: The Volkswagen / Dieselgate scandal was still very much present in everyone’s mind at the time. I didn’t feel like living in a “historic” 30 year old+ car to be freed from any legal requirements. Yet I also didn’t want to find myself excluded from driving into certain areas because my car was causing too much air pollution. So in my mind I had to go with a fairly recent model. I also wanted my van to be inconspicuous and not too impractical for everyday usage. Entering parking garages would ideally still be possible. So the California-series delivery-van base paired with a fold-out roof seemed like the best option to me. I can’t tell exactly any more why I didn’t look at other manufacturers’ offerings. I believe the Ford Nugget-based version didn’t seem to allow sleeping in the main cabin but only on the fold-out roof level. Maybe I also didn’t trust brands like Opel or Fiat very much. I can’t really tell any more.
And so, after having picked up my new home on a Friday afternoon, one hot Sunday evening in the mid of July, I finally found myself spending the first night on my employer’s parking lot. This adventure ended up lasting 7 months. There were many lessons I had to learn and overall I think it was a very formative experience. But to go into more detail on it I shall be doing another time, in a second part of this blog post.
