500 days in the World, without a “home”

500 days in the World, without a “home”

Have we gone nuts? Maybe.

“Wouldn’t it be cool to reach 500 days…” – Mr.Blab was dreaming in the days before we set off. Frankly, it sounded ridiculous at the time. We were only hoping to make it to a year, and even that seemed far fetched. At the time no other family that had dared to share their spending on a gap year, was even close to the budget we were setting for ourselves.We were nuts for going, we were nuts for thinking we could do it so cheaply and we were nuts for taking our kids along.

We are there. Five hundred days. Almost a year and a half. 26 countries. 105 places.

Time has passed so quickly, that this fact itself should be enough evidence that we have had a blast. Having in mind that we have actually traveled all of that time  we should be half dead, barely able to keep up the spirits, itching for a home and on the edges of our patience with each other. Instead we are lov-ing-it! You’ve got travel? BRING IT ON!

I want to tell you all the wisdom that is supposed to come with this experience, the meaning of life and all that jazz, but this is not a glossy travel magazine. My headline will read  “Travel is an experience, stupid” instead. It is not a holy grail or the spark to change your life. We are the same people with the same positives and negatives we left all those months ago. The difference is that we are doing what we want to do, which gives us an incredible amount of glee jolt to start up every day. There is still laundry to be done, meals to be thought of, cleaning to be avoided, but there are no commitments, no phones, no jobs, no wake up alarms. It is bloody fantastic.

My social inner bug has been happy meeting a whole heap of wonderful people along the way. Oh, the conversations and laughter that has spilled over me in buckets. I am soaking in it and grinning all the way to my bursting social bank.  Mr.Blab has drugged himself into sugary Eden trying all the sweets he could put trembling fingers on. And the kids are simply living.

What now? Who knows.

We barely know where we will sleep in 2 or 3 nights, that is how uncommitted we are to plans. We hope to get to Tromso and then deliver Couch to my mom. I dream of spending months in Spain and learning the language (not gonna happen). We want to stop in Iceland on the way to North America, but it  seems so far right now, it is hard to think about it.

It is like we left yesterday. Miss Fab commented today that she cannot believe we watched the Burj Khalifa New Year’s Eve fireworks 6 months ago. I agreed.

It is a well known fact that life passes by quickly. We are just doing our best to fill the frames up, so when we look back on the reel one day, years of footage will not look like a still photo. That is what travel does.

Five hundred days of our best life.

Nuts or not, we are lo-ving-IT!

July 12th, 2012, Estonia , General
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