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“What are you going to do when you get back?”

HaHaHa, that’s a joke question right?! I can barely keep the week straight, let alone to plan that far in advance. I know people are anxious to understand our plans, but we don’t know. All we know so far is that we move out of Auckland in April, with the kids heading to Blenheim a couple of days before us. We’re going to Blenheim to help with this mind shift (and childcare while we work – thanks Mum) then we head to the US for a couple of weeks. All the US plans we have at this point are to continue the schooling and working routine we have thought about but won’t know how it really works until we try it. After the US, we fly to Norway for a few days (this stop is for Alpha since she loves Roald Dahl ‘The Witches‘), then on to our first major stop Latvia, for the month of June. After that, we go to Estonia for the month of July. After Estonia who knows?! I really want to go to St Petersberg (since it’s just over the border from Estonia), but we have no clue for the rest of it. It’s been a mission to get this far, and I have to start working on Russian visas soon, which we might have to do in Latvia actually. There are so many countries we want to see and we have to manage the Schengen countries with non-Schengen countries. So it’ll be 3 months in and 3 months out. Lennox really wants to go to Bulgaria (because of ‘Great Uncle Bulgaria’ from the Wombles), and wow, yeah the list of countries that Nat and I have is long, really long, and we know we can’t see them all, so we’re going to let things unfold a little.
Bike
Letting it ‘unfold’ is not how I used to be when it came to planning and I love the fact that I’m a little more free and easy with country selection. With most things in life I want to white knuckle the details, but when it comes to travel, I relax quite a bit. We want to be able to change our mind depending on what happens, who knows if we meet someone on the road who tells us we ‘must’ see a place or a perfect housesitting gig comes up. Of course, when we get to one country we have to know what the next country will be because immigration at the border wants to see your ‘exit plans’. In fact they want to see a lot. Immigration in most countries (not all) want to see that you’re leaving, that you have insurance, you have money to support yourself, and a lot of them what to see that the kids are being educated. (In some countries homeschooling is illegal for residents, so they can look at you extra hard.) At this point, we will know one maybe two countries ahead and that’s about it. Things may change down the road and we may want to have more definitive plans, but not right now.
The countries that we are likely to visit on this journey is not the list of ALL the countries we’d like to visit. It does not cover South America (oh so many in S.A,  we had to decide if we should do Europe or South America), South East Asia, or Africa. But here’s some we’d love to get to on this adventure

  • Latvia
  • Estonia
  • Norway
  • Russia
  • Croatia
  • Germany
  • Netherlands
  • Spain
  • Italy
  • Turkey
  • Egypt
  • Scotland
  • Bulgaria
  • Czech Republic
  • Greece
  • A ‘stan’ or a ‘jan’ country

Oh and then I start going down the rat hole of countries that are so close and we could add….

  • Lebanon
  • Portugal
  • Morocco
  • Slovakia
  • Serbia
  • Romania
  • Bosnia and Herzegovina

You’ll notice the absence of France and England, Ireland we’re on the fence about. I only want to go to the Louvre in France, and is that a good enough reason to add a country? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows we may end up there. But if there was a choice between Italy and France, I’d go Italy. Or if I had to choose Spain and France, I’d go Spain. Nothing against the French, it’s just I’m more inspired by Italy and Spain.
Will we get to experience all these countries? Nope, I know we won’t, because there isn’t enough time to do it the way we want to (a month or more in each country). But we will see what we will see and we will experience as much of it as we can. When we’re getting closer to the end of our trip we’ll figure out what we want to do.

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Alice Rae-Flick

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9 Replies to “When we're back”

  1. Exciting to have your blog up and running! I’m really glad we’ll be able to check in on your adventures and see the ups and downs of this epic time in your lives. Can’t wait to see you in the states!

    1. Yay a comment, thanks Allison. We’ll be tweaking this as we go, so much more to do with this site, but as you can imagine there’s tons still to do. But we’re getting there, the list is only 1 page long (but it’s A3 size) rather than 3 pages long. Let me know what you want us to write about, and I’ll be sure to waffle on. Alice

      1. Already off to a great start guys! I’d love see pictures and hear more about how the kids are doing with distance learning. I’m also really interested in teh “stuff” part of this. What were some of the hardest things to let go? How did you feel afterward? Just a smattering of the things I’m curious about.

  2. Ok I’m hooked!
    And OMG Nathaniel your wife is Freaking Awesome!!!

    1. Thank you so much. This is her dream but it’s become mine too and while it’s hard work I’m going to look back on all of this and really be thankful we made it.

  3. Ok I’m hooked.
    And Nathenial I Fricken Love your wife she’s Awesome!

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