Where Next? Travel with Kristen and Carol
Where Next? Travel with Kristen and Carol
Belgium, Bosnia and Bicycles with Digital Nomad - Maryann
In this episode, we meet with Maryann Walters who navigates life as a true digital nomad, exploring Europe with her husband, their dog, and their bicycles.
Maryann's journey began with determination in 2020, when she specifically sought out remote work that would accommodate a travel lifestyle. After securing a remote position and spending three years renovating their Reno home to make it rental-ready, she and her husband embarked on their European adventure, starting in Belgium.
Their time in Belgium revealed a cycling paradise where the sport is revered like football in America. But their journey was shaped by visa constraints – as Americans, they could only stay in the European Union for three months without special documentation.
This limitation led them to creative solutions, including stays in non-EU countries like Andorra (a tiny nation between France and Spain) and Bosnia to "reset" their visa clock. Each location brought unique challenges and rewards and stark differences in infrastructure and environment across countries.
Through it all, Maryann has maintained her professional commitments while forming deep connections to places they lived for months at a time – a depth of experience inaccessible to typical tourists. Her story reveals both the extraordinary freedom of the digital nomad lifestyle and its very real challenges, offering valuable insights for anyone dreaming of breaking free from geographical constraints.
Ready to reimagine what's possible with remote work and international living? Follow us on Instagram @wherenext_podcast for more inspiration and practical advice from travelers who've taken the leap into location independence.
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Hosts
Carol Springer: https://www.instagram.com/carol.work.life
Kristen: https://www.instagram.com/team_wake/
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Hi, welcome to our podcast when Next Travel with Kristen and Carol. I am Kristen and I am Carol, and we're two long-term friends with a passion for travel and adventure. Each episode, we interview people around the globe to help us decide where to go next. Welcome, marianne, and you are a dear friend of Kristen's and I understand you travel the world, so we're excited to hear what you're going to share today. Yes, thanks so much, marianne for being here.
Speaker 1:So I've known Marianne since Marianne for being here. So I've known Marianne since what? 2015 or something. We met in our companies and just hit it off and I've always enjoyed our conversations. We haven't talked in a little while. And then we talked and you were over in Europe, central Europe, traveling with your husband and your dog and your bikes and going and sending me these amazing, gorgeous pictures of all over and this podcast. We started what four years ago and it was a lot about you know, traveling and living anywhere in the world digital nomad, and you embody that more than actually a lot of that we've talked about, and so I was so thrilled to have you on this just because I'd love to see you and catch up and everything and we'll have to catch up afterwards, but also about your amazing journey and when it started and where you're at. I know you're here locally right now, or actually in Reno, I think right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, for a couple more days, yeah.
Speaker 1:In Reno. Okay, that's convenient. Okay, yeah For this podcast.
Speaker 2:Like a little Lyft driver asked me from the airport, you know like oh so where do you live? And I was like nowhere. He was like he couldn't get his head around this. He was like no, no, no, no, no, you live somewhere. And I'm like, no, I don't live anywhere. Well, you do have a house, I do, but I don't live there. I have people living there Correct Exactly who are really happy there and do not wish to have me hanging around.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly. And before we start into your amazing adventure because I know right now you're here locally, you're interviewing for a job, a remote job, and then you'll go back, or you may be coming, which I thought possibly potentially to Oakland, which would be amazing because then I would see you and that would be fun, but that you start beginning in your journey when you and I had talked about renting out your house because of what you were doing and the anticipation even years before about that journey, and just so our audience can get an idea if they want to do that, you know how did you set that up and make that work for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good question. So this actually started I think it started seriously in 2020, where I actively sought out a job that would allow me to travel, and so that was the first step.
Speaker 1:And your husband was on board with you and he's retired.
Speaker 2:Yep, he's a retired bicycle racer and bike mechanic. He does a good job, kind of, you know, leading the home renovations and taking care of all of the stuff. That doesn't include, you know, working at a corporate job, so that includes all of our four-legged children.
Speaker 1:And how many four-legged children do you have?
Speaker 2:Because I know, right now it's just one dog in Europe with us.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:We left our cat behind, but as soon as we land and we know where we're going to be living for more than a month at a time, we plan to reclaim the cat, but as soon as we find a place to land, like I said, we hope to acquire more animals. So okay. So it started with looking specifically for a job, because I knew that you know the current job that I had, it was very US based. There was no chance not only of, there was no chance of being able to work for one of the international divisions or an office, and no chance of being able to go overseas for more than you know the time you take on vacation and, being Americans, we never go on vacation, except for Kristen, who gets to go hiking with Girl Scouts in August, and I'm incredibly jealous. One of these days I'm going with you, yes, so so we started with that.
Speaker 2:So I started actively seeking a job that was remote only and was okay with travel, and at the same time, we got really serious about our house renovations. So that took about. That took exactly three years. From that point on, I did manage to get a job with a remote company in August of 2021. And the house was ready to go by August of 2023. You know the process of you know, filling an entire house and God knows how many storage units with all of our stuff and my husband's stuff and my family's stuff, because somehow, like every book my family has ever owned is, for some reason, with me.
Speaker 1:I have a question, marianne. So you're saying that the reason you renovated the house was because you were going to start working remote and you want to rent it out? Yes, so you wanted to get it in prime shape. Okay, got it.
Speaker 2:We installed air conditioning and a heat pump in it, and that was part of the exercise, as well as actually installing installation on a house that was built in 1937 that had sorry insulation, had no insulation whatsoever, and getting air conditioning in a house in Reno, nevada, it's kind of pretty essential these days. I don't think it used to be, but it is now, and it's really unusual for the old houses in the Midtown district in Reno to have air conditioning, and so we thought this is how we're going to differentiate ourselves. You know this will be a place where people can live and, you know, not have to huddle in a room somewhere. You know, like trying to get the little mobile unit working.
Speaker 1:Well, it's really a nice central location. I feel like I met you there while we were going to rest or something Like you can walk everywhere. It's right downtown, right. Yeah, it's super walkable.
Speaker 2:It's a great place to live. It really is, especially if you're not worried too much about the kind of stuff that my friends with young children worry about, which is like what school they're going to go to and all this stuff. If you don't really worry about that, it's a wonderful place to live.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, I've never considered Reno, yeah, and it's really close to Lake Tahoe. I mean it's a lot of outdoor activities that come with living where you're at. It's far enough removed so you're not totally in the snow, but I think you probably still get some snow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And if you ever get tired of winter, you just have to drive over the mountains and go to California.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly Just a couple hours.
Speaker 2:You don't get the same kind of seasonal depression that you do. If you like, say, live in New England or you know Pennsylvania. Yeah, once it gets cold and dark, it stays that way, you until april maybe absolutely so.
Speaker 1:Then we're in uh, you're august 2023, you've got your house renovated, you have a job that's remote, and uh, was it at that point where you said, okay, let's start planning, and you, you took off shortly after that, or what was that like?
Speaker 2:So we went to Belgium in the beginning of September 2023, and we stayed there for three months, which is as long as you are allowed to stay legally without doing any other paperwork as an American. Right now in Europe, I have heard that the rules are going to change, but they're not going to change for at least another six months, so for now, that's still the deal.
Speaker 1:Well, that's not that bad because, if I'm remembering correctly, that was quite a pivotal trip and a very beautiful biking community which you and your husband are very involved in.
Speaker 2:And you know, we were out there every single day riding our bicycles, even though it literally rained every single day from October 15th to, like the day I left, on December 1st.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:We didn't care we were still out there riding our bicycles, just absolutely so thrilled to be there, you know, I mean from real winter. It was like it's not that cold, it's 45 degrees out and it's pouring rain, it's fine.
Speaker 1:And everyone else Tough cookies. Also, did everyone else bike in the rain?
Speaker 2:Only the pros. Everyone I saw was like a world tour pro. If I saw another woman, you know I'd be like, oh, I wonder who that is looking on Strava, just seeing who would pass me. You know, you know I'd be like, oh, I wonder who that is looking on Strava, just seeing who would pass me. You know, it was very humbling in many ways to be around those kinds of cyclists, and we ran into them in Andorra too.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, Where's?
Speaker 2:Andorra. It's in the Pyrenees, it's a tiny country between France and Spain and it is not part of the EU.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's interesting, I'll get there in a second, because it's kind of part of the second part of our trip, which is, while I was over there in Belgium, I was actually laid off from my job and I agreed to stay on and do some extra work for the same company for a little while just to see, you know, what else would come up and help them out with some transitions in the compliance team space that they were working with. And so when we came back to the United States, you know, we thought we'd rent like an apartment for six months or something like that, and we just found that it was just impossibly expensive compared to what we've been used to living in in Belgium, and so we literally moved into our little tiny 15-foot travel trailer and we lived in that travel trailer in one of, you know, one of three local state parks all winter long until we went back to Europe in May.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, it's so great to just think differently and save money, and then I'm sure you guys could go different places.
Speaker 2:It's the only way you can live in this part of the world for like $1,200 a month and live that comfortably.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:You know, stay at a state park and some of them. You have to move on every two weeks but you can kind of cycle around and we stayed at a place kind of halfway between Reno and Tahoe for a great part of the year. That was a an RV park. That was really nice oh nice, you guys have an RV. Uh, we sold it before we went back to Europe okay um, we ran that thing into the ground.
Speaker 1:It was like not really, uh, seaworthy anymore yes, so now give it to the the Burning man people. That's close by right right, right.
Speaker 2:We ended up selling it for like $2,000. I can't believe somebody even gave us $2,000 for it. It was literally like worth nothing.
Speaker 1:Well, it's a roof over your head, doesn't have to move.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean my side of the bed leaked, but you know we figured it out.
Speaker 1:It's a series in Belgium. I was in the biking community and you mentioned just kind of hinted at the pros. What has the pros? I know we talked offline a little bit, but figured just to share it here what makes the pros go to Belgium? What was so special about Belgium? Why did you love it? And, if I'm remembering correctly, that was the place that you really want to go back to you and your husband remembering correctly.
Speaker 2:That was the place that you really want to go back to, you and your husband. Yeah, absolutely, and part of it is because we spent a lot of time there and it really takes like three months to get to know a place, and so we had the benefit of being there for three months in the fall. So by the time we came back in May, you know, we immediately, like you know, started making really, really good friends and kind of knew all the places we wanted to be and where we wanted to ride and kind of getting all that out of our system. You know, finding the good restaurants, etc. Finding the good, good houses to live in, um, meeting people who might like, for example, have like a place to stay, you know, in like the barn in the back of their property, instead of having to go through Airbnb, oh nice, so, yeah, so part of what made it so wonderful for us was just spending a lot of time there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but also is that, you know, in Belgium, cycling is like football in America and cycling in America is like cycling in America. Okay, in America is like cycling in America. Okay, yeah, um, I mean, it's, it's the national sport, it's it's in the not, and not just um commuting by bicycle, like in the Netherlands or Germany, but like actually racing bicycles, and so we didn't see a whole lot of it when we were there in the fall Um.
Speaker 2:but when we eventually found our way to the right place in Flanders, in the Flemish Ardennes it's where all the very famous hill climbs are from the Tour of Flanders, and they're all cobbled, they're made of cobblestones and they're absolutely incredibly difficult and steep. There's one that I still cannot get up on my gravel bike. It's like, yeah, it's 24% grade. I'm like like super cobbled, and it goes on for just like just a few too many feet. You know it'd be for me to be able to get up it, but that's the only one I can't get up, and that's the copenberg um. So you know they all have these famous names. Some of half of them are named after the famous cyclists from this. You know 60s and 70s and 80s, yeah, and of course, this is the hometown of Eddie Merckx, the greatest bicycle rider that's ever lived.
Speaker 1:Very cool.
Speaker 2:So it's just embodies the sport, not just for road, but also for cyclocross, which is a bicycle sport that I think is practically dead in the United States. As far as I can tell, all people in the United States ever want to do is do triathlons. Boring, it's what I do, but it's all good Triathlons are fun, but it's not the same thing as bike racing.
Speaker 1:No, not at all. It's so cool, I was gonna exercise what's that?
Speaker 2:it's exercise. Exercise is really good and I love exercise.
Speaker 1:Yes so what's your passion about bicycling that you love so much? That I mean because because you get to explore and like travel for so long well, there's two kinds.
Speaker 2:There's bike, right, and then there's racing, and bike racing is a craft, you know. It is a finely tuned sport. Those that are really good at it are, you know, performing works of art when they're out there, that's as a fan.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as a cyclist, I mean, it's wonderful to ride your bicycle everywhere to see the city in a way that you never get. You never get you know you or just the countryside in a way that you don't see from a car and you can't see when you're walking, because you know you don't really want to walk for 18 miles, you know, but you could easily, like go for an 18 mile bike ride and get to see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've heard of some of these like cruise, like river cruises in europe, where you you bike in the day and then the cruise goes along and holds on to all your stuff and then you sleep in the cruise ship at night and so you're hitting town by town but then you're biking so you don't have to do loops or anything, you just keep going. I like that. I think it would be amazing.
Speaker 2:And we got really good at it.
Speaker 2:My husband part of it is because he's not really afraid of anything and that helps because I'll be like I don't want I'm going to get lost, you know.
Speaker 2:And we went for a bike ride from a campground in Milan and we had a great time and we found fine roads to ride on in the middle of that, you know, crowded, it's just, it's a, it's a very special place and, like you know, it's amazing to just be in a country where every single person you see on a bicycle, whether they're, like you know, eight year olds that have better bike handling skills than like any woman in the amateur racing field in California, have, California have.
Speaker 2:Or you see an old woman going riding her bicycle to the store, you know, to get this enormous vat of mayonnaise which she has, like, strapped to the back of her rack, you know, on her bike. All of their bikes fit them perfectly and you just know. You know, because you notice like people just on bikes, you know, riding around, whether it's like DUI people or just people in the United States, and like everyone's riding a bike, it's not the right size for them, you know, and that's one thing you notice in Belgium is they're all. Their seat heights are all perfect and they'll have absolute perfect cycling form. You know, and it just comes from a country.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, genetically in them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of genetics going on. The um, the, the current um. Well, he lost the world championship to the Slovenian kid. But the current great out there is a guy named Mathieu van der Poel and his father was named Adrian van der Poel, which is also the name of our dog, Audrey.
Speaker 1:And his mother.
Speaker 2:I don't remember the name of his mother but it's like, literally, like he's got, like he's like the grandson of this one, like most famous cyclist that ever lived. He's Dutch, but he grew up in Belgium and like his father and like it's the same like pattern that they look for in racing horses where they're like this horse is going to win. You know he's got like that heritage and that genetics and and you know he's he's one of the strongest guys in the world. Wow, that's amazing and it just comes from this tradition of you know, belgian and Dutch families and how strong they can be, and the women too, like the fastest women in the world, are also from Belgium.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting. So do they get it from the Belgian chocolate Super biking? Powers there's something about that. Can we eat that?
Speaker 2:Well, and it's funny too, because when I say that it's like football, like even people who are sitting there like drinking like unbelievable amounts of beer at these bike races and smoking cigarettes, they love to smoke. You know, they're also huge cycling fans and some of our best friends in Belgium are not cyclists they love to smoke. You know, they're also huge cycling fans and some of our best friends in Belgium are not cyclists. They're people that smoke, that we met because we like to sit outside, you know, our favorite like cafe and at the same time as us. And one day they sat next to us and they were like, what's your story? And we're like, oh, we're American. And they were like what, what are you doing in this tiny village in Belgium? What was the village you were in? It was called Flobeck Flobeck and it has a local name. The locals call it Flobiza.
Speaker 1:Is that the one that's the home of Eddie Burks, or is that a different? No, eddie Murks is actually. I'm not sure where he's from. I think he might even be from Wallonia.
Speaker 2:Is it Eddie Merckx or Burks? You said I should know that and I'm going to bicycle hell for not knowing the town.
Speaker 1:What's his name? Burks or Burks Burks, merckx with an M.
Speaker 2:M-E-R-C-Y-X. Oh, I'm not that close Okay.
Speaker 1:That sounds incredible.
Speaker 2:But I do know that Greg LeMond lived in Kortrijk, which is pretty close to Flaubert In Ronse Ronse. So is your travel very bike motivated.
Speaker 1:You want to go explore this place on a bike or that place on a bike, or you just go explore, and of course, you can bring your bikes just because that's what you do.
Speaker 2:No well, it was a first right. I mean, we ended up hanging out long enough in Belgium just to realize that this part of the world is like this is where we want to be, this is where our hearts are, this is home for us. Oh, okay. And then we ran into visa constraints. So initially I was there, I was going to get a job working for the same company. It would be an on-site job in Portugal but it didn't work out. Oh okay, like we can't actually sponsor your visa. Um. The plan had always been like oh yeah, let's go live in portugal until we're eu citizens and then we'll just go back to belgium and then I'll be able to find a job, no problem, because I'll be an eu citizen and no one will have to give me visa sponsorship. Um. But that didn't work out, and so I actually ended up eventually quitting my job.
Speaker 1:Um what kind of work were you doing?
Speaker 2:um, I'm a uh supply chain operations procurement oh, okay, all right, so it's not like professional. I was working in the in legal operations oh, okay, oyster, he's very modest.
Speaker 1:She's a pretty, pretty skilled job. Yeah, she's very skilled, unbelievable, has done so much for so many very large companies and anyone that ever gets her is extremely lucky. I said what would do and build was incredible, the way her detail and what she knows unbelievable. It was really impressive. So she's very modest, but yes, she kicks butt. Let's just say that.
Speaker 2:Yes. So at that point, you know we were going to Portugal and we just kept running into these. We still have a European bank account that we can't really access because, like, we've never been able to get like the PIN number working. I mean, there's the bureaucracy and troubles of like not really having an address that people can send stuff to. You is like it's. It's really a part of the struggle of being a digital nomad. You know a lot of places you'll stay. You won't be able to receive packages or mail because you're in, like, the back of someone's apartment or you're in some weird building.
Speaker 1:Oh, I never thought about that. Ok, got to buy local then I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when I we lived in andorra, nothing could get shipped to you, nothing because, um, they would like derail it and always open it for customs purposes. And try to see if people were, you know, trying to get around the rules of a tax haven by bringing in cheap goods without paying the duties.
Speaker 1:Can you tell me about Portugal, like, is it easy to become a citizen in Portugal? That that was your plan? No oh okay, well, just not yet an EU citizen. I have a feeling that's going to happen for sure.
Speaker 2:The path to citizenship in Portugal that I had to take was something that they call. Sometimes they call it the retirement visa, but what it is is that you have to have an income separate from like. It can't just be one lump sum of money. You have to have a recurring income of not very much money, only 850 euro a month, and then, if there's two of you, 12, half of that, so I think maybe it was 1250 or 1200, euro.1,200 or €1,200. I mean, they're close to the same. Right now Euros are a little more expensive, but you had to have that just kind of coming in. So that's why so many people in Portugal are retired. That's pretty easy and we were able to show that we had that in terms of our rental income on a net level.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Quite on the gross level. And so we ran into problems with our visa that way and plus, like it was all tied into me doing this job that I just I didn't really want to do. At that point, you know, I I'd taken a job um, a little, a couple notches lower than my capability because, you know, I thought it would be worth it to live in Europe and get the opportunity, but it didn't seem stable and it didn't seem like something that was going to be around for five years and it just didn't seem like the right opportunity for me. So, yeah, so when I found out how incredibly difficult it was to get the visa and spend all that time in Portugal for a job I didn't necessarily know that I really wanted, you know, to live in a place that we didn't really necessarily want to live in, I mean not for a long period of time. It just seemed to make sense to abandon that entire process.
Speaker 2:And we did after we were pretty far in. I still have national tax IDs and bank accounts in Portugal.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's crazy. So did you spend some time in Andorra.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we thought that once we applied for the visas in Portugal, we'd be able to stay in Portugal.
Speaker 2:I had like five people tell me that that was the case and maybe it would have been better not to ask the lawyers. But the lawyers said that is not the case, you cannot take her. And so we were getting ready to be done with our three-month period in the EU, which Portugal is part of, and it was so confusing because they wanted you to have a house with a lease to get the visa. But how are you supposed to find a house or a lease to a place to stay that you want to stay in um unless you're allowed to stay there? And find a place to live?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, catch 22, check me there like airbnb and like rent a place that way, and then show that sure, but we'd already been in belgium for a month and a half, you know, buying the car and taking care of uh other business. Um headed to portugal, and so it was around. Then we realized that we were going to run out of our time at the end of August, and there was just no way this visa was going to happen before then. So that's when we went to Andorra.
Speaker 1:I'm looking at a map here. How did you hear? I can't believe. I've never heard of this. We've done France a couple of times. We've been in the south of France. We've done Europe. We've been to the south of France. We've done Europe. We've done the Santiago. We've never heard anyone mention Andorra, or maybe I didn't realize it was a country. That's crazy. I've heard of it but I don't know much about it.
Speaker 2:It's mostly like it's a huge ski resort. It's pretty windy.
Speaker 1:It's like right between France and Spain. It almost looks like it's on the border between the two of them.
Speaker 2:It is, it is yeah.
Speaker 1:And is it France, or is it Spain, or is?
Speaker 2:it, it's its own country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know why? Because as I look closer there's a little circle, a tiny little circle with an arrow right on Andorra, so it is its own country. So it's like Lake Tahoe is its own country almost probably, kind of like a little ski resort area.
Speaker 2:No, this is a little bit more like Guam, I would say.
Speaker 1:Okay, and it's not part of the EU. Oh, so you can go in the EU for three months, but then you have to leave and then come back. And so you went to Andorra. How long did you have to stay there for then?
Speaker 2:Well, you can stay in Andorra for up to 90 days.
Speaker 1:Three months Okay.
Speaker 2:As an American without a visa, but the rules in Europe have changed a little bit. You have to go for longer than three months now when you leave the EU before you can come back again.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:And it's different in every country. We kind of got different rules in all the different places, but we tried in general to not stay too long in a European country. We would have liked to have stayed longer in, say, portugal. We would have liked to stay longer in Croatia and Slovenia. They were all part of the EU, so we really were pushing against that time limit.
Speaker 1:So we went to.
Speaker 2:Andorra, and the reason why we didn't leave, why we left Andorra, was not because we were in danger of our visas expiring. It's because the snow was coming, oh, okay, and we were not there for a ski vacation and we lived at 7,500 feet. It would basically be like being, you know, living at a ski resort. Oh okay. With that much snow.
Speaker 1:Not so great for biking even, and I'm sure you guys would bike in it.
Speaker 2:But yeah, again, all the world tours were in andorra um never saw a normal person on a bicycle the whole time I was there. Yes, really yeah, it was like august and, yeah, everyone was there between the tour de france and the vuelta de spania, which, for the first time in like ever in the last 80 years, didn't go to Andorra. I was so disappointed, oh wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So which countries are the best for biking? You know I'm probably most of the listeners are not at the pro racing level. Is there big advantages for the normal layperson to bike in specific?
Speaker 2:countries. I would definitely recommend the normal layperson ride a bicycle in Belgium.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the only reason why we always saw pros out there is because it was winter.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:In spring and summer there's just vast hordes of like group rides everywhere like groups of cyclists with 100, 200 people in them just riding.
Speaker 1:And they're on the roads or they do like a lot of off-road, like mountain they like mountain biking there, but they're also.
Speaker 2:The roads are set up. Every single road is a bike lane oh, really okay.
Speaker 1:How about slovenia? That's uh, it's my heritage. I haven't been there yet. I'm really dying to go. Did you spend much time there?
Speaker 2:no um oh, okay, beautiful campground that we stayed at.
Speaker 1:Oh, it was a campground. Okay, did you guys have like a van, or you actually camp, camped?
Speaker 2:We bought a cheap tent at Decathlon which is like the European REI.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And we had our car and we pitched a tent.
Speaker 1:Okay, awesome, so you had a car throughout Europe, or did you train somewhere?
Speaker 2:We bought the car in Belgium. We ran into a lot of red tape. We managed to get it registered eventually in Andorra, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow. And then what'd you do after your time was up?
Speaker 2:So we left Andorra and at that point, you know, in terms of the question of what was driving us, I was just applying for jobs. At that point I, you know I no longer had any income coming in, except for a little bit from our rental property. So we just decided to live as cheaply as we could outside the Europe in a place we could drive to. So, that's what led us to Bosnia.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow OK.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, wow, okay. And we were like, oh, let's just go there and check it out. And then we started seeing all these YouTube videos about all these people who clearly put absolutely zero attention to politics. Being like this is the best place ever. Yay, this is our favorite new tourist destination, trebinje, bosnia. And it wasn't, you know, if you weren't a tourist, that was there in the summer. It was actually a little hard living there.
Speaker 1:Um, why is that? Is it language or?
Speaker 2:Language is difficult, um the, the culture there, um people are not naturally friendly.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Um, I mean, they're not really in the Netherlands or Belgium either, but if you're there for long enough, they eventually, you know, you can weasel your way in once they figure out you're not a tourist, but you know we really struggled in Bosnia.
Speaker 2:We spent most of our time in Respublica Srpska, which is the Serbian section of Bosnia. Okay, we did go to Sarajevo. There were just like small things about it not being part of the EU that were very noticeable. There were just like small things about it not being part of the EU that were very noticeable. I would say the big trash and the trash like the trash everywhere, and then the field dogs and cats. I mean, anyone who's been to Latin America probably has a little more experience with those two.
Speaker 1:It's very India-like almost.
Speaker 2:Yeah it's a little it's pretty heartbreaking if you're a dog person.
Speaker 1:Because the dogs are they're not.
Speaker 2:Like you know, in America, or even in Portugal, like all the stray dogs were like the same breed, you know, and they were just clearly some kind of like super mutt, you know that is accustomed to living on the streets. Or you know, in America they're all pit bulls and stuff. You know they were really nice breeds of dogs, you know, like in many cases like purebred dogs you're not used to seeing like a golden retriever living on the street.
Speaker 2:You know yeah, oh wow yeah yeah, labradoodles, yeah like friendly, beautiful dogs, you know big little I mean mostly big. I didn't see many little ones okay, um and the cats too. Cats were so friendly um, it was really hard to not take them with us oh, I can imagine, I would want to and then also the pollution too.
Speaker 2:You know, everyone in bosnia is driving a 1984 volkswagen with a diesel engine. Oh, and even though we were on the Mediterranean sometimes, I mean it usually wasn't that bad, but sometimes it could be really, really bad the further you go into the mountains, which is the entire country, the more the pollution hangs in the valleys. I mean it smells like sulfur.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:It's bad, it's really bad. It's like something that you don't ever smell in America.
Speaker 1:Okay, what about Croatia?
Speaker 2:Croatia was gorgeous. Okay, but it's part of the EU Okay. We could ride our bicycles. Where we lived in Bosnia, we could ride our bicycles to the border of Croatia. We could see the Adriatic Sea and Dubrovnik and have coffee looking at the ocean. Oh nice we didn't actually ride our bikes through customs that much, because every now and then they gave you a hard time and wanted to see a passport, and we didn't want to burn any days in the EU.
Speaker 1:Oh, I see, oh smart. Okay, you're not in there if your passport's not stamped.
Speaker 2:I am.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, very good.
Speaker 2:And from then we went to Montenegro.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I don't really think, but that's uh, is that kind of near Croatia, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it needs to do it Also a former Yugoslav.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, I'm Yugoslavian by descent, and so now it's like I think we're mainly from Slovenia, but you know there's Croatia, and what else did you say it was?
Speaker 2:The Serbs.
Speaker 1:The Serbs yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Serbs live in a lot of different countries, like Montenegrins. They're ethnically Serbs, okay, and of course Serbia is mostly Serbs, and then Croatia is mostly Croatians, because they kicked out or killed all the Serbs.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:And all the Serbs in Bosnia have been killing the Bosniaks, who are the Bosnian Muslims. Oh, okay, he's joined in that as well.
Speaker 1:I need to read some history.
Speaker 2:It got pretty ugly and you can really tell Like. I spent only a couple days in Belgrade in Serbia, and Serbia itself is not a place where you know people hold on to the past. I think it's really, you know it's a pretty modern, pretty friendly place. Oh, okay, that's not the feeling you get necessarily all the time when you're in Bosnia. You really feel the tensions, the ethnic tensions still between the groups.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay, wow, so did you. Oh sorry, oh, go ahead. I was just going to say I think Montenegro, if I'm remembering correctly, was one of your favorites.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we did love it. We lived in Sotinia and actually this is crazy A week after we left, there was like a mass killing with a gun in Satinia. This is like a tiny village. We were like we could not believe it. When we read it in the news Did they say why? He was some ex-army guy. Wow, so not just in.
Speaker 1:America? Huh, I was going to say, was he in cahoots with the guy from what? In front of the Trump Tower with the no, and then in the New Orleans? Maybe there was a trifecta or something going on.
Speaker 2:It was an isolated incident. I didn't even know that they were allowed to have guns in Montenegro. I mean, I never saw any.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe they weren't. How long were you in Montenegro for then?
Speaker 2:We were there for a month and a couple months.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:We would have stayed longer, except we decided that things were kind of coming to a head with my job applications. Okay. We decided that we should move on to Ukraine if we truly wanted to volunteer in Ukraine before I was going to end up having to start working for a company.
Speaker 1:Yeah, wow, what kind of volunteer work did you do.
Speaker 2:Well, I never made it. I got arrested on the Polish-Ukrainian border by the Polish police. What was that? I got arrested at the Poland-Ukrainian border by the Polish police because I did not have an international driver's permit, which I had no idea I needed. Which?
Speaker 1:had not come up for driving. What did that look like? What happened?
Speaker 2:and the police were really nice, like even they thought it was a shakedown. Um, like a bunch of like the women like on the police force like kept riding in the back with me in the cars, I wouldn't feel like I was getting arrested. Oh gosh, that's my other half I'm polish.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been done. Oh yeah, well, in fact my husband's still there.
Speaker 2:He's not going to ukraine until he's going to ukraine on sunday. Because when I came to amer I got him his international driver's permit, which is this BS cardboard document with like a poorly trimmed passport photo tape to it. I mean it's so ridiculous. I mean there's no like, there's nothing behind it. Oh my gosh that's hilarious. You get from AAA. Oh, I think I've heard about that before. Yeah, it costs 20 bucks, 12 if you let them take your passport photos.
Speaker 1:Okay, Is there any big consequence of getting arrested? You just they like slap your wrist.
Speaker 2:Interrogation for my punishment and I was like kind of giggling at the police's English, you know, and they were just kidding Now we will conduct your interrogation for your punishment. And then I actually saw the document and it really said on it she was reading it. They gave me an English copy, English version of this document. It's great. I'm going to frame it.
Speaker 1:That is an awesome story. That's so cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you're a little nervous at the time, but I had to write a letter to the judge and they're either going to give me a fine Actually, I haven't gotten the letter back yet. They're either going to give me a fine or they're going to ban me from driving in Poland for six months, or some combination thereof, or they could throw the whole thing out and they didn't even know if I had to. Like I was trying to figure out if I had to go to court and they're like well, we've never really done this before, so we don't know.
Speaker 2:no, someone, just on a whim, decided to press yeah, just on a whim, it wasn't really the police's fault. Like as soon as the like the the charges had been you know, like clear that I was driving without an irrational driver's permit in poland, like I guess the police had been. You know, like clear, that I was driving without an international driver's permit in Poland, like I guess the police had no choice. So I've been stuck in Poland over Christmas.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness, oh just like a month ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh you just got back.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, she's here just interviewing, and then she's are you going to go back it?
Speaker 2:all depends, yeah, yeah. So if I don't get a job, I'm going to go back to Europe and join him and we'll get another three months in Belgium, keep applying for places. And if I do get a job, then hopefully it's a remote job and I'll be able to go over there and hang out with him and work. And hopefully it's a remote job and I'll be able to go over there and hang out with him and work. But if I get a job that's not a remote job, then I'll probably just go out there for a couple of weeks, take vacation and help him move home, and we'll be moving somewhere in the United States.
Speaker 2:Okay, very open ended right now.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so exciting. I love that. So, living in Belgium, do you rent then by the month? How do you do?
Speaker 2:your housing. So we boarded with a family for a significant time over there and we paid by the month. And Airbnb is hard to find in the villages there and it's kind of expensive. Short-term leases tend to be like three to six months. Those are in Brussels and they tend to be for, like you know, diplomats and people working for the government. Those are very accessible in Brussels but in the village it's hard to find places you might have to find like an overly expensive Airbnb until you kind of meet people and figure out.
Speaker 1:Okay, you got to get the lay of the land. Someone knows someone.
Speaker 2:Exactly Once you start meeting people, you know they're like oh, my parents are renting out this house. You know, okay, and they would never do Airbnb.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. And then as far as like trying to find a remote job, our audience might be interested in this.
Speaker 2:So are there certain remote jobs that, yeah, they're remote, but no, as long as you're in the United States are there certain remote jobs that only will let you be remote internationally. So I am technically an American working in America with an American tax address, which is here in Nevada it's a UPS store and so therefore I can. When I work remotely, I can only go to Europe for, within those same constraints, three months at a time.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:To do, to work somewhere where you can live longer than that. You have to obtain, you have to obtain a visa.
Speaker 1:No, no, I was thinking. I'm wondering if the employer cares if you're in the United States or if they're worried about like security and on the internet in a different country?
Speaker 2:that's a good question. Um, usually what they care about are taxes and okay taxes and breaking visa regulations, which is why I? Went there um, but I think most companies have advanced VPNs oh okay.
Speaker 1:As long as you can get on that and they wrap up the security. Oh, okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 2:And in fact for me, having the VPN made it really difficult to do things like basically do anything online when I was in Montenegro or Bosnia. I kept on getting like your bank does not allow this location.
Speaker 1:Oh right, because it says you're in America and they're like why would Americans be hacking into our accounts here?
Speaker 2:Interesting. Yeah, all companies are going to want to make sure that you've got all of the VPNs and the two-factor authentication on anything you're using for work for your mobile devices.
Speaker 1:Yeah, got it For sure. Yeah. Your mobile devices yeah, got it For sure. Yeah, how was it with the internet and trying to work and you know if it was tricky or not tricky and I'm sure, it's like well, I guess I'm just not going to be able to work here for a couple of days or a week or a month or something like that.
Speaker 2:It was tricky. There were a couple places that said they had internet and they didn't, and so what I had to do was, in both locations I was able to find a co-working space that wasn't more than like 40 minutes away Drive away, and so that's what I always did, okay, yeah, it was really hard in places in Portugal.
Speaker 1:Oh Okay, I portugal's like digital nomad haven well, because of that.
Speaker 2:Um, there were a lot of co-working places. You know, if you were anywhere near a big city which, again, if you're willing to drive 45 minutes is it's a small country, yeah, so you can find those places. Every time it rained really hard inenegro, which was pretty much all the time we were there, like the sun would come out like twice a week. We'd be like get on your bikes, go, go, go. We'd lose power and like not be able to get into our apartment building and like our you know, our Airbnb host was like no, no, no, it runs on battery, it still lets you in when power is out. We're runs on battery, it still lets you in when power is out. We're like we're telling you that we can't get into our own apartment building. Oh, that was kind of stressful and I had a whole bunch of interviews, you know it would always be like oh, my god is it gonna rain?
Speaker 2:is it not gonna rain? And the rain, I mean, like you couldn't like one of them. I had to reschedule. I had to reschedule an interview because the rain was so bad that I couldn't even drive you know, like I couldn't even drive on the highway Like there were like there was like standing water that was like feet deep.
Speaker 2:Everywhere the rain was insane. I guess that's just winter weather for um, for the, the Mediterranean. What do you call that? The Dalmatian coast? Yeah, Cause Montenegro is next to Croatia, so it's like the next little loop in the coastline there. But I was not expecting that at all.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:It is really stressful. It's really stressful when you're somewhere and you can't work and you need to be working.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's why I'm always like do I want to try to work remotely? I'm like I'm thinking maybe more I'm going to try to get myself set up so I can take three months off at a time, or even just a month off, and then go somewhere, come back and then plan another trip for one or two months, like especially in Asia, I think, with the time difference and everything. I definitely think I want to just take a break rather than trying to work remotely.
Speaker 2:Well and even when I wasn't working. I teach English to Ukrainians online.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 2:And so I always felt like there was always something I needed to do and needed to be online for whether it was like networking calls or webinars or teaching English or job interviews, I never really felt like I could truly be off the grid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 2:It does make it stressful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how did you get the teaching jobs in English? That sounds kind of fun.
Speaker 2:We were looking at all the volunteering in Ukraine I think that's the name of the website, although my husband he's volunteering with the Ukrainian Bicycle Project, which actually he found through a different route online. He just sent him an email and was like hey, I'm a bike mechanic, can I help you build bikes? They're like yes, I was volunteering in Ukraine and had all kinds of options and some of them were remote and that's how I found it and I signed up and I got trained and I love it. I have three students. They're all women in their 40s. I have an economist, a computer science teacher and an attorney and they're learning English so they can find a job outside Ukraine as refugees.
Speaker 1:Wow, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:Good for you, that's awesome, it's amazingly more helpful than I thought it would. Be you know, to help them.
Speaker 1:That's very neat. That's incredible. What would you say are your three favorite places and why?
Speaker 2:My first favorite place is Belgium, my second favorite place is Montenegro and my third favorite place is Poland.
Speaker 1:Is Poland. What was your three favorite foods?
Speaker 2:your three favorite foods. Um, there's a, a food that they eat in. Uh, we call it serbia land because, you know, it doesn't really matter what country you're in, like, the ethnicity of a lot of these same people are serbs. Um, they have something called ivar, which is ground bell peppers and eggplant, and sometimes they put spicy peppers in it, and, and it is just absolutely. How do you spell that In the Romantic alphabet?
Speaker 1:Or just like Ivar, like with Victor the I-V-A-R.
Speaker 2:V-A-V-A-J-V-A-R.
Speaker 1:Okay, that sounds right. Brown peppers and eggplant. That sounds like something I would love. I've never heard of that before.
Speaker 2:So incredible. And then you know just all the little farmer's markets in Montenegro, like the little vegetable mongers there was, like you know, like one of them, every city block basically just with like all these amazing fresh vegetables, the peppers, especially in that part of the world, were just incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Mild and spicy the whole gamut.
Speaker 2:Okay, yep, everything in between, and of course you could get like persimmons for, like you know, pennies, you know, for like a massive, huge bag of them, those are so good.
Speaker 1:I love those.
Speaker 2:And then I really like the Spanish food. I love any place, and Portuguese too. I love any place where you sit down and they give you a bowl of olives, you know, as soon as you sit down, and I really, really like the fish that they have yeah.
Speaker 2:The famous fish dishes I know that that whole region of the world is famous for, like their Iberian ham, and I certainly ate a lot of that stuff, like all their smoked sausage and everything. We lived in Andorra, andora, um, but you know, we really started to just crave like fresh food. You know, yeah, just have amazing fresh fish yeah, olives are incredible.
Speaker 2:They just came off someone's tree. Um, and then also, you know the thing I love the most about europe? And it doesn't matter where you go in Europe, you're going to find it is just the bread. Oh okay. So good. And I don't mean the white bread, I mean, like the brown, full-grain bread.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, so fresh.
Speaker 2:So fresh and it's cheap.
Speaker 1:And what was your favorite dessert, from what country? If you had to pick one dessert, what would that be?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a tough one because I don't eat a lot of dessert.
Speaker 1:I usually have to choose between dessert and beer. What's your favorite beer then? What was?
Speaker 2:your favorite beer. If you had to pick one, oh well, you know I'm a huge devotee. My Belgian friends would scoff at me, but I think Leffe the Belgian beer which is one of the few kinds you can get over here in the United States and we actually found some in like a French grocery store in Andorra. We were so happy, you know, it was like Spanish, Portuguese, Italian beer. It's all like very light, you know beer.
Speaker 2:It's happy every time we can find a left, and I also had a rule that I couldn't drink any belgian beer where I hadn't been to the actual town, usually the cathedral, and then the left. Um, my second one was iname e-n-a-m-e, which was also a cathedral town, and that was from flanders, where, where we lived, um, sounds, it was all the same, it's all belgian blondes. You know, it's all very strong, like six, six point six, yeah it's all so, so, so good.
Speaker 1:And then I just I love the belgian chocolate too coffee or tea, nanny coffee, coffee, coffee, nice, yeah, that's awesome well thank you so much, marianne.
Speaker 1:This was so much fun. Oh my, my gosh, we could talk forever. I have so many questions. It just sounds, I mean, it just opens your people who are listening's mind of just a different type of adventure, because a lot of people will talk about one country, but someone who's actually really doing it which I want to do as well along with taking you backpacking. Obviously, it's happening. It's happening, oh, it will happen.
Speaker 2:I'll have to tell my new employers, you know, like, look, I got a problem with August, you know.
Speaker 1:Exactly For sure. But thank you so much, marianne, for just this wonderful discussion about your adventures and exploring with you, your husband, your dog and your bikes right, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I'm honored that you're interested in my stories.
Speaker 1:Yes, for sure. Well, have a great weekend and I'm sure we'll be talking very soon. All right, nice to meet you, marianne. Take care, bye, bye. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast, can you please take a second and do a quick follow of the show and rate us in your podcast app, and if you have a minute, we would really appreciate a review. Following and rating is the best way to support us. If you're on Instagram, let's connect. We're at where? Next podcast? Thanks again, music.
