It’s been just over 3 months, although it feels like much longer, that we’ve been on the road on Our Big Adventure (OBA). Our former workaday routine seems far away. We’ve covered a lot of ground, seen many beautiful sites, met some wonderful people, and tasted lots of great food. We’ve hiked in the Alps, attended a film festival in Sarajevo, and floated through the canals in Amsterdam. So it feels like a good time to reflect on our journey thus far. We have so many great memories already! I had feared that I might get tired of being on the road full time, but so far, this new normal is agreeing with us.
Our lives in two bags each
Living out of our carry-on bags got to feel routine fairly quickly. Ivan is loving his 2-backpack set up (bigger one in back, smaller daypack in front), and I’m happy with my small roller bag and daypack. Ivan uses packing cubes, but I’ve been happy with my rolling clothes and packing them upright technique. Carrying my bags around, especially up and down train station stairs, has been a good way to get a bit of strength training in when there’s no access to weights.
Amazingly, there’s nothing we wished we’d packed that we didn’t. And given that we needed to be prepared for desert, mountains, and beach, I’d say we did pretty well.
My tennis shoes, that were almost new when we left, have already been retired and replaced, and my hiking boots got the boot in Switzerland after I realized they really didn’t fit me that well (did you know it was possible to get huge blisters through moleskin?). Most of my tank tops and Ivan’s Ts need to be tossed and replaced. When you’re rotating among just a handful of clothes, they wear out pretty quickly. The hard part has been finding new ones that we like, especially since online ordering isn’t really an option.
Bottom line, we are so happy to be traveling light. It’s freeing to know we really don’t need much ‘stuff’
On the road day to day
We’ve generally been spending between 4 – 7 nights in each location. That pace has seemed about right so far. We’ve been pretty good about not feeling like we have to see every attraction. It doesn’t take long to realize that full days of back-to-back “touristing” is not only expensive, but tiring! So, we give ourselves “low key days” where we walk around and explore without any set plans. We also have “productivity days” where we plan the next sections of our trip, weed through our pictures, and take care of day-to-day stuff. We’ll be slowing our pace as we continue so we can feel more integrated and can have more time to work on other goals and hobbies as well.
One thing that we always took for granted before, but we now really appreciate, is reliable, fast internet. It hasn’t always been easy to come by, even in a major hotel in a big city. So it’s helpful to have an offline activity too. For me, it’s pasting ticket stubs and scraps into my little art journal and making collages.
We keep close tabs on our budget through the Travel Spend app (highly recommend). We’ve learned that the cheapest activities are also the things that help us to get to know a place best and feel more integrated in the community. For example, going to the laundromat is a great way to interact with people. Wandering around off the beaten tourist track and exploring neighborhoods, stumbling across parks or small locally patronized restaurants is a lot of fun (we just break out the Google Translate for the menu). And of course, grocery shopping. Going into grocery stores is one of our favorite things to do in each new locale to see what’s different, for example, the dozens of varieties of fresh olives in Split, shelves packed with all kinds of dried soup mixes in Mostar, and meal prep kits in Vught. When we have a kitchenette, it also saves us money to cook some of our own meals. We’ve got a simple menu that serves us well.
A new level of togetherness
We’re used to spending a lot of time together. We’ve both worked from home for several years, and we’re accustomed to doing most things together. But it is different being within view of one another pretty much 24/7 and in close quarters where sometimes there hasn’t even been enough room for our bags on the floor!
We’ve refined our division of labor and have been playing to our strengths. I take the lead on the broad itinerary. Ivan takes the lead on figuring out the public transportation and buying tickets. Ivan makes the breakfast (when we’re lucky enough to have a small kitchen), I make the bed and do general tidying up (important when in small spaces). I help interpret which way the Apple Maps walking arrow is pointing, and Ivan helps me figure out how to turn on the shower/hot water (both occasionally much harder than they would seem!) 😊
Luckily, we have been in sync in terms of how we choose to spend our days and what we want to see and do. The challenges mostly arise when we’re both tapped out on decision making. That can make little things, like choosing a restaurant, challenging sometimes. We’re getting better at recognizing when we need to slow down and chill out. We’re also working on speaking up about what we want, not expecting the other to know, and not assuming we know what the other wants. For example, “I thought you’d want to take the tram” or, “I didn’t know you wanted a pastry!”. True, those are keys to any healthy relationship, but they become even more critical when moving so closely in tandem through each day’s activities.
We’ve also pretty much mastered the art of just sitting. It’s been a skill we didn’t know we’d need but has served us well and had some unexpected benefits. For example, we took a 10:50 pm bus from Rovinj, Croatia to Ljubljana, Slovenia. The front desk at our hotel closed at 7 pm so there was no way for us to leave our bags there past then, and it’s not fun to wander around or sightsee with bags. We knew that the bus probably wouldn’t have phone chargers, that it would be a long ride, and that we’d need our phones for directions and after-hours entry to the next hotel. This forced us to just sit by the harbor in Rovinj, without being on our phones so as to not wear down the batteries, and just be. We talked. We people watched. We even used the embankment to do some step-ups, push-ups and tricep dips. And we just enjoyed the breeze and the sunset . . . for hours . . . offline. And it was actually . . . well, kinda nice.
What I've learned so far
One of our goals of OBA is to learn more about ourselves, and I can say that even three months in, I can see some changes. Here are the five biggest ones:
1. I can function without making to-do lists. It’s been 3 months with nary a list! Planning and to-do list making has always been a big part of my routine, even for the weekends. And it’s not that we don’t have things we need to do while traveling, we do. Maybe it’s because they aren’t high-stakes things, or there are fewer of them, but while on OBA, I’ve not been my usual list-making self. I do keep a calendar of where we’ll be each day, and at the end of the day, I jot down what we did. And I’ve kept up my nightly journaling practice which I really enjoy. But to-do lists are out, at least for now.
There’s also something about being physically further away that makes things that may’ve seemed like big issues when we were at home seem like not as much of a big deal. Yes, we have less stress now, but my perspective has also shifted somehow. I have more trust that things will get done without having to hold such a tight grip or try to control outcomes as much. But that’s still a work in progress!
2. I’m becoming more spontaneous. I suppose it goes hand in hand with the list-making thing, but on OBA, I’ve become OK not having everything completely mapped out. We can decide to go on a daytrip, for example, without a full itinerary and directions mapped out. Or, we can decide on a place to visit without me having a comprehensive picture of every possible highlight or hazard.
3. I’m getting better at trusting that we’ll figure things out. Thankfully, things have gone pretty smoothly on OBA so far, but when there are glitches, I trust that we can problem solve and that things will be OK. I also barely recognize myself not freaking out seeing our bank balances going down without a plan for when we’ll have jobs again! As long as we’re staying on-track with the rate at which we’re spending, I’ve been pretty calm. I am the person who’s always chosen security over adventure, but OBA has flipped the script for me. I’m becoming more OK with uncertainty and ambiguity. Ivan’s positive outlook has really helped me with that, and I’m grateful.
4. I’m learning about history, and enjoying it. History has never been a strong suit of mine. I tended to find it dry and confusing. Maybe it was because I never had great history teachers, but I just couldn’t relate. This is no doubt why I usually feel woefully ignorant, especially when going to museums. But traveling to places so rich in history, and seeing direct evidence of it, while overwhelming, has also been intriguing. Our trip to Sarajevo especially, with so much history that’s happened in my lifetime, and friends who have lived through it, has pulled me in to learning more and it’s making traveling a richer experience.
5. I need to watch my expectations. I’ve noticed that when I have a place built up in my mind before we arrive, I’m most likely to feel a little let down when we first get there. There have been a few towns on which I had watched gorgeous You Tube videos, for example, and had really high expectations of. But upon arrival, when it didn’t seem sparklingly magical, I felt a little bummed. On the flipside, no surprise, when I’ve had low or no real expectations of a place, they’ve sometimes ended up being unexpected highlights of our trip.
And there are several smaller learnings too:
- People connections make the whole experience so much richer, even the brief ones
- It’s good to have a travel day ‘uniform’. It’s one less thing to have to think about, and at least I know I’ll be comfortable
- Review pictures daily – delete dups/duds, mark favorites, and organize them in folders/albums on your phone. It’s a nice way to recap the day with your travel partner too
- Don’t assume the rental car agents will be in their office when you show up to rent or return your car
- There’s no need to pack more underwear than your travel partner packed. When the first person runs out, it’s laundry day anyway
- If the ‘information booth’ attendant at the bus station seems annoyed by your question, walk away. It’s not going to get any better from there
- Make sure you check the indicator arrows at the laundromat and that you’ve put your tokens in the slot that activates the dryer where your clothes actually are
- WordPress is not as easy as it proclaims to be
- Never, never assume that a Flixbus trip will go smoothly!
OBA by the numbers
I may not be making to-do lists these days, but I do still love to document. Here are some stats relating to our travels.
- 11 countries visited (12 if you count the daytrip to Malmo, Sweden)
- 30 cities/towns stayed in (plus lots of day trips)
- Transportation;
- 3 Flights
- 7 Train trips
- 10 Bus trips (about 8 too many!)
- 648 Miles walked (only counting outdoor walking) and God knows how many stairs
- Plus plenty of in-town transportation in the form of local busses, trams, subways, Uber equivalents, boats, and gondolas (the only way to get down to a road from Murren, Switzerland)
- 81 life birds seen and/or heard
- $1,866 Estimated savings from home exchange stays thus far
- $4,536 Saved from credit card points and loyalty programs on hotels/transportation used thus far, not including the free breakfasts
OBA is living up to her name! We’ve seen a lot, we’re learning a lot, and we can’t wait to see what the coming months will bring!
2 Comments
What a nice window into your new world! It’s perceptive and funny. I laughed at your division of labor set-up – that’s so true about the google arrow and shower heads!
Oh my, I had to laugh about your comment, “ If the ‘information booth’ attendant at the bus station seems annoyed by your question, walk away. It’s not going to get any better from there”. I’m sure that was an experience. Thanks for sharing your adventures with us.