Hey, I am back with some other interesting facts or stories.
Yesterday I was exploring the internet and suddenly a story came in front of me. I guess you all should know about it.
“The financial crash pushed us into living a dream, of visiting more places in the world, more than we ever could have seen otherwise,” reflects Betsy, who still admits to occasionally yearning for a small home base, even the humblest shack, where she could also host her family for the holidays. But the stress of having no home, she acknowledges, remains a freedom. “You don’t have those anchors around your neck anymore,” she says.
At age 61, Betsy and Mark are living hand to mouth, like backpackers with real jobs and children with mortgages of their own. Both work remotely, Betsy as a freelance editor while Mark runs his own online data storage company. Money is tight, though both say the expenses of maintaining their home in Carlsbad were far higher than the cost of any apartment they’ve rented across the globe. It’s not an expensive way to live, they insist, just unpredictable. Today, they get by on less of everything but experience.
“Mark is better at me at living in a minimalist manner,” says Betsy. “But I think you learn really quickly that material things aren’t that important. People have their favorite mugs, but in foreign places you get used to drinking out of different ones.”
So far, the Blondins have drunk coffee from new mugs everywhere from Ecuador to Antigua to the Netherlands. Most tourist visas allow them to live as residents for three months, enough time, both say, to develop an understanding of a place on a level most tourists can’t access, to have more than a casual affair with another culture. As soon as they begin to feel at home, however, they’re off again, with no itinerary and often the challenge of learning the basics of another language.
Affordability and interest play equal parts in where they venture next. Whatever their address, they must continue to balance their desire to immerse themselves in all the attractions of a new city with full-time jobs and careful economy. Mark admits he would love to live in Paris for three months, for instance, but so far the City of Light is just not cost effective. Turkey, however, may lie just within reach, meaning it’s time for the Blondins to start scouring Craigslist for short-term rentals in Istanbul and putting the money they’re saving on property tax toward their next plane ticket.
It may not exactly qualify as a plan, but it is a strategy, one for living a life that constantly asks you to adapt and not always be sure of what you’re eating. It works, but only because, as both say, slow travel found them rather than the other way around.
“There wasn’t this grand plan in the beginning in which we said we’ll be gone for five years. There was never an end game either,” says Mark. “When we took off, we planned on being in Berlin for our son’s graduation. Then we were in Spain for a couple months, and then it just took on its own momentum. The economics were the scariest part. But once we traveled and both started working online, then it was like, ‘What about Argentina? We’ve always wanted to go to Argentina.’”
With its lust for life, tango, and juicy steaks, Buenos Aires ranks among Mark’s favorite cities, which also has the advantage of a low cost of living. But were Japan, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries to suddenly drop in price, they’d also be fair game.
If this approach to life sounds fearless, the Blondins insist they’re no different than the rest of us. They’ve just allowed experience to teach them to expect warm welcomes from strangers, who never remain strangers for long.
“When we lived in northern Michigan early in our marriage,” observes Betsy, “some people would say I’ve never been south of a certain latitude and were proud of it. But the more we travel, the more it constantly confirms that everyone in the world is the same. We all get hurt and we all get happy. People are the same with their babies everywhere in the world. A lot of people, though, are just stuck in their routines. With this lifestyle, though, we can’t be.”
Mark and Betsy have also found they’re hardly alone in carrying their homes on their backs. They’ve discovered a thriving expat community living on less everywhere from Latin America to Eastern Europe, and the Blondins are collecting their stories for an upcoming anthology to be published through Betsy’s own Word Metro Press, which has also published Betsy’s Migraine Expressions: A Creative Journey through Life with Migraine.
Finding migraine medicine in different countries, she adds, often becomes a useful introduction to the culture. In Antigua, she visited three different places to buy the same medication only to receive three different prices, she remembers with a laugh. She chalks it up to being part of the fun, which the expat anthology project reminds her extends more widely than at first she realized.
“When we started the expat anthology, we thought we’d get stories from retirees or people like us, but we really received more from young people, who are embracing this lifestyle more widely, it seems. Most of the people we’ve met in our travels aren’t disgruntled with America,” Betsy adds. “It’s more people who are resourceful, who are explorers and want to see the world and are willing to live without a certain level of security or comfort.”
When hearing that Betsy and Mark travel permanently, people often mistake them for being wealthy, which is true in a sense, only not financially. All their clothes and cutlery may now fit inside a suitcase, but Mark affirms the sacrifices are worth the view.
“It seems we’ve got another ten solid years of being able to haul bags around, so I just want to keep going. Once you have a home base, then you have to have buy curtains. Then you’re back to the two-week vacation a year, and it just gets ugly.”
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