Proof of address

Once upon a time last winter there was a happily married couple who had spent quite a significant number of years travelling an itsy bitsy, tiny part of the world on their oldish sailboat.
In order not to get bored of spending their annual holidays in the most beautiful archipelago in the world, they decided to broaden their horizons a bit and check out how the other half do it (vacationing, that is).

I, myself, comprise about half of that couple. We're ordinary, finnish people (except that we speak swedish instead of finnish, try to have a rather Peppi Longstockingly approach to life, and got tattoos for our 20 year anniversary).

I've long wanted to go for a roadtrip in the Netherlands so this year I decided to sell this idea to my darling wife Carola. I showed her pictures of all the quaint villages, told her about the rather far out art festival in S'Hertzogenbosch, and all in all started to prepare for  roadtrip to the tulips.
-I want to see Scotland, she said.
-No way, woman, I've got my heart set on the Netherlands and you *will* respect my authority! I manly retorted before ordering plane tickets to Edinburgh.*


We decided to hire a campervan and follow the NC500 -route because it sounds cool and makes me feel like I'm participating on the Cannonball Race or something, and at the tender age of 52 I'll take all the bolstering I can get.

The North Coast 500 route consists of a mostly single lane road that meanders along the coast of the Scottish Highlands, crossing mountains and villages, and offering plenty to see for the wide eyed traveller. A campervan offers the weary traveller the freedom to stop for the night wherever the weary traveller wants. Since the scottish freecamping regulations do not apply to vehicles, it also offers the equally weary (of campervans) policeman to wake the traveller and tell him/her to feck off to a campsite. We have yet to see how the cookie crumbles on that one, but we hope that the van will provide us with, in the words of the most famous scot of them all, Mel Gibson: "Freeedoom!" **

Renting a van in Scotland is a more convoluted affair than in Finland. Over here you pay, scribble your name on the contract, let them take a copy of your driver's licence, and Bob's your uncle.

In Scotland all the above applies, but you will also need to provide the renter/renter's insurance company with a proof of address, assumingly so you don't run off with the car.
This proof has to consist of at least 2 bank statements or other more or less official documents with your name and address on them (I haven't seen one of those in 15 years) or utility bills with your name and address on it. Since a five minute googling and a bit of creative photo shopping could provide me with any of the above, stating any address I want, this whole Vonnegutian approach to security seems rather outdated...

But all is well that ends well and after parting with the "proofs of address" and slightly over 0.001 million euros, our home away from home is now ready to receive us on Monday.
Stay tuned to this channel for more ramblings!
-B-

*Coaching sessions on how to keep your marriage a happy one are available upon request ;)
And Scotland is an extremely beautiful place in its own, rugged way, as we could see when we visited the place last year. We can't wait to visit it again. We are actually already thinking about going back for a third time in 2019, then hiring a narrowboat.

**Yes, I'm well aware that mr Gibson isn't actually scottish, but since this is my blog I do reserve the right to embellish the truth a little bit at times in order to amuse you, my dear followers.