The Official Kickoff…

So, this is it…

The last days were quite busy for us with cleaning the apartment, saying Goodbye to friends & family and celebrating the New Year, of course.

This morning our keys were finally handed over to the agency which is taking care of renting out our apartment.

Now we are sitting in our favourite Italian café “TRE PAZZI” at the Mühlenkamp and enjoying our last coffee and lunch before we head for the airport.

“How Does it Feel?”

We were asked that question so many times during the last weeks. My answer was always “I don’t know, I guess I don’t quite realise yet, that this is going to happen”.

Well, I guess this morning, the moment when we left the apartment, I realised that it IS going to happen. Now! So, this is what it feels like now:

• We will not see family and friends for a long time which makes me feel a bit sad. Life will go on in Hamburg without us. A few things will change in 12 months. Other things will probably stay the same. How is life going to look like in Hamburg in 12 months? Is our Parkrun group still meeting for coffee? Will colleagues still have the same positions in the company I work for? …
• We will certainly experience many different things in the next 12 months which makes me feel excited. What will we see? What people will we meet? Which places will we discover? Will we miss home?
• I am launching a few new features of my little project “Rezeptrechner” in a few weeks time. I am nervous and proud at the same time about this one. It may help to generate some further income for the next 12 months. But even if not, it just makes me happy to see what I built over the last years in my free time and that it actually is useful for many people.
• There were doubts between the moment we made that decision and now. Even though we may often seem determined in all the things we do, rest assured we have doubts as well. Taking a year off is not cheap. How does it feel to see savings shrinking? What impact will it have on my career? We never really travelled that long – will it change our views on things? Especially when you do something which is totally different from what others may expect you to do, it feels weird. It is our life and we are free to make our own decisions but society and especially reactions from people you know still have an impact on you. The very positive reactions from all our friends and family have – in the end – encouraged us even more to do this trip. And so this blog is also supposed to give something back. Be it inspiration, motivation or just a little bit of satisfying curiosity 😛
• So there is a mix of different feelings right now. But if I had to bring it down to 2 sentences: In general all these feeling are embedded in a feeling of happiness and calmness. I am grateful that we have that privilege to make our dream come true.

And to make this Blog more personal and because we will have a lot of free time in the next months we decided to create our own little characters which you see below: Our very own “Mainzelmännchen”

They are created by one of Chris’ illustrators. For those of you who have always been interested in finding out what kind of designs Chris’ team of freelancers from the Philippines creates, here are some samples: