Over the years, we’ve read about average people traveling the world and finding themselves. We’ve seen our friends go on 3-month trips to exotic locations or bike around the world— twice . Now it looks like it’s our turn at adventure.

In August 2016, Beth and I began to plan a move to Germany. On our bicycle vacation in June, we started from Munich so we could open a bank account, contact potential employers and scope out the neighborhood we thought we might want to live in.

It was the perfect time, really. Our kids have good jobs, Beth’s dad had passed, I wanted to spend more time with my parents back in Germany — and I started to dislike my job.

I don’t remember exactly why or how we chose our departure date, but I think we thought leaving in the fall would be too soon to get our ducks in a row, so we settled for the end of the year. Of course, moving in the middle of winter is not really fun, so one of us had the bright idea to take a little sabbatical and travel west, crossing off a destination that’s been on my bucket list forever: New Zealand!

Since we both hate long flights, we added a few stops: Hawaii, Australia and Thailand. Originally, we planned to go to Vietnam and Laos instead of Thailand, but reading some of the travel blogs, we decided against it. Then we found an organized 12-day  biking, hiking and kayaking trip through Thailand and almost booked it, until we saw how expensive immunizations would be.

So here we are: leaving the US mainland in January to spend 1 week in Hawaii,  6 weeks in New Zealand, 2.5 weeks in Australia and 3 days in Bangkok before flying to Munich.

It’s going to be our trip of a lifetime — we hope — and we’re going to write about our experiences on the way and adjusting to life in Munich on this blog.