Have you ever dreamt of taking a leap into the unknown. Quitting your job, take your savings and just book a flight somewhere? I sure did. Many times. But it never seemed quite the right moment to do it, until now.
My name is Katrine and I´m married to Thomas. Together we have two kids, Eddie (10 years old) and Olivia (7 years old). We own a house in Sweden near beaches and nature and live the typical scheduled family life that most people do in our situation. But somewhere we always longed to try out something different. Since both of us always loved to travel and meet new cultures and our kids are brought up in a multilingual home (Swedish, Danish and German) we decided that a long backpacking trip was going to be our melody.
So, I quit my job that I had for over 7 years. A decision that was not only easy to make. I´ve had solid jobs and a fixed income during the last decade of my life. We have a house and two kids so the student mentality of only having to provide for myself is long gone. Also, my husband is self-employed and has a quite irregular income and we always more or less relied on my salary. But not anymore.
Why a decision like this? Let´s say it was time for a change. It´s easy to get stuck in the same patterns and go on doing what you always did because it works. And because you´re kind of good at it. But somehow you tend to forget the most important thing of all – what do I want? And for me the best way of finding the answer to this question was to make a clean break.
This is now 5 years ago. We had an amazing trip to Cuba and U.S and managed to cover 13 states during our three months long journey. You can read more about how we managed to backpack our way around with two small kids in this blog. If the idea to backpack with kids ever have crossed your mind you just HAVE to try it. I won´t lie to you, it´s bloody hard from time to time. But the bond you create together as a family is priceless.
After returning to Sweden again in summer 2018 I started my own company and we tried to settle into our normal life again. But the itchy feeling wouldn´t leave our bodies and after thinking about it for some time we came to the conclusion that our journey wasn´t over. In the end of March 2019 we moved to Basel in Switzerland. From a two story house to a three room apartment. From countryside to city. Stay tuned and find out how we will manage to build up a life for ourselves in a new country.
Four backpacks and a teddybear 