We’ve written a post with key questions to help you begin thinking about whether you might want to be a meandering minimalist and travel the world. Here is the first expansion of that post, asking you to take a good hard look at what travel means to you.
Do You Actually Enjoy Travel?
Most people, and certainly most Americans, go to the same few vacation spots their whole lives. They often buy second homes in their favourite one. And we think that’s grand! But we’re always puzzled when those very people suggest that they will, upon retiring, begin a life of international travel. For one thing, we aren’t sure how they can afford it. Much more importantly, though, we notice that they haven’t ever behaved like people who want to travel. (It is a bit like that Mark Twain bit about heaven, which people fill with things like harps that they don’t like in life!) If you have ever thought of moving abroad, even to just one place, it is vital to be clear about this most important first piece.
Travel is romantic and adventurous, in theory: who doesn’t like Paris, or Italy, drinking wine harvested just over there? But the reality is often quite different. And even when it’s great, it is usually not how you imagined it. If you don’t have a lot of experience travelling, your first forays are likely to prove disappointing and disconcerting. You are not in control of most of the things that happen to you on the road. Disappointments abound. Plane flights are usually wretched. Hotel rooms are less clean than expected, and look nothing like the pictures. The food you thought you ordered is not the food that shows up. The museum is closed.
So we urge you to do some travelling before you retire. If it has to be a guided tour, so be it: that is an entirely legitimate way to dip your toes in. But we really recommend going someplace on your own (i.e. without a professional), for at least a week, at least three or four times before you decide to move to another country. Do this with the people you plan to travel the world with. Try to imagine yourself living there. If you don’t travel much, you will naturally be running about seeing the sights, but make sure to take a few hours to sit quietly in a park reading a book, or poke your head into a grocery store, just to catch a glimpse of what life is like there. Pay attention to how people live, to the climate, to other stuff you care about.
What If You Don’t Like Travel That Much?
If it turns out that you don’t like travel, this whole business is probably fairly unappealing. But if you don’t like just one particular piece, minimize it. We want to travel the world, but you might like just one little corner. The most obvious solution to not liking travel itself is to hunker down in one place, i.e. don’t actually travel. But perhaps it’s language: can’t stand making an ass of yourself every time you walk outside? Go somewhere you speak the language. Public transportation makes you anxious? Rent a car. Afraid of buying property? Don’t, or hire people to help you.
Most of the difficult aspects of travel can be minimized or avoided, but if you never travel now and imagine you someday will want to, you will save yourself heartache by testing that assumption before you begin chucking everything you own.
Sage advice. When I find myself wanting to do what you are doing, I must return to this. As I was reading, I began thinking of travel mishaps over the last 20 years (atm card deciding to stay in Zurich permanently, Ordering raw fish by mistake in Italy, arriving for a flight 12 hours late, booking a hotel with shared bathroom…..). Do I want that often? I may just continue to sit here in this little mountain cabin.
Ah Mark… we have our own versions of nearly every one of these things: brains instead of raw fish [must look up that word in French before we go, again], mixing up month and date because other countries do it differently… There are some ways around the misery and we are hoping to help people find them. But yes: you have to like novelty and being off-balance. Our experience has been that a lot of people don’t. Thanks for the thoughtful comment!