Sooner or later, we knew it would happen to us. On the internet, you can find numerous reports of people being harassed by locals simply because they choose to live or travel in an RV.
Unfortunately, this is a reality in Europe, and in some locations, you don’t feel genuinely welcomed. However, fortunately it didn’t happen very often.
Our personal experience unfolded in Corsica after 547 days on the road.
We were in Ajaccio, in a place near the beach, some bars around, definitely a beautiful place! We had a great day in the area and around 9 pm we went home. There was some noise due to the bars and people hanging out, but this didn’t really bothered us, we are used to it.
Around 1 am, we were abruptly awakened by someone banging on the door. We assumed it was just drunk people returning home and tried to dismiss it. However, this happened three or four more times during the night.
The chaos escalated in the early morning, around 7 am. I heard a noise coming from the kitchen window and went to investigate, as I was already awake. To my surprise, there was a man staring at me silently. To break the ice, I asked him what he wanted, but he remained silent. Feeling uneasy, I closed the window.
I decided to make some coffee and sat at the table near the window to write in my diary. While enjoying my coffee, I glanced out the window and noticed another guy was standing there, looking inside with a weird face, curious maybe, as if he was in front of a groundbreaking technology from another world. He hadn’t noticed me until I tapped on the window from the inside, at which point he hastily fled.
A few minutes later, the RV started shaking violently, as if someone was attempting to overturn it, I went outside to see what was going on, and I found 7 of them pushing the car, really trying to turn the vehicle. I said … “ heey … what are you doing, you are not supposed to do that “. They momentarily paused, looked at me, and burst into laughter. I stood there, my mind was trying to make sense of the situation 😅. What was that ? What they were trying to achieve ? Why someone could possible think about doing something like this ?
We quickly gathered our belongings and decided to leave, shocked with what have just happened and 2 days after we were returning to Italy, after all, there was no sense to stay in that island afraid of what might happen.
After the incident we started searching the internet, Corsica has gained a reputation for dangerous incidents involving both locals and RV travelers — We could have done this search before and avoided the situation.
Corsica is so far the only place that we really didn’t like. The natural beauty in the area is undoubtedly worth exploring, but this counts just half — Other things like, interacting with people, witnessing their pride in sharing their culture and surroundings counts for the other half, and on this aspect they showed us selfish attitude trying to keep their treasures solely for themselves.
Of course this is not the rule and I’m pretty sure, as we also experienced that, there are locals who are genuinely open and welcoming to foreigner, but anyway it is what it is …
If you are thinking about visiting Corsica in a Motorhome, our suggestion is : Go ahead ! 😅 — but plan the trip carefully opting for camping grounds and never park outside otherwise you will risk to get harmed.
