tic-tac, tic-tac, the clock is ticking

My weeks of preparation are starting: my apartment is terminated, I found a potential buyer for my car, besides some small things I already sold my furniture and now I finally need to decide on my traveling route. I first thought that a round-the-world-ticket would be the smartest, but since I want to focus on central and south America a multi-stop ticket apparently is the smartest choice. Oh well, still a lot of things to figure out. There are so many beautiful countries, that I want to see. But where to start? And how to travel? Sometimes some limitations can be good because the possibilities can be overwhelming.

It is very easy to underestimate the whole planning-process: vaccinations, contact lenses, sorting out which clothes to pack... all kind of minor things but still, they require some thinking ahead. Although I am super excited to travel alone, I am also a little nervous because I know that bad stuff can happen and I, of course, want this experience to be the best time of my life. Luckily a friend of mine recommended that amazing website to me. It is called www.travelettes.com (backpacking in heels) which is a website from girls for girls. Since hours I am reading all the entries, which includes tipps on how to best pack your backpack to some safety rules to avoid being robbed the first day, how to save money for upcoming trips and so on.

I will continue with my research and hope to be more clear about my destinations soon...

This song is accompanying me lately:

Living in a globalized world

Most of my friends and me have one major thing in common: we left our home countries to travel or to live abroad. Once one starts with traveling it honestly becomes difficult to stop. This is of course not a bad thing, especially since there are so many wonderful places to discover. Just to be clear: I am not talking about 2 week all-inclusive kind of holidays, but long journeys of a couple of months or moving into another country entirely. 

But, as always, there are two sides of a coin. With every journey one gets to know new people, new traditions, new cultures, new difficulties and excitements. On the other hand, with every further journey you loose friends, or let's say companions, which apparently were only meant to be in your life for this particular period of time. This also concerns relationships. How many relationships broke in my surrounding mainly because it started in one country and then one of the partners went back or somewhere else and the couples tried making the long distance relationship work... unfortunately often this did not go too well. I am loosing my faith in those kind of long-distance-relationships. I admire those couples that actually manage to stay together and after years finally manage to move to one country and start their settled lives. It is good to know that it CAN work but still, they seem to be the exception. Or it was meant to be, whatever this mystic sentence actually means.

Well and for all of us, for which it apparently is not (yet) meant to be: what is left to do? Enjoy the time as a single, live life to it's fullest, enjoy meeting people, enjoy being at amazing places because one thing is for sure: starting with the settled life can happen faster than expected and often happens when you least expect it!