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I'm finally home. I'm home. I just feel like I have not been home in forever. I've been here a couple of times this year, but only for like a couple of weeks at a time, and I just feel like I have not actually been home in a very long time. In far too long. In between the Sahara expedition and the UK book tour and the US book tour, now I'm finally here, and I'm not leaving. I am not leaving home anymore. I am just I'm not moving any I'm not going anywhere. I'm not traveling. I don't care about travel. I just want to be home. I've been so homesick for the first time in my life, and I'm finally freaking home. And where is home? Well, in case you
don't remember, home is in the Carpathian Mountains in Poland. This is one of the biggest and least known mountain ranges in Europe. It stretches from Romania in the south to Czechia in the northwest and connects many Eastern European countries. I may be biased, but to me the Carpathians are a truly magical, mystical place, home to the continent's biggest populations of bear, wolf, and lynx. Yeah, it's a pretty wild spot. Hey, buddy. Hey, Vic. Come here. Come on. Look. Come. Clearly that rock is much more important than saying hello to you guys. Oh, pop.
What? Is that a good rock? Do you like that rock so much? Yeah, so good. Hey, Vic. Come on. Hey, buddy. Spin. Yeah, twist. Yeah, back up. Look. So much has changed while I've been gone. I've been, you know, juggling a million projects here remotely and some of them have been going for years and many of them came to fruition over the last month while I've been gone. So, over the next couple of episodes, I want to catch you up on some of those changes cuz they're pretty major. Actually, they're going to change the way that I live out here completely. For the better, I hope. All right.
Here we go. As you can see, I've already opened up the doors and the windows to allow a little bit of fresh air in cuz it's it's quite um musty in there. Yeah. A little musty. Ah, yeah. It does smell like it hasn't been opened up in a while. Ah, but it's not too bad. I feel like maybe one day of fresh air circulating here and it should be fine. Well, honestly, it doesn't look bad. It looks kind of like I left it. I don't think any of these plastic boxes with food have been touched. And when I say touched, I mean by mice.
Now, there's definitely a lot of mouse droppings. You see them here? Um yeah. They're um They're on the bed. They're on the window sill. They're here on the old bed. Mice is actually my only kind of concern when I leave the shepherd's hut kind of on its own because, you know, mice get in here and they will just poop everywhere. So, you've got to deal with the mouse droppings. And as you guys may remember, a few months ago we had a hantavirus scare globally. And well, this is what I have to deal with pretty much every day.
[snorts] Um I don't know if mice in Poland carry the hantavirus. Maybe not. Who knows? But, I'm going to have to clean this up, definitely. I'll just air all of this out. Oh, right on top. You see it? Remember when I painted this bench last year? It's still so cute. I love this color. I've been keeping most of my things here in these plastic boxes because they are quite resistant to mouse bites, and you know, mice trying to get in and eat the food.
I did learn my lesson quite painfully last year when I left for like 2 weeks once. I left some of my food not in a plastic box. And I came back and it was all just chewed through, and there was food everywhere, and it was all scattered, and the mice got into coffee and chocolate and lentils, freaking everything. Yeah. This is a problem. You know, this is the first time in my life that I feel like I could use one of those like carpet stands. If you're Eastern European, you'll know exactly what I mean. I haven't seen them in the US or in the UK, which is quite interesting cuz they're actually useful as I'm finding out as a 35-year-old cuz I don't know exactly how to clean this except for just doing this, which I feel like I'm just breathing in
the hantavirus right now. What if we just put you here on this? We're just going to put it out in the sun. You know, like that's a always a good natural method to clean things. Before we move on to the rest of the cleaning operation, I want to address the elephant in the room, which is the fact that Toycar is here, which is unusual because as you may well remember, up until quite recently, the only way for me to get up here to my property was in my UTV, my little Polaris. Well, I have been working for a very long time on improving the trail that leads up here, and it has become so good now, thanks to the crew that worked on it for a long time, a very, very long time. It has become good enough that I can actually
access my property with my truck. I mean, you know, still involves low gears and sometimes a diff lock, and I still won't be able to get up here in Toycar when it's wet or muddy. Uh but when the weather is good like this, I can. In a nice 4x4 car. So, that is just such a game-changer. That is a huge game-changer. A huge I'm very excited. Now, I don't want to show you what the trail looks like. It's It's quite rugged. It's very rocky. It's very simple. There's, you know, it's Yeah, it's a mountain trail at the day but I don't want to show you what it looks like because obviously, I have privacy concerns. So, trust me when I say that it's extremely steep
and impossible to cross in a car that's not a powerful 4x4. So, yeah. Now, you're just supervising. You're just making sure that everything is okay. Yeah. Yeah, you're making sure that everything is okay. Oh, boy. Back to the cleaning. Back to Ew. Oh my god, this is really gross. All right, take a look at this. [snorts] Oh god. Oh my god. Like that is going to have to stay outside for a while. Ew. And there's a lot of mouse droppings on that side of the carpet as well, right next to it.
Mhm, [snorts] this is not very pleasant. Right, let's get it out. Let's get it Annoyingly, I don't have one of the scoopy things. You know, when you sweep and you scoop the dirt on top. I've lost it somewhere. Uh so, I'm just going to have to use a bit of cardboard. You got to work with what you got. Yeah.
Okay, I think we've cleaned enough. Now, let's move her back in. Hi. You recognize your home? You know that this is your home, right? You know that this is your home? Yes, you know that this is your home. Yes, I know that your home is your home. Yes, your home. I am just genuinely so excited about every little thing including making the hut cozy and pretty again. I have literally been missing home so much. You know, the last month or two have been incredible. Being able to travel all around the world to share my book with so many of you.
You know, I feel like I hugged thousands of people. I've met so many of you. I signed so many books, had so many amazing conversations with so many of you. And despite all of that, I still really longed for home. I felt just so incredibly homesick. I really missed it. I wonder whether I am just completely over travel at this point. It's a good question. I don't really know the answer to that. But after traveling full-time for nearly 10 years, you know, probably can't blame me that I feel like a change. A change of pace.
Look, this is your bed. Yeah, I know you like it. There is one more massive change that has recently taken place here. This one [snorts] has been in the works for a couple of months and in my head for about a year or two, probably 2 years. Um and this is a change that many of you told me I should implement. It just took a little bit of time. But I'm very excited to present to you my water hose. So this is connected to the little spring that I've been drawing water from for the last couple of years. Um so this is my beautiful spring water. Except there's a pipe here that is right next to the um right next to the hut and it means that I don't have to walk all that way anymore to fetch my water.
And I can probably even take showers here if I want to. Which will be cold but quite convenient. See if she works. Yep. Hey, big. Want some water? Don't be so greedy. I feel like in some way I am going to miss having to go to the water spring to fetch my water every time. In some way. But I know this is a lot more convenient. It's going to save me a lot of time and long term if I want to keep developing you know, the hut and all this stuff here this is going to come in really handy. So, yay. We got water. Ah!
We got running water. I mean it's still not like it's not hot water, but it is running water. So, the other day I was visiting my uncle and he has a little shop with all kinds of knickknacks and I saw this. Oh. That's not what I meant. I saw this cupboard among all the other things that he had and I just loved it so much. Oh, perfect. Isn't she so cute? Look at her. So lovely. It is was so whimsical, so adorable, so cute. I want it in my life and so I brought it into my life. So, I'm thinking somewhere in that corner.
Mhm. And then she's just so adorable. Huh? Perfect. No, she can't be in the corner. This is not a corner cupboard. This is a cupboard that needs her space. That needs to be showcased a little bit. So, what if we put her here? Ha. So, that whenever I enter, this is the first thing I see. The good thing about having a very small living space is that it doesn't take too long to clean it. So, after I was mostly done, I still had some time to leave Vilk in the cabin with his dinner for a couple of hours and go pay my horse a quick visit. The reason I'm not bringing Vilk is because there's other dogs where the horses are staying that Vilk doesn't get along with. So, he's just going to stay home and
hopefully chill, take a little nap. I'll be back in about an hour or two. Can you believe I'm driving my freaking car? Oh my land, this is so exciting. Yeah, this is the beginning of a whole new era. I have one more update for you, one more major massive change to how I live up here, and this is probably actually the biggest one. So, when I get back home to the hut, I'll tell you all about it. Because I feel like this one is it's just Yeah, it's huge. I've been waiting for this for years, and it's finally happening. Um so, I'm really excited. But first, we're going to go spend some quality time with the beautiful horseys.
My horse Shaman lives with my good friends and their herd on their beautiful property not too far from my spot. They run a boutique chalet resort here, and nice people who stay with them end up falling in love with this hidden corner of the world, and I'm pretty sure that this is what horse paradise actually looks like. Hi. Yes, Zuzia. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I missed you so much.
[clears throat] The horses just live outside 24/7 together as a herd, and they have the freedom to roam the meadows in the forest here. It's a pretty awesome life. Now, I do have some big horse-related plans for this summer, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. They smell so good. For now, I'm just so excited to see all the horses all together and to hang out with Shaman once again. This is paradise. Mhm. This is paradise. [snorts] Back home.
My god, I love being home. Hello. Hi. Hi, buddy. No hi? It's getting a little bit dark, which is kind of perfect because there's one more thing that I really want to show you, and this is the big change. This is the massive change that I don't know how I feel about this one. In a way, I know it was going to happen. It was always going to happen. I really needed it to happen to make living here sustainable. But I know that I'm going to miss the old times. I don't know if you know what I'm talking about, but I want to show you. [snorts] I want to show you this. Do you know what this is?
Do you realize what this is? Yeah. That's a wall socket. I now have power right here in the shepherd's hut. Yeah. I'm no longer off the grid. There's the wall socket. There Here's an extension cord. Mhm. It's green. Let's plug in fairy lights. This is a big one. This is a really big one. One of my favorite things eat over here is just fresh bread with a good thick spread of butter like proper butter and salt.
This is just so good.
