Free like a bear

Before reporting about the travel part – even though it is the most interesting I guess – I thought I’d write something about the preparation of a world trip. Many people have indeed asked me questions about how easy it is to organize such a tour and how I proceeded.

There are basically 2 big types of things to take care about when preparing a long tour… 1/ preparing the tour itself and 2/ organizing everything home in order to be able to leave for a long time!

I will start with the boring part first… the things to do before being able to leave!

After signing the termination agreement and putting an end to what I thought was my only big commitment in life, I naively imagined I would be totally free and could leave right away! But it was without thinking about all the other things which commit us in life. If there is something I learned for sure in this phase of the planning, it is that you are never free even when you think you are. As soon as you get rid off the main handcuffs which refrain you from going away, you notice that there are many more you haven’t really thought about.

 

The apartment

Typical things that prevent us from flying away are material. I cannot recall how often people asked me about what I will do with my apartment while I am away. It was very often the first question I got asked, even before being interested in the trip itself. And this question really annoyed me since it was something I was struggling a lot with. I had basically three options: giving the apartment away, subletting it or leaving it the way it is. I excluded pretty quickly the first option. Coming back to Berlin, I would never ever find a comparable apartment with a similar location and rent… I even think that I wouldn’t find anything comparable for double the price! Being unemployed, I basically would have no chance to get anything! And in addition, I would also need to store my furniture and things somewhere which would cost a lot (and I wouldn’t want to sell my furniture for 1 euro… I still like everything!). I thought for a while about subletting but finally decided against it. I have some trust issues about letting somebody I don’t know use the flat with me being away, and I don’t want to have troubles while I am at the end of the world. But more decisively, I don’t want to lose the flexibility of coming back from my trip whenever I want to. Maybe I will be fed up after 3 months, or I might get sick and need a break, and it is really nice in this case to have a place you can call home. So yes, I decided to keep the apartment empty, to pay my monthly rent and to lose a lot of money… but to me, it is worth it. And I don’t need to tidy anything and put my things away… It’s really convenient. The only backside is that I need to annoy friends who once in a while need to check that everything is fine, empty the letter box, water the plants, etc. I am very grateful to my flat care team, the bear’s den team (“Bärenhöhle Betreuungsteam”!) as I like to call them!

 

Administration

Another huge part of the to-do list concerns the administrative matters. For those of you not living in Germany, it might be hard to understand… but German people love paperwork!

I needed to apply for unemployment money before the trip in order to… get some money after the trip! Nice paradox! If I hadn’t done the paperwork before leaving, I would have lost the right to get unemployment money when I come back because I wouldn’t fulfill the necessary criteria anymore. But taking action before leaving guarantees my right to get this money for 4 years. It took me a while to figure this out but some great German backpacker sites helped me a lot. Many bloggers made checklists with all the things you need to think about, which was very useful! But this meant spending a lot of time filling forms, going to the Agentur für Arbeit for meetings, collecting documents, etc… So finally, I was officially registered as unemployed for less than 2 weeks, and cancelled my registration on the day I left.

I also had fun writing contract termination letters to many services I wouldn’t use for a while like the gym, streaming services, cable TV, useless insurances, etc.

I also had the chance to deal with French administration! I originally planned to travel with my German passport (yeah! I have both French and German citizenships!) but noticed that I only had about 8 empty pages left, which is not a lot knowing that the customs guys love putting their stamps in the middle of the pages! Instead of renewing it, I thought it might be good to get a new French passport, the old one being expired for over 5 years. I made an appointment at the French embassy to apply for it, and was prepared to lose half a day there and to wait 3 months to get it! Even if it hurts to admit it, I was really impressed about how efficient it was! I got an appointment within 3 weeks, and an email informing me my passport was ready for pick-up 4 days after I filed in the request! And they are printed in France! Quite amazing…! Maybe the Berlin administration should have some of their employees do an internship at the French embassy…

 

Health

The health-related preparation was also time-consuming. I needed to find a world health insurance to cover my stay abroad and also had to figure out what to do with the German insurance… If I hadn’t done anything, I would have had to pay every month a lot of money for something I cannot use!

Talking about health, I also had to take care of vaccines! I went to the tropical medicine institute of the Charité hospital in Berlin to discuss about what I needed. I was quite confident that I wouldn’t need much, since I already had done so much for previous trips… But no! I had to go there 4 times, getting many shots of all kind of stuff! Japanese encephalitis, typhus, rabies…! And as a little extra, I also got a flu shot! I also received a prescription for paludism prophylaxes drugs in case I am entering in a malaria endemic area. To round this up, I went to my general doctor too to discuss about standard drugs to take with me in my travel pharmacy.

 

Money

I also had to think about the money topic. Because traveling without money is not really working! And nothing more annoying than being abroad in front of an ATM and not being able to get cash because your credit card is refused. Since I already had this experience several times abroad, I am well prepared and have many credit cards from different banks and countries, and there is always one which is working. I also got 2 cards from banks where you don’t need to pay fees for paying in foreign currencies or getting foreign cash which is really convenient. And I always have some emergency cash… in case nothing is working or I lose my cards. I was frustrated to get dollars for this though! I never understood why most of the countries want dollars but not euros! I feel like the times where the US dollar rules the world are over… but I seem to be the only one to think like that. Haha.

I also needed to set up the online access to my bank accounts on my phone and travel computer in order to be sure that the safety systems for money transfer would work from abroad.

Shopping

Continuing with material things, the trip preparations were a nice opportunity to do some shopping and get some new stuff which I thought I might need… like for example a flexible water bottle, some backpack packing bags, some new clothes, a new camera, etc.! Not that I really needed all of this stuff, but I had to take the chance to use my Amazon Prime subscription before canceling it!

 

Digital life

What took most of the time was to prepare my “virtual” luggage, i.e. to prepare a set of data and files I might need, and put it on a cloud… scans of passports, ID pictures, lists of login and passwords and more! Also, I put together a selection of some pictures of Berlin, the Alsace region, my apartment, my family and me. It happened quite often during my previous trips that some locals or people I met wanted to see pictures of where I am from, and I was always frustrated to google-image for pictures instead of showing mine. Finally, I prepared all the social media stuff, like this blog or my Instagram account to be ready to go!

 

Beloved ones

You can imagine that all this stuff kept me quite busy! But there is more than material stuff to take care about… and it is way more important! Because when you leave your home for a long trip, you don’t only leave things, but you also leave people behind you! You leave friends who might be stuck in their hamster wheel. But you also leave your family, parents and sister, which will worry about you being far away and will miss you. And you won’t be there for them when they need you! I realized that traveling was a selfish thing. It is something you do for yourself and it doesn’t leave a lot of room for others. In a paradox way, caring loved ones limit your freedom. But they also give you roots. You might not be as free as you’d like, but you know you have a place you can call home and you cannot get lost in the wild world. Luckily, we are living in times where technology can compensate for the bad conscience of being far away… and I hope I will be able to keep in touch very regularly with friends and family with WhatsApp, Skype and this blog!

And so we come to the maybe saddest but also nicest part of the trip preparation: saying goodbye!… and I really enjoyed all the goodbye cafés and dinners I had in the weeks before leaving!

After all that was done, it was time to take care of the trip… which is another story in another blog article. To be followed…