There is a German saying to “break down all tents”. And that’s what we did with our life in Frankfurt. We paused/quit our jobs, canceled the lease for our small apartment, and sold, gave away, or donated our furniture and a lot of other stuff. Now we are free. Free to open a new chapter in our life. First, to embark on a traveling and paragliding sabbatical in South America. That’s the journey that we want to share with you in this blog. Second? Let’s see… 🙂

We? That’s Katy and Simon. If you don’t know us already, I guess you’ll get to know us more and more via our blog posts throughout the year. But as a first intro: we are both software developers and both studied Media and Computer Science in Wiesbaden. That’s not where we met, though, but at a local metal concert with barely any other visitors. That was in 2018. The same year we traveled to Washington together and started to learn paragliding. Which I guess foreshadowed quite remarkably the year that is now ahead of us.

First, we had to wrap up our existing life though. While I quit my job, Katy is enjoying a sabbatical contract where her salary is spread across two years. This fact alone shows how long we were preparing for this trip. During the whole year of 2022, colleagues were surprised that I was still there after announcing my departure almost a year in advance 😀

I could now talk about all the other things we took care of in preparation for our journey. Like deciding on a destination, taking care of insurance, getting vaccinated, researching and buying equipment, and so on. But that would definitely overload this first post. What we find worth sharing we will add to the blog over time along with lots of impressions and pictures. You can also ask questions or share your own thoughts below each post — we would be happy to hear from you!

The last weeks of 2022 were dominated by the goal of clearing out our apartment. As mentioned in the intro we took this as an opportunity to cut down on our belongings, asking ourselves if we would be happy to have something back after a year of traveling. In particular lots of clothes we gave away (asking ourselves why we had so many of them in the first place and being disappointed that it is so difficult & time-consuming to ensure them a second life). Given limited storage space & a small car, we also gave away most of our furniture (primarily to the lovely next tenant of our old apartment, Siara).

Now we are almost ready. One week left until our flight departs towards Panama City on the 23rd of January. How are we feeling? Nervous? Excited? None of that to be honest. I guess we still haven’t fully realized what is ahead of us. We’ll let you know if that changes 😉