The decision for a world trip

In late summer 2019, Tomek told me that he has a great desire to see more of the world. He had been thinking about it for a while and realized that the 30 days of vacation per year were no longer enough for him to fulfill this dream. He would like to travel the world for an undetermined amount of time. At the time, we had both been working in Cologne for a year and a half and had a beautiful apartment in Klettenberg. I was a bit taken by surprise, but after a few days of thinking about it, I too felt the desire to give up all my obligations and travel around the world with him completely free. We soon decided that we want to quit everything for this dream and that it should start from April 2020!

We often read in travel forums or in other travel reports that you should start planning years before the trip. But for us between the final decision for a world trip and the actual cancellation of our jobs just were a few weeks. The desire to travel grew from day to day more and we did not want to postpone it any longer. Fortunately, we had already put money aside since the beginning of our life together and since we both earned well, didn't live a extraordinary luxurious life and never really chased after new trends, a good amount of money came together in the two years, which we wanted to use for our travels. But we also wanted to work for locals via platforms like workaway or wwoofing and in return live there for free and thus travel around the world on a small budget.

The originally planned route

The world is so big and we want to experience as much of it as possible! So often we stood in front of our big world map in the living room and thought about where to go first. Maybe a trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway? South America was also very appealing to us and it was a big dream of both of us to travel Patagonia one day. But also since I was in New Zealand for an internship in 2016, I wish to fly there again with Tomek, to travel the country and to visit my old friends again. However, we quickly decided that we didn't want to stress ourselves by planning too much, hardly booking any flights in advance and letting everything come to us (in retrospect, we had exactly the right intention with that!).

The only thing that was really certain a few weeks before the start of the world trip was: We will start together with Tomek's parents in Rome and then continue by train through Italy and France to Spain. There we would look for a host where we could do workaway and improve our Spanish skills. In June we would go back to Germany for a short time for a wedding, then we will travel on for 3 months (destination unknown), in September there will be another wedding and after that we would like to fly to Mexico. From there we would then make our way to South America and who knows where else the wind will take us. That was the plan...

The Corona Pandemic: Is our dream bursting?

When people first heard about the "new Corona virus" in China, we were in the middle of our preparations. We had quit our jobs 3 months in advance, were just looking for a new tenant in Cologne, were organizing a suitable health insurance abroad and started to take the first boxes to my and Tomek's parents. The virus seemed to have no influence on our dream, the danger seemed so far away. The weeks passed and we came closer and closer to our last working days.

Then, when the infection cases in Italy rose, we were still very optimistic. After all, there were no Corona cases in Rome and the regions by the sea, through which we wanted to travel on the rail route, were also not at risk. But then the events rolled over, every day new cases appeared and one week before my last working day we received the news that our flights to Rome (the only ones we had booked) had to be cancelled. However, we still remained optimistic, decided that we would just start in Spain then - but also a day later all schools were closed in Spain and just a few days after that a curfew was imposed all over Spain. On Tomek's last day at work, March 12, we realized for the first time that our dream of a trip around the world was really on the line. I remember exactly how sad that felt for me. So while we postponed our start date (March 31st), we continued to clean out our apartment and prepared to move out. I then had my last day at work on March 18 without saying goodbye to my colleagues, because everyone had been sent to the home office in the meantime. Even though there were some very sad moments, somehow our decision to quit still felt right and we were full of hope that it could start someday.

Farewell Cologne

So our "quitventure" started in March 2020 in Cologne. After more than two years in our shared apartment and almost five years for me in this city, it was then time to finally say goodbye at the end of March. The apartment was successfully handed over to a very dear next tenant and we can proudly report to have mastered our move all alone and only with our car. The measures against the Corona virus made it difficult to move with several people.

So after we no longer had our own apartment, there was only one thing left for us to do. We wanted to put a love lock on - but not on the Hohenzollern Bridge. The last walk along the Rhine, the last time at the crane houses and the last time the cathedral spires right in front of our eyes.

E Stöck vum Hätz blieht für immer heh!

„Wwoofing“ in Deutschland

After staying with Tomek's parents for the first few weeks, we heard that due to the Corona crisis, harvest workers, mostly from Eastern European countries, could not enter the country. Thus, many farmers were desperately looking for help, some even had to give up the harvest completely for this year. Since we didn't want to be idle during our waiting time and also liked to help out in the field while traveling, we started a short but intensive career as harvesters at an asparagus farm in the Palatinate.

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During those weeks, we lived with my parents in my old childhood bedroom, worked six days a week in the asparagus field in all weathers, got burned by the sun, and showed our bodies that there are muscle parts we didn't know about before. Even though the work was physically demanding and we often fell flat in bed, we enjoyed the activity in the fresh air. In addition, we could see every day what we had achieved, which was also very motivating.

What we also liked very much was the farm's own farm store and so we were stocked up with asparagus and rhubarb for the next few weeks. Also, we could find the merits in the fact that the farm had not only asparagus, but also strawberries in the assortment.

New daily routine in Germersheim

But this job also came to an end and we began to help my parents in Germersheim with all kinds of tasks around the house. That was mainly preparing the firewood for the winter, pruning the vines and planting vegetable seedlings.

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Even though we heard over and over from friends that it would not work out with our trip this year, we wanted to hold on to our dream. Nevertheless, there were still bans on entering other countries in May. So we used the time in Germany to take a closer look at the country and to take a closer look at the world "on our doorstep"!

Trips in the palatinate forest

But the palatinate also has more to offer than just work and we took some hikes and excursions in the palatinate forest. The palatinate forest makes up about 1/3 of the entire palatinate and is only about 20 minutes away from Germersheim.

Our first hike started in Wachenheim and led from the Wachtenburg to the Eckkopf and through the vines back to Wachenheim.

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A few days later, we went hiking the Annweiler Castle Hike in the best weather and passed great rock formations until we arrived at Trifels Castle. There, however, the entrance was only possible with a mouth guard, but we had none with us and therefore only enjoyed the view from the top with delicious strawberries that we had brought with us.

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A third hike was the Steinfeld Westwall hike. The Westwall was the approximately 600 km long German fortification line in the III Reich, stretching from Basel to Aachen, built around mid-1938 to early 1940 to protect the German western border against France and as a counterpart to the already existing Maginot Line on the French side.

Today you can walk along there well and only signs and some remains of bunkers show what happened on site at that time. For us it was an exciting experience and also interesting that something like this can be found only a few kilometers from my hometown.

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Trip to the other side of the Rhine to Baden-Württemberg

We also visited my grandmother at that time with great distance, but still very regularly and could also see how beautiful the Kraichtal is for walking.

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It was also especially great that we were able to be in my grandma's garden at harvest time and put our newly learned harvesting skills to the test on her cherry trees and currant fields. For the first time in my life, I also boiled down jam because we had so many cherries.

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Trip to North Sea

At the beginning of June, the number of Corona cases were again at a very low level and in the meantime it was again possible to travel through Germany without major restrictions. Even though we like the Palatinate Forest and you can spend a lot of time there, the thought of going to the sea again appealed to us. At the end of May we visited Tomek's parents in Hamm, from where it is only about 3 hours to the North Sea. And so we left early one morning and could finally breathe the sea air again! Since we were very close to Wilhelmshaven, we also paid a visit to the city, because Tomek spent his time there 10 years ago in the Bundeswehr.

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The start of our worldtrip with a delay of 3 months

Then at the beginning of June we heard that the borders of the European countries are mostly open again and you can fly without much entry requirements. We looked for cheap flights, found a flight from Dortmund to Palanga, Lithuania three weeks later and could not help but book it. So it happened that with a delay of only three months we finally had our world trip start in front of us again. I still remember how happy I was that evening and couldn't believe that it was really starting now.

You can find our travel report from Lithuania here.

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