The travel blog: Preparations to go abroad. Tips and Tricks

It's a small world

It is a small world... this was just so funny that I need to share it!

Actually we are getting our last tasks done. One of them: Get some colombian pesos for the cab from the airport...

Aaaargh, when exactly was that bloody flight?!

You know that feeling? You booked your flight some weeks ago and simply cannot answer that question, without scrolling around in your emails for 5 minutes.

This does not get any better, if you have 8 flights, some accomodations, a camper and a ship booked and a friend asks you "when are you in Cartagena? We would like to visit you, would those dates be ok and whats the address?".

But we found a solution for the email scrolling terror!!! It's called Tripcase and I am soooo happy to have it, really!

Visa - Mania: Canada

I would have expected, that Canada is way stricter in immigration issues, comparable maybe to the US.

And yes, that's right.

Now we want to work & travel in Canada. Hm. Might be even more complicated.

Right again.

Actually its a freakin' nightmare...

How to set up TripCase

TripCase is an app to organize your travel data into an itinerary. It really made my life easier and I can answer questions like "when exactly is your flight?" without scrolling around in my emails.

Here's how you set it up:

Language school: 6 things to take into account

Finding a proper language school is kind of a task - even if you roughly know in which part of the world you would like to hit the books again. The amount of offers is overwhelming and there is hardly a useful review in the internet.

Here are the 6 things you should think about before booking.

Preparation of a different kind

Thats the guy.

The guy that made sure that I am able to carry a 20 kg bagpack to the top of the rocky mountains or punch a bear on his nose, should one of it be necessary. Here are some silly lines from our last training session before the trip - training can be slapstick ;-)

Murphy says: You will get sick without a health insurance

Longer hospital stays might easy be hundreds of thousands of Euro and being transported home with an ambulance jet is a higher 5 digit Euro amount. On top a health insurance is requested sometimes, e.g. by language schools or work&travel hosts.

So yes. You'll need one. Here are the options:

Stay with your local health insurance
Get a travel insurance (valid 6-8 weeks)
Get an overseas health insurance (restricted period of validity)

3 weeks before - a status

The last weeks were marked by preparations for us. We are pretty far with The List of Horror: ToDos before... *sigh*, 3 weeks before departure I wouldn't want it differently :-) Whats left is the insurance nightmare and selling / signing off the cars.

Then we planned the first stages of our trip. Here is kind of a status:

Visa - Mania: Colombia

Would you believe this?

Being citizen of one of the many countries without required visa for Colombia, we didn't think much about it at first. You usually get a 90 days Tourist visa stamped into your passport at imigration. Then one of the language schools requested a student visa, as we would be staying in school more than 60 days. Huh? I mean, this is Colombia, not the US ?!

The List of Horror: ToDos before... sigh

This is my personal list of horror. No, honestly, you will not imagine the thousand things that you need to arrange, check or simply DO before boarding any plane. We did a bit of brainstorming and the list became longer and longer. Here are 15 things you may not think of at first.