Worry, Stress and Excitement | 5min read

Our time in Switzerland is getting shorter and shorter… Our list of worries and things to stress about, on the other hand, is getting longer and longer.

Let’s talk about our emotions. That’s a topic everyone really likes to talk about… NOT. For us, it feels a bit weird to write this down for everyone to read. Nevertheless, we want to be an open blog (funny word joke) and getting stressed and worry about stuff is part of the process.

First of all, there are your daily “Ow shit are we really doing this” and “OMG it’s only X more days until we are leaving”. These are pretty easy to deal with, you just remind yourself that it’s going to be awesome and that you’ve prepared for this trip, so everything is going to be alright. “Did we really prepare for everything??!!” is often the one that follows the previous ones. The cure is pretty much the same for all these types of thoughts: just chill and “we zien wel”.

Secondly, you have your logistical worries. “What if our luggage gets lost”, “What if one (or both) of our bikes gets stolen”, etc. Notice that these start with “What if”, making it a thing that hasn’t happened yet and isn’t necessarily going to happen. So if you really think about it, is it really worth stressing about something that MIGHT happen? Probably not. Is this starting to feel like a lecture?

Now we’re at the juicy part. What about our friends and family? We often get a bit scared about leaving everyone behind, there are probably going to be some cool and important moments in peoples’ lives that we’re going to miss. So to our friends and family who are reading this: please wait until we are back. We want to be there for these cool and important moments!

What if a family member comes to pass (Bwaargh!!)? We don’t like to think about it, but some of our family members are getting there, age-wise… If someone gets sick or something, we don’t even get to say goodbye or attend their funeral. What do we do then? Do you abandon your trip? Or continue? It's stuff like this that affects us the most. We don't really speak about it that much, but we both know that it's on our minds.

Bears! They’re scary too, just throwing this in here to lighten the mood.

Have you ever been together with someone 24/7 for an extended period of time? If yes, is the other person still alive?

We’re going to be together day in, day out. That’s bound to put stress on a relationship. Luckily we’re both pretty easygoing people and hopefully we can sometimes find moments for ourselves as well. So about this worry we are rather naïve, uhm no, optimistic was the word!!

Enough with all the negativity! Of course the majority of the time we are really excited for this crazy adventure. Getting to know other people, new cultures, living mostly outdoors and seeing extremely beautiful nature are just a handful of things we’re looking forward to. Being on the road and having so much time to think is a great opportunity to reflect on your life and what you really want to be doing. Because what are we going to do when this adventure is over? That’s a question that we, hopefully, can answer a little better in 2 years. Because right now we don’t have a clue…

So that’s it for this blog. If there is one thing to take away from this blog, we think it’s that: Bears are dangerous!