The idea to travel the world was sparked by a train of thoughts. How cool would it be to travel for a longer period of time, perhaps a full year, visiting places which we have not seen before, hang loose somewhere on a beach with no agenda whatsoever and meet like minded people you connect with? How rewarding would it be to show our kids the beauty of this planet?
From the initial thoughts to actually leaving on a jet plane we have had to overcome a number of obstacles. This took us about a year. What milestones did we take? What were our challenges?
This blog post is about the getting ready to travel the world which. We will answer 5 key questions valid for any journey of global scale. In this blog post we will shed some light on the early phases of the planning process when we have tackled potential showstoppers such as releasing Lily from school and applying for a Sabbatical. Are you ready?
1. Should I stay or should I go?
Many people dream about to travel the world. Take off a few months together with a loved one. Sure, that sounds intriguing. Hence for most this dream doesn´t come true. Why is that? It´s because of obstacles, the barriers life puts in our way. One has to overcome them, one by one.
Your getting ready should start with this question: How much do I want to get away? How strong are you called by the force of Wanderlust and how strong is your determination to follow? In the end intent is the decisive factor for making dreams come true. So how much do you feel the urge to travel and see the world?
Our reasons to travel, that we highlight in one of our blogposts, may be the fuel for our determination to make our dream come true.
2. What is the perfect time for travel around the world?
The question appearing on our radar quite early is when is the perfect time for traveling the world? The answer is closely related to the whereabouts. Quite early in the planning you need to shape a rough idea which places to visit. The itinerary details can come later.
In our case we have determined that the year before our younger daughter Nisha will get enrolled in primary school to be the perfect time for a longer travel break. Almost 7 years ago we have realized a 2-months trip to South East Asia together with Lily. She was at the same age then as Nisha is now when we knocked off Angkor What and Luang Prabang in Laos of our bucket list.
We were quick to decide on the season. The winter is cold in central Europe and we are not very fond of snow and chilling winds. Like migratory birds we have an inner compass guiding us to the South.
Where can we go to escape the northern hemisphere winter? Sure, the tropics or the southern hemisphere would offer good destinations. We have been attracted to visit Asia for numerous reasons (that´s worth another blog post actually) in the past years and there were still some Asian countries on our bucket list we wanted to visit, these were Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Indonesia.
Since Irka and I run a business together, a wedding decoration and planning studio, we needed to make sure to leave during the low season to minimize the impact of us being absent. What a coincidence that the low season is the winter time, when very few people get married in Europe. Finally, we had to make sure to empower our employees to help running the business while we are gone.
3. How do I manage to release my kid from school?
If you have school age kids in Germany this topic is of crucial importance for planning any journey as school attendance is compulsory regardless in which state you live. Basically, families are confined to travel during the school holidays. The German government enforces a rather strict school law. If you take your kids off from school without official approval you actually commit a crime and risk serious punishment. At the worse case, you go to jail instead traveling the world. Totally uncool!
Step 1: Get information on your local school law
To make things even more complex each state has its own school law. How well you can remove this obstacle thus depends on where you live.
We live in the state of Lower Saxony. High level, over here one has 2 options: A, you can apply for temporarily releasing your kid from school or B, you can temporarily move your residency to another country where school attendance is not compulsory. I am not sure how many parents take the emmigration option but to us it was the less desirable one, a workaround. We were focusing on plan A.
Step 2: Seek a conversation with your child’s class teacher
A few months before we wanted to start traveling we have asked Lily´s class teacher (Lily was then in the 7th grade) how the process of applying for a temporary release from school looks like. In the face to face situation with the class teacher we have learnt that:
- for releases up to 3 months the local school board can decide to give approval
- for releases longer than 3 months the approval of the school board of the city, i.e. another approval step, is required
- we need to apply in written form
- there must be some „severe reasons“ to have a chance to get approval
We also learnt that Lily´s class teacher was not fond of the idea of releasing Lily from school for a longer period of time. She argued that Lily´s performance would likely drop. In the worst case she would need to repeat the 8th grade. The negative effects in her opinion would clearly outweigh the benefits of our journey for Lily. The teacher ended the conversation with these words:
„Have you thought about what are you are doing to your child?“
Lily´s School teacher at 7th grade
Well, the conversation with Lily´s class teacher didn´t go as smooth as we have expected. But we also knew that she wasn´t the one being responsible to give approval, it was the local school board in which the class teacher was not even a member.
Step 3: Write a motivation letter to the school board
We also came to the conclusion that we had to write a very convincing application letter to the school board explaining our severe reasons why we wanted to release our child from school. In the application letter we emphasized on that we are entrepreneurs and that we are aiming to expand our markets in Asia. It was a coincidence that at that time I was given the opportunity to give an interview at a local radio station about our business. Eventually in our motivation letter we also focused on the advantages for Lily, e.g. improvements we expect in English language.
Step 4: Convince the principal or school board from your plans
A few weeks after we have sent the application letter we were invited to talk to one of the school´s principals. That conversation was a totally different story. The principal seemed to be open to give approval to our request and just asked questions about our business, how we can manage to school Lily during our journey and if we have booked already our flights. We seemingly have answered all his questions correctly. A few days after the interview we got a letter from the school board in our mailbox, stating that the approval to release Lily from school for 3 months was granted.
4. How much does it cost to travel the world?
Very early in the planning process you need to look at how to finance the whole trip. How much would it cost to travel 1 year, half a year and so on. Fortunately, the travel destinations we have selected are on the light budged side. Traveling in Asia, due to lower costs for food and accomodation, is more cost efficient for Europeans, despite the higher intercontinental flight costs, compared to traveling in Europe. The point of break even is reached at around 4 weeks. For travel periods longer that 1 month it is cheaper to travel in Asia.
After some rough calculations we figured that we can save about 600 EUR a month. Plus some savings that we have made, it would be hence enough to travel for about 4 months in Asia. How far you can get depends besides the itinerary on different factors. First of all how you prefer to get around. Furthermore on your expected level of luxury. And subsequently on how many days paid leave your company allows you to take.
We were looking into the mid price range places to lay our heads down. We can live happily in a beach hut for some time. Our budged for accomodation we set around 10 EUR per night per person. As we are 5 people on tour, 50 EUR per night will give us access to the places we look for. Normally these include small boutique hotels, well rated pensions, surf camps, bed and breakfasts with a special focus on design and details.
The finance plan step by step became more granular as we have added costs for transport (plane tickets being the most costly), visiting sights and food. We also added costs for comodities like clothes, snorkel gear, backpacks. After all, we realized that the our overall budged will be around 50 EUR per person per day. Then, we decided to add some weeks in Western Australia to the travel itinerary. We had to cut down on the lenghts of travel again. A realistic time for the journey was cut down to 3 months. There are plenty of very helpful blogpost about saving tips that give you money to travel the world.
Once I knew how much off time I needed I could work on overcoming the next obstacle. Asking my employer for a Sabbatical. How that worked out you can read in the next chapter.
5. Can I take a Sabbatical?
Besides running a wedding business together with my wife I am working as a manager leading a team responsible for training and documentation at an international tech company. When I asked my boss and HR representative how the company policy was for taking a Sabbatical (about 9 month before the travel) I was positively surprised. Both HR and my line manager signaled that this option would be feasible.
I have calculated that if we travel the world beginning in December until February the following year I could combine the vacation days I have in 2019 and 2020. This equals 60 days altogether. With the X-mas and New Years public holidays falling in between I could take off 11 weeks paid leave in one go. One week was still missing. Then, I heard of the option to apply for 8 extra vacation days for 2020 which was possible as a result of tariff negotiations made by the IG Metall union in Germany. I have applied and was granted the 8 extra vacation days. Now I was able to take 3 months off from work in one go, while still getting paid. Sounds like magic, doesn´t it? But these kind of coincidences actually happen to you when your hearts sends a clear message to the universe.
Thanks for sharing. I read many of your blog posts, cool, your blog is very good.