In 2020, we decided to press pause on our careers and busy lives in Portland to prioritize something that, up until that point, seemed impossible: traveling full-time. We’ve always been curious about what life is like outside of America, and we don’t want to just vacation, we want to experience it up close. This is that story.
Some of the best experiences are unplanned—the ones where you show up with only your things and no preconceptions. You haven’t had time to build up expectations in your mind. It’s just you and the day ahead of you.
It’s always kind of concerned me that most of my role models live in vans (or have lived in vans at some point). It’s a reminder of a choice we often forget we have; it’s the difference between Tuesday mornings becoming once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
It’s a strange feeling flying from Scandinavia to Spain in the same afternoon. That morning, I woke up early to take photos—not too early though since it was late fall in the high latitudes—before we made our way to the airport.
The first day, we spent $50 USD on tacos. In most parts of the world, that would get you between fifteen and twenty tacos, but in Copenhagen, it will only get you seven. Still, after two months any tacos is better than no tacos, and the Vikings use way more flavor than the French—désolé.
During our last week in Sevilla, Tori met several people through her Spanish classes. We formed a little group and met up for dinner or drinks in the evenings. One of the girls we got to know, Johanna, was from Germany and invited us to spend some time getting to know where she’s from if we were ever around.
Through the mist, you could make out columns and facades in the Austro-Hungarian style. Hedgerows disappeared into the distance, and I began to wonder if Cedric Diggory might be around the next bend.
Ljubljana feels like the authentic version of what most Western European cities tell you they are. Tucked away in an eastern corner of the Alps, Slovenia feels like Europe’s best-kept secret. There’s a magic and a charm to it.
Croatia is known for it’s coffee culture, and Zagreb is the capital of that as well. It seems every 100 meters there’s a specialty coffee shop. On breaks from travel planning, we decided to take in some of the local culture one cup at a time.
There are hundreds of islands off the coast of Croatia dotted with towns and villages that, at first glance, more or less look the same. But, each one has its own story, its own history, its own feel. For awhile, I’d been looking for a place to spend a little bit of time to refocus, to set the screens down, to not have to be ten steps ahead in my mind.
Walking the empty streets reminds me of walking through a dream of endless corridors—always wondering what’s around the next bend. The corridors don’t always make sense, and what seems like a dead end might just have a narrow passage to somewhere else.
