I didn’t grow up traveling. My family didn’t take vacations other than two road trips to Disney Land and Disney World when I was too young to really remember. I didn’t board an airplane until I was 18, the summer before starting college. I didn’t get a passport until I was 25, when a friend asked if I wanted to join him on a three week backpacking trip around Europe.
That’s when I first heard people talking about year-long or longer ’round the world trips, and I thought both, “I would never want to do that,” and, “I could never do that.”
Five years later, in July 2011, at 30 years old, I quit my full-time job and bought a one-way ticket to Berlin. The plan was to travel “around the world” for a year but, especially after spending my first few weeks in tears, no one thought I would make it past three months.
