So! I decided to take a trip. Finally. A longer one. Like three to six months.
I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while now, and now I finally put things in motion. I saved up money and time and exchanged my Alfa GT “Red Danger” for a Hymer 514 Classic camper. Ok, I plummeted visually for about a century ;) And it’s still a Fiat engine but much better than its reputation. And it’s really practical…I think. We’ll see how we get along soon. Next, I sublet my apartment, took care of vaccinations, made sure that working while traveling will be possible and organized things like international health insurance, mail forwarding and many other little things.
There’s lots to organize when taking a longer trip, so my advice is definitely: start preparing early. And then even earlier than that. Give yourself some structure, for example with tools like Trello if you like it the digital way. Or organize yourself with post-its and simple “Todo”, “Doing”, “Done” categories. Write down stuff otherwise you may forget it as so many little things want to be taken care of. In the last week or two before leaving, I still had a few social tasks like meeting with friends, calling people and things like that. I found it a bit difficult to handle the social side and still take care of all the other things and I even didn’t manage to meet or call everybody I wanted. Next time, I’d try to keep my last week before the start either free of friends or free of remaining tasks.
Referring to the headline “It’s happening!” – it’s a quote from the person subleasing my apartment. She also decided to mix it up a little in her life and took a new, hopefully exciting job in Cologne. After we signed the contract for the sublease, she joyfully and with slight remainder of disbelief spoke out these two words to express that what just took place is no theory, no thought, no maybe but – reality. It could not fit her and my situation better. It’s the slogan of the trip.
Just do it. It’s happening!