In autumn 2025, many things suddenly became very concrete: the apartment was gone, much of what I owned had been sorted out, and there was no new home waiting with an address and a key. There was only the decision to go — and the unusually open question of where, exactly.
From the outside, moving abroad often looks like a country decision: Spain or Portugal? City or coast? Visa, apartment, registration. For me, it started differently. Long before I left Germany, another question had taken hold: How do I want to live on ordinary days — not only during my weeks of holiday?
Travel was never only a holiday for me
Being on the road had been part of my life for many years. Over time, what I was looking for changed. It became less about collecting places and more about how everyday life feels when time, nature, movement and flexibility are not limited to a few weeks each year.
As a family, that question became even more concrete. I realised that I did not automatically want to choose between a reliable everyday routine and a mobile life. I wanted to find out whether the two could work together in a way that suited us.
I did not leave because I had found the perfect country. I left because I was becoming much clearer about how I wanted to live.
Not against Germany — for a different model
Germany is not a place I want to devalue or erase from my story. People, memories and connections there still belong to my life. That is exactly why the decision was never as simple as “I do not like it here anymore.”
I wanted to try something that, over the years, had increasingly felt like my own model of life: more room for travel and nature, more time together, and less of the feeling that real life was always being postponed.
Without a finished master plan
When I left, not everything was solved. Some organisational questions were clear; others only developed on the road. Professionally, too, I had to find out what could work in the long term. That openness was sometimes liberating and sometimes uncomfortable.
Looking back, that was an important part of the decision: I did not need every answer before preparing the next step seriously. But I did need to be honest enough to see which questions were still open.
Why GaVopia grew from it
An international restart is rarely one single big decision. Everyday life, documents, insurance, work, money and family are connected. Trying to solve everything at once can quickly make the whole picture harder to see.
GaVopia grew out of that experience: not as a place that claims to know the perfect path, but as a place that helps make the next good decision more visible.
I am deliberately telling the detailed stages of this story gradually. Not everything that happened needs to be published immediately — and not everything private belongs online at all.