01 April 2018

Alarm clock. It’s 08:00 in the morning. Today is the day. In a few hours our dearest family will come over for final good byes. 😢 It feels strange. As if it’s not true. All these months of preparations. Getting ready. And all of a sudden the time has come to go. To leave and travel the world. Bizarre. It’s no longer a dream.

We take a walk on the beach. It’s raining and the beach is empty. Like our house. We’ve stayed the night in Hotel Restaurant Sonnevanck. The so-called ‘living room’ of Wijk aan Zee, our home town up until now. When will we hang out on this beach again? What will happen in between? We shall see. We are ready to go. The world lays in front of us.

The last couple of days were hectic. Last day at work. Last time meeting friends. Last time eating a Dutch herring, bread with Dutch cheese, mama’s chicken soup… The very last item on our seems-like-never-ending-2do-list was to deregister from The Netherlands. Man-o-man, the Dutch don’t let you go easily. “Sorry guys, we can’t help you, you need to go to the municipality next door.” “Can I have your new address?” “Uhm, we no longer have an address.” “The system needs an address.” “Ok… what about a post address?” “Sorry, it has to be outside the Netherlands to save it in the system.” 🙄 Sigh. A complicated route from pillars to posts eventually gave us the green light.

The good byes are tough and unreal. It needs to sink in later. We jump on bus 78 to the train station and forget our bag with food. Our minds are clearly somewhere else. We don’t really care, cause we’re on our way! On to Berlin. Our first stop. Our world trip has officially started!

1 April 2019

Today, it’s a year after and we’re still moving. So far, we’ve made it to Singapore. Almost made it to Singapore, another 100 nautical miles to go. We flew out of our main route a couple of times to have a travel break and to explore India and Nepal, but basically we’ve travelled from The Netherlands all the way to Singapore without flying.

A year on the road (and sea) is a milestone. A perfect moment to look back and reflect. It’s just that this milestone passed by almost unnoticed as we were completely blend into our sailing voyage down the Malacca strait. And still, somewhere in the middle of the night on the ocean during a watch together we gave it a go.

A year full of travelling and sailing is pretty amazing. We think. Off course the high lights are memories never to forget. Everest, Trans-Siberian, Great Wall, Forbidden City, Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat, Lhasa, Annapurna, … But it seems to me it sounds like a broken record to blog about these again and in fact for some reason it were the small moments that came to our minds that night. The parrot in grand café ‘1^stclass’ at Amsterdam Central Station who woke us up with a cheerful ‘hello’ when we silently zipped our coffee waiting for our train to Berlin. Both lost in our own thoughts. Our glass of champagne in St. Petersburg when we officially sold our house. The simple but tasty buffet food at the hostel in Olkhon Island (Baikal lake). The little Chinese boy who reached to Wouter’s knees and who was so proud to take a picture with us. The baby goats in Mongolia…

The truth is, it’s pretty hard to reflect on the last year. We’re still in the middle of our travels and moreover we’re in the middle of an intense sailing course, which feels like life changing. We just don’t know how. Yes. A lot is going on in our minds and hearts. True reflection will come when it comes. What do we feel? Have we changed? Do we have different perspectives? Probably yes. One thing is crystal clear though. We do feel stronger, more human, healthier.

We feel alive 🙂