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Discussion Would you just... go...

YuliApp

YuliApp

Senior member
So recently i got somehow fed up with the world, pseudo friends, hunt for money, civilization effort and lack of time to do literaly anything. Sold everything, and i mean everything and moved to Africa / Canaries in one van with hubby, baby and 3 cats.

All what we needed for life would fit in one car. Been traveling 2 months, trying to reconnect the life we were losing since all this crap started and settled down in small abandoned broken house for 3 figures and started DIY repairs.

Would you be able to just leave everything you thought you have or been working for and go?
Have you been thinking about to just go to an more or less empty island and focus on your life and love?
 
YuliApp said:
Would you be able to just leave everything you thought you have or been working for and go?
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Perhaps if I had no commitments to anyone but myself. I would not want to expose others to the downsides of such a radical change -- especially children.
 
BudAshes said:
You got fiber internet installed in an abandoned house in Africa and I can't even get it for myself or most of my clients in the good old US of A.
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Dont be sad, i have been living for years few kilometer out of Stuttgart in Germany and having only 2,5Mbit upload and close to zero phone signal. And it was in a fairly large city, not in middle of the woods.
 
PowerEngineer said:
Perhaps if I had no commitments to anyone but myself. I would not want to expose others to the downsides of such a radical change -- especially children.
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I understand. My son is only 1 year old so I believe he will only benefit from that his (both) parents wont be working 24/7 like most of German parents have to. Sure it is radical, but what (aside from potentially better schools which are becoming rather obsolete year to year) might he really miss. Some great humans came out of the third world.
 
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YuliApp said:
So recently i got somehow fed up with the world, pseudo friends, hunt for money, civilization effort and lack of time to do literaly anything. Sold everything, and i mean everything and moved to Africa / Canaries in one van with hubby, baby and 3 cats.

All what we needed for life would fit in one car. Been traveling 2 months, trying to reconnect the life we were losing since all this crap started and settled down in small abandoned broken house for 3 figures and started DIY repairs.

Would you be able to just leave everything you thought you have or been working for and go?
Have you been thinking about to just go to an more or less empty island and focus on your life and love?
Click to expand...
Need pics of cat please and thank you.
 
YuliApp said:
I understand. My son is only 1 year old so I believe he will only benefit from that his (both) parents wont be working 24/7 like most of German parents have to. Sure it is radical, but aside from potentially better schools which are becoming rather obsolete year to year might he really miss. Some great humans came out of the third world.
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Well, a "more or less empty island" paints a fairly bleak picture in my mind's eye, at least when it comes to opportunities to socialize and for medical services for your child. I also wonder how wide a range of opportunities your child will have available as he/she grow up. But perhaps I am mistaken.
 
I did the start over for about 1.5 years. We rented out our house to students, and did vrbo/airbnb in South Lake Tahoe, then Seattle, then Bozeman. It was a blast. Did it all with our Great Dane. All we had were 2 cars and a small uhaul trailer and we lived pretty damn good.
 
PowerEngineer said:
Well, a "more or less empty island" paints a fairly bleak picture in my mind's eye, at least when it comes to opportunities to socialize and for medical services for your child. I also wonder how wide a range of opportunities your child will have available as he/she grow up. But perhaps I am mistaken.
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Yes it is not that bad, the island has about 100000 population and all medical care and such, but still no social security really and no jobs. It sounds horrible for many people in Germany or other 1st world countries in Europe but on the other way it is still EU (belongs to Spain) and has some (little) standards and way above at least 50% of earth population. My kids should just be strong enough to educate them self. I am self educated more or less all my life, my BcEng didnt gave me much and my hubby too (left school and not even a degree or anything).
 
BudAshes said:
I did the start over for about 1.5 years. We rented out our house to students, and did vrbo/airbnb in South Lake Tahoe, then Seattle, then Bozeman. It was a blast. Did it all with our Great Dane. All we had were 2 cars and a small uhaul trailer and we lived pretty damn good.
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what made you go back?
 
I've been dreaming about living off grid, though I don't really want to necessarily give up everything I own or be super far from family and friends, I just want to be less dependent of "the system" while simultaneously reducing my costs of living, getting more land and room for hobbies than in the city, and all while doing it in a greener way. Using renewable energy etc. And just being in nature etc. Would be like a permanent vacation destination that I own. My first step is finding the right land. Once that happens I'll be paying that off for a while, but I can slowly start to build on my days off.

I have a good job with pension and benefits though so I don't really want to give that up either so for now the property would be more of a place to go camping and such on my days off. It's too bad working from home is not going to be a permanent thing.
 
I do think about it but we do have some obligations here that would greatly complicate things. But I'm also not completely fed up with everything... yet. Kudos to you guys for realizing you need a change and then making it
 
Red Squirrel said:
I've been dreaming about living off grid, though I don't really want to necessarily give up everything I own or be super far from family and friends, I just want to be less dependent of "the system" while simultaneously reducing my costs of living, getting more land and room for hobbies than in the city, and all while doing it in a greener way. Using renewable energy etc. And just being in nature etc. Would be like a permanent vacation destination that I own. My first step is finding the right land. Once that happens I'll be paying that off for a while, but I can slowly start to build on my days off.

I have a good job with pension and benefits though so I don't really want to give that up either so for now the property would be more of a place to go camping and such on my days off. It's too bad working from home is not going to be a permanent thing.
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I understand it of course. The education which forces us to focus on stable job and hope to live in retirement. It is hard to give up when life is ok. Mine wasn't and only got worse with Covid so it was easier.
I have also never been employe except during university for fixed term so that might be the barrier i didnt have.
 
Exterous said:
I do think about it but we do have some obligations here that would greatly complicate things. But I'm also not completely fed up with everything... yet. Kudos to you guys for realizing you need a change and then making it
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Thank you. We have been thinking about it for about a year and working on legal part of it. Finally pull a plug two months ago as soon as borders opened.
 
Was the two months traveling just the Canaries or other places? And how did you know the Canaries was the right place to settle down?
 
I've never really considered it. I went to school in England for a summer and had a little time to check out Paris, but I really didn't see why people are so enamored of traveling. I'm glad I did it though just to realize that I wasn't really missing anything.

I should mention though that a lot of this has to do with my OCD. Traveling is basically trauma for me. I can't decide what to pack. I'm always worried that I'm going to lose shit. It used to take me hours to check the apartment or house before I could leave. It was so bad I had to take pictures of things like faucets and gas stove because I knew I would question myself later. And since the idea of "enjoying life" generally involves the outdoors in some way, that's a deal breaker. Last year I went with some friends to check out a campsite. No camping, just looking. I was almost paralyzed worrying about Lone Star ticks and Lyme disease. I never go out at night in the warmer months because really hate getting bit. I could go on for a while but I'll leave it there.

Things have gotten a lot better though. I'm not nearly as much of a basket case as I used to be but don't go calling me "normal." I'm not even normal adjacent.

The only thing I really want to do now is go cruising. That poses a lot fewer problems for me although I probably won't even do that until there's a vaccine for the norovirus.
 
Exterous said:
Was the two months traveling just the Canaries or other places? And how did you know the Canaries was the right place to settle down?
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it was around the Europe, Germany, Spain, France and Czech Republic. Just since we couldnt travel a lot in various state of lockdowns and had no home anymore we more or less had to.

We believe it is the right place as the weather is perfect for us, and we knew the place a lot from our previous (holiday) visits.
Also a part was because Spain is now starting to experiment with basic income and it would ease up lot for us.

Real reason was though that it was cheaper (and in all directions) better than staying in Germany unless we had huge income (which is needed in Germany to be above the water, similar to Switzerland and getting worse year to year).
 
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