Leaving everything - home, city, friends, work - to experience an authentic adventure: this is what Felix and Selima did, a couple from Berlin who decided to transform an old school bus into a traveling home and set off to discover the the American continent, traveling from north to south.
Leaving everything - home, city, friends, work - to experience an authentic adventure: that's what they did Felix and Selima, a couple from Berlin who decided to transform an old school bus into a traveling house and to set out to discover the American continent, traveling it from north to south.
The project in question is called Expedition Happiness and the protagonists are two young Germans, the director Felix Starck and the musician Selima Taibi (stage name "Mogli"), accompanied by the inseparable dog Rudi. Their adventure began a few months ago, with the purchase, on the internet, of an old yellow school bus 12 meters long by 2,4 wide, at a price of 9.500 dollars (just under 8.500 euros).
Subsequently, Felix and Selima moved to the United States to "meet" their bus and, in the space of several weeks, they radically transformed it, making it a very well equipped and technological tiny house, a comfortable home on wheels, with which to embark on the long-awaited adventure on the road: a long journey across America, the stages of which will be documented from time to time with videos posted on their website and on Facebook.
"We are originally from Germany and we were tired of the life we led in a big city like Berlin." - Felix and Selima say on their crowdfunding page - “So we decided to buy a twenty-year-old school bus via the internet. A few weeks later, we boarded a plane for the United States and started converting the school bus into a camper, a tiny house or a loft on wheels - well, call it whatever you want. After 12 weeks of daily failures we have completed the conversion and are now ready to take our work on the road to South America. Will we really make it this far? We have no idea, probably not! Are we going to have a great experience? For sure!"
The tiny house was built following instructions from various online forums and asking for help from a North Carolina couple who had already built a similar house for themselves. The laborious work of reconversion of the school bus was carried out using different recycled materials, starting from old wooden pallets, used for all the interior coverings (with the exception of the shower cabin, entirely covered with handmade tiles).
READ also: The most beautiful (and smallest) Tiny Houses of 2015
The result of a lot of work is a house on wheels equipped with everything you need to live: running water, electricity (thanks to the possibility of using both solar energy and the connection to the electricity grid), kitchen with stove, dining table , shelving, refrigerator, freezer, bed, shower, composting toilet ... a mobile and miniature house that, in the couple's hopes, should allow them to make the most of the long journey from Alaska to South America.
However, it is not the first time that Felix and Selima have chosen adventure: in the past, Felix traveled for a year by bicycle, covering a total of 18.000 km and crossing twenty-two countries around the world. At the end, he recounted his experience of him in the documentary Pedal the World, for which Selima wrote the soundtrack.
If you are curious to know how this American adventure of the couple will turn out, you can visit the Expedition Happiness website or the related Facebook page.
Lisa Vagnozzi
Photo Credits
