In September 2009 (before my 30th birthday), I visited New Zealand for the second time. It was only a six-week vacation, but that’s where it all started: everywhere I went, I met people who had simply left Germany behind for an adventure. They quit their jobs, put their furniture in storage, and left.
How extreme!
Sure, I always wanted to get away.
After school: away from my home town, so I went to Hanover to study, and after graduating, away from Germany, so I spent three months in New Zealand.
But giving up a well-paid job, friends, family… wow!
But the idea was in my head and kept nagging at me.
I’d loved to travel around the world, but either that’s unaffordable or you only get to see the airport and one or two cities in each country, and that’s it. No, that’s not for me. I’d rather visit one country and really get to know it. But where and how?
The “how” was quickly resolved. “Working holiday visa” is the magic word that took me to New Zealand for three months five years ago and allows you to work abroad for up to a year. As far as I knew, the Working Holiday Visa was only available for New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, so the “where” was also quickly decided:
New Zealand? I had already been there after college, nice, but not enough prospects.
Australia? Too hot, too toxic, and dangerous, no thanks!
So that left Canada.
And everyone who talked about Canada was enthusiastic about the nature, the people, everything. Apparently, everything was great in Canada. On top of that, there were wonderful reports about Canada on television: mail ships in Newfoundland, traveling by train from Toronto to Vancouver, or polar bears up in the Yukon. Fantastic!
In December, I thought, why not just apply for a visa? It won’t work anyway. Just give it a try, it’s only 80 euros.
On top of that, there were fees for a police clearance certificate, new passport photos, a new passport (mine had expired in the summer, of course), and various copies. All in all, it cost less than 150 euros, which was a bargain.
The day before Christmas, I had all the documents ready and popped them in the mailbox—my Christmas present to myself.
Of course, no one knew about my crazy idea at the time, but when – against all odds – the visa arrived in the mail in mid-January , I had to make a few decisions:
Should I really go through with this? How should I go about it, just as a 3-6 month break with unpaid leave, or the full package: quit my job, give up my apartment, and just leave without any security? What would happen to my cat, my apartment, my furniture? What about my phone, health insurance, TV license, liability insurance, bank accounts, mail, and retirement savings?
It quickly became clear that I wanted to go through with it, and if I did, I wanted to do it properly, i.e., without a safety net or backup plan.
Even though I had serious doubts about whether it was really the right thing to do. The decision had been made.
A week after the visa arrived, I had the crucial conversation with my boss that I had been dreading: giving up a secure, good income and great colleagues in this day and age is totally insane. But, what can I say, that’s just how I am.
The conversation went well and I got the impression that my boss was more jealous than angry with me.
After that, I was able to get started with the preparations. I quickly booked my flight online for May 6, 2010—I always tend to do things like that a bit too quickly—and that meant my first destination in Canada was set: Toronto in the province of Ontario.
It was more by chance, because I actually wanted to fly to Vancouver first and was just looking at the offers for Toronto… and then I must have clicked “Continue” too many times.
But since I wanted to travel across Canada anyway, it didn’t really matter where I started.
Over the next three months, I compared various self-storage options for my furniture, organized a new home for my cat, arranged international health insurance, put my health insurance and pension plans on hold, argued with phone companies about early termination, bought new shoes (sturdy and suitable for hiking), a camera (small), and a laptop (small and light), and repeatedly fended off enthusiastic outbursts from my friends and family along the lines of “oh, how brave you are, I’d love to do that too, but…”.
It really had nothing to do with being brave; you just set yourself a goal, then try to switch off your brain and simply do what you’ve set out to do. During those three months, I often thought that I was just crazy and would be better placed in a psychiatric facility.
But somehow everything worked out, and although I never would have thought it possible, at 3:30 p.m. on May 6, I was sitting on a plane from Frankfurt am Main to Toronto, my first stop in Canada.
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