So Stefan decided to move to London and my theory of telling your kid to go off and experience the world became completely ironic. What? Why would you spend all those years raising a kid to have them be independent and resourceful and ambitious and then they decide to go and leave a great career and an awesome friend group and move to London? The fact that he has ended up working for the same company in a better job and all his friends moved to London too meant that he didn’t really give up anything. But, it’s not supposed to be that way. It’s not supposed to be anyone else at the airport going off on an adventure’s it’s supposed to be us!

Leaving Stefan at Auckland airport is one of the hardest things we’ve ever done. Not because we were sad that he was going but sad that we weren’t. It was weird. We drove home from the airport and watched the flight tracker to see how he got on. We watched the flights arrive and depart LA knowing the pain in the ass that LAX is, we saw the flight arrive at Heathrow knowing the amount of time it takes to clear customs. We watched it all reflecting on our time doing the same thing. I think you go through stages in life where you grieve for a life that once was and know can never be again. I needed to grieve my “I’m moving to the other side of the world life” and I have. It’s easier because we have left a door open that we will move to the other side of the earth again one day, you never know. We do still have a Swedish pension fund.

Anyway, he went and we said we will see you in summer and so here we are with some flights booked, an instagram post to say we’re going and some very loose plans. The theory is that we will buy a left hand drive car and a caravan in England and travel to the other side of our house latitudinally and longitudinally which is in Spain. There I will use all of my Dualingo Spanish to inform the farmer who owns the land that we are from the other side of the world and that’s why we are taking pictures of our feet! What could possibly go wrong. Dualingo however has only told me so far how to say the man eats an apple. Hopefully it is an apple farm.

Anyhoo, long time listeners first time callers will know that Nigel has never been to Spain… but I have! That has given me a 1 country advantage over the years but still doesn’t make up for places he has been that I haven’t. Congo, Pakistan and Antarctica which while not officially a country is a continent and so gives him all of the continents. Being only 1 country behind has been manageable, livable even. So I have consistently told Nigel that Spain is a waste of time, it’s full of tapas and wine and sun and beaches and hot Spanish people. Why would you want to go there? But now I am going to have to concede. I will forever be 2 countries behind… bugger!

So our planning begins, I’m contacting people along the way and advising of some dates we may be in their part of the world and maybe wanna say hi! So far we’ve had 100% hit rate of people wanting us to come by and stay which proves my point. If you say to me when I meet you travelling in Vietnam to look me up if you’re ever in Montreal! Then expect us to take you literally at your word and turn up at some point, Lise and Daniel I’m looking at you! A shared love of craft beer and travelling will get us through the French English language barrier. I am also contemplating putting a post out on Facebook asking for anyone who knows anyone in Europe with a driveway that we could park in to nominate their person. A friends of a friend type scenario. I think that could be quite fun and would also provide a washer dryer option maybe?

So off we go, no real plans but a smile and a good attitude. Follow along for our adventures. I’ll be blogging along the way and Nigel will be approving the blogs before they post (after the Vietnam pooping story which he really wished I hadn’t posted).

Remember when you wanted what you have.