End of the Road

Welcome to

Cosmographia

— a newsletter dedicated to exploring the world and our place in it. For the full map of posts, see here.

Far, far away Soria Moria Palace shimmered like Gold — Theodor Kittelsen (1900)

One of my earliest posts in this newsletter, then under a different name, was a farewell to London, which my partner, Amie, and I were leaving behind. After years living in the capital, one of which was mostly spent cooped up inside during a global pandemic, we wanted to get out and see the world a bit while we were still unencumbered by such adult responsibilities as a mortgage and children.

It felt bittersweet to be leaving behind the city we’d both enjoyed living in so much, the place where we’d first met and fallen in love, that was still home to the majority of our friends. But any sadness was dwarfed by our excitement at the prospect of a grand adventure. As I wrote in that early post, we were unsure how long exactly we were going for — I naively predicted four years, Amie was more realistic with two — and apart from a short wish-list of cities we’d like to visit, we didn’t know exactly where we’d be going.

This was all possible because I had the good fortune of both working entirely remotely and being self-employed. Amie did not have that luxury, so when I first suggested the idea of us leaving England and travelling for a few years, I was essentially asking her to quit her job. It’s to her immense credit that she had both the bravery and trust in herself and I to do so; a bet that paid off when she secured herself a remote job in an industry she’d long wanted to work in, only a few months after we left.

For two and a half years now we have been living what in modern parlance is called a ‘digital nomad’ lifestyle¹ — free to go wherever we pleased so long as we had reliable WiFi, remained within a few hours of the GMT timezone (so as not to be forced to work nocturnal hours), and didn’t violate the standard three-month allotment of a tourist visa. For those reasons and the fact we knew we would return to the UK every few months for things like weddings and Christmas, we mostly remained in Europe. At one stage I was trying to convince Amie of the perks of places as far afield as Uzbekistan and Zanzibar, but in the end we opted to be more sensible with our airfares.

In that time we have traversed 24 different countries,² visited over 30 cities, the majority of which we stayed in for a month or more, and made what is likely to have been hundreds of journeys via planes, trains, and automobiles. Among the highlights were experiences as diverse as tracking brown bears through the forests of Romania, seeing the Pope in the flesh, and attending a Halloween party in Dracula’s Castle. We’ve hiked mountains, swam various seas and lakes, sampled dozens of cuisines, and visited countless museums and art galleries.

On that last point, in my own rather pretentious way I’ve sometimes thought of these last few years as our own version of the Grand Tour — the coming of age travel through Europe that acted as a sort of cultural finishing school for aristocrats in centuries gone by. Though our lineages are firmly among Britain’s lower classes, and we are a good few years older than the average Grand Tourist ever was, we’ve both learned more about art, history, music, and architecture in the last couple of years than many years of formal schooling. Throw in the fact that private tutors (my day job) often accompanied these young aristocrats, and that they spent the most time in places we’ve visited on our own travels — Rome, Florence, Venice, Vienna, Geneva, Flanders — and perhaps you can see why the comparison occurs to me.

Since Britain left the European Union, Schengen Area travel rules have left Brits unable to spend more than three months in the bloc before being required to leave. Whilst this was a frustration at first, the silver lining has been that we’ve spent considerable time exploring places that we may never have reached otherwise — namely the Balkans. Countries like Albania, Romania,³ and Bosnia have been among our favourite places and as they are more affordable they balanced out our expenditure on the more typical destinations like Italy or Switzerland.

On affordability, living the digital nomad lifestyle is far more affordable than you might expect. Neither Amie nor I are particularly high earners yet we’ve been able to afford short-term rentals pretty much anywhere on the continent. I suppose when your point of comparison is renting in London perhaps everything seems affordable, but we’ve actually been saving more money living this way than before.

It’s not all been sunshine and roses, of course. Being away from home means we’ve seen friends and family far less than we would have liked. There’s also the fact that no matter where one lives there’s a level of mundanity to life that’s inescapable; sometimes that mundanity — food shopping, going to the post office, seeing a doctor or a dentist — is just easier in your own country. We obviously have to work most weeks Monday to Friday, only sightseeing or adventuring on weekends. That naturally brings with it a sense of obligation to fill one’s spare time as much as possible, even if all you want is a lazy Sunday for once. We’re in Venice right now so this problem is particularly acute, but we are so tired of both being tourists ourselves and of being surrounded by them. (If one more selfie stick brushes me in the head I may well impale the owner with it.)

I am under no illusion that these are anything more than First World problems, and that we are exceptionally fortunate to have been able to travel so much. Any difficulties, even the most taxing, have been worth it a thousand times over.

It is, however, time for a change. Constant travel for two and a half years has brought with it a general weariness that has us both aching for a sedentary life again.⁴ In fact, we’ve even made a list of things that we’re looking forward to after we’ve moved back home — things as mundane as not having to relearn the layout of the local supermarket every month, being able to purchase books without worrying about how much space there is in our suitcases, and having a wardrobe of more than thirty items.

It feels strange to be writing this, but this week marks the end of this particular road for us. In a couple of days we’ll be flying back to the UK and giving up the nomad lifestyle for good.

As we’ve approached the end we’ve spent some time reflecting on all that’s happened since we took our first flight to Vienna in 2022. Among our family and friends, three new humans have come into the world, and five have passed on. Five couples have gotten married and four more are engaged. Britain has coronated a new monarch and swept through four Prime Ministers. It’s almost as if time has sped up at home while we’ve been away.

Another thing that’s changed is this newsletter. What began as a simple travel blog to document what Amie and I were up to has morphed into something else entirely. My little missives here are regularly read by many thousands of people and the paid subscriptions now form a meaningful part of my income. I can’t thank you enough for that. Now that we’ll be moving home I hope to be able to put out higher quality work on a more regular basis — in large part just because I’ll have access to all my books, but also because I won’t have to balance writing alongside sightseeing.

Until then, I guess all I have remaining to say is this:

If you have the opportunity to travel, do so. Travel as much as you can, as widely as you can. But even so, don’t forget that, eventually, it’ll be time to come home.

1. I have never liked the term ‘digital nomad’. There’s something about it that seems far too wanky and upper middle class to deserve an association with true nomadism. After all, DNs mostly stay in rather comfortable apartments, live in cities surrounded by all the amenities of modern life, and the biggest problems we tend to face are flight cancellations. Most of the time, life as a DN feels remarkably stationary, with a bit of travel punctuating each month’s end.

2. For those interested these were: Austria, Slovakia, Germany, Hungary, Romania, Italy, Vatican City (it counts!), Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, Scotland, Czechia, Poland, Ireland, Turkey, Serbia, North Macedonia, Kosovo, and Bulgaria, not counting the various trips back to England for special occasions.

3. When we visited in 2022, Romania was not yet part of the Schengen Area, though it is now.

4. It amazes me that some DNs are able to continue living on the road for many more years than we have managed. Brent and Michael of

Brent and Michael Are Going Places

are into their seventh year of nomadism! Their stamina must know no bounds!