VW Bully, surfboards and the subconscious founding of compagnon...

What follows is a story for the diary, a transcript for our children when they can read one day... Some of you probably know that we, Vitalis & Valentin, are not just business partners. No, we've been cousins for much longer and friends for almost as long - compagnon. Perhaps today is the right day to tell you a little about what we've been up to. We are separated by exactly two years to the day. We were born in the same village, somewhere in the Kyrgyz steppe, in Sokuluk, even in the same hospital. Our mothers have the same first name, spelled differently but pronounced the same. No, they are not sisters... ;-) When we still had hair on our heads, we even had the same hair color. It's all quite funny, but it's no guarantee of a long and lasting friendship.

Today we want to take you on a short trip. The trip took place in 2006, eight years ago. Back then, we didn't even know that there would ever be such a thing as "compagnon". But we must have sensed it somehow. It was the beginning of 2006, in winter, when four guys decided to buy a VW T3 together. We wanted to take this bus somewhere on the coast to go surfing. But none of us was a mechanic, which is useful for a longer trip, and none of us could surf either... But it didn't just remain a dream full of words and pictures, no, we spent weeks scouring the then still popular bulky waste newspaper and searching on mobile.de. In the end, we found a beige-brown Volkswagen T3 built in 1985 with less than 100,000 km on the clock on "elektronische Bucht" for just under €1200. Ok, it has to be said that the odometer only allowed 5 digits - unfortunately we still don't know how many kilometers the good guy has really driven... The bus was older than most of us back then... An auction is an auction, so we drove to Freiburg and took it home after a short, successful test drive... We also quickly found a name for the good piece of technology. It is to be called"Camille". Of course, we can also provide an explanation. Camille comes from camel. A camel has to drink a lot quickly and be able to travel as far as possible on a full tank - without complaining too much. In the meantime, we also agreed on a destination. We wanted to take our Camille to the Atlantic coast of Portugal. To Peniche, where the waves are supposed to be high and the beaches, for illegal camping, are extensive... Camille was our compagnon. We boys were compagnon. The trip was an ode to compagnon. The word compagnon didn't come up once, but we lived it all day long. We drove about 3000 km in one direction to the sea, we slept on the beach in sleeping bags. We barbecued in the dunes, went surfing during the day, or something like that, we walked the Bairro Alto in Lisbon and listened to lots of good music in the Camille.... And this is what it looked like back then in pictures (yes, there are many, but each one is important)

And eight years have already passed. By the way, Vitalis is the guy jumping off the Camille and Valentin is the guy with the red sweater, which he also had with him recently in Ghana...(to the proof photo) A few photos are a bit boy band - like, but that's what you do when you're young... ;-) Back then, we would never have dreamed of making a living from the "compagnon" spirit, the idea was too daring. We took the photos with Canon IXUS and Konica Minolta superzoom cameras, who cared back then? Aperture, shutter speed, ISO, why when there was automatic? Memory cards so big that you can't fit 50 RAWs on them today - so what! :-) Back then they were enough for a road trip. Today we still talk about the trip from time to time, but not too intensively and not when our girls are with us, otherwise we feel like old men talking about the "good ol' times"... The Camille served us well for a few more years. Everyone had it when they needed it. Car sharing in its earliest form with a key that you only really needed for the ignition because you could open the doors through the side window at any time... You want to know what happened to our friend Camille? Warning - spoiler - the ending is tragic!