One couple. Two opinions. Many places.
Who, why, and how:
Many people would say we’ve already lived adventurous lives. Jason served on active duty for 29 years in the Army, was deployed five times to combat zones, was stationed in Germany twice, traveled in many countries, and has lived in five states. Jennifer has lived in Germany, lived in four states, and has solo-traveled to many, many countries. We used to attribute all the moving around to our careers, but now that our lives are in our own hands, we realize we still want to wander! While we had hoped for this blog to be a concise year of wandering, the pandemic had other plans. Things turned out differently, but we’ve still been able to to find new adventures. So, now, we use this blog to share our travels and adventures.
We are not unique in our desire to travel and to wander. We have met many people on our past travels who are like us. Either military and retired, child-free, remote workers, or travel lovers. But we also acknowledge that we have many resources others might not. A life of selfless service to our country and hard work have earned us some benefits that take others a lifetime to achieve: affordable, lifetime health insurance coverage; a comfortable pension at an early age; college educations; supportive families; and generous employers who allow us to work remotely.
This blog serves several purposes: a way for our family and friends to keep up with us, a place to chronicle our thoughts and locations, and a resource to those who might need some practical advice, or some play-by-play, on the logistics of traveling.
This blog should be interesting. Anyone who knows us knows that we are VERY different from each other and have VERY different perspectives. So, this blog is an attempt to capture both sides of the story with SHE SAID and HE SAID commentary. We’ll try to be as transparent as possible to be helpful—without sounding like Archie and Edith.
To know you are hearing Jen’s thoughts, the font will be purple.
To know you are hearing Jason’s thoughts, the font will be blue.
So, our hope is to travel to as many places as possible. We always make an effort to live like locals. So that means: Eating out is occasional. Laundry must be done. We use public transportation rather than rental cars or taxis. Finding the grocery store is priority rather than the closest cocktail bar. We plan to do a culture/history walk at each new location and to learn as much about the location as possible during our stays.
There is an updated FAQ page, where we post and answer some of the questions our friends and family have asked us. Our initial plan was to stay for three months in Italy…then the pandemic. So, we encourage you to also read our “Best Laid Plans” blog about how our Spring plans were derailed. Then, you will get some background on how we ended up in Budapest and then back in the states for a couple of AirBnB stays.
Obviously, Jason has had a hand in the planning of these potential wanderings, otherwise there would be no answers for these questions because I would have dropped everything and said: We’ll figure it out as we go! We’ll figure it out as we go. Let’s GO!
Most of the FAQ are answered by me because Jason has no friends. Just kidding!
Fine by me.
Of course, I wander and ponder things much more than Jason. So, you can follow my random thoughts and blogs on my own blog site:
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
JRR Tolkein
SHE AND HE WANDER 