5 years without a place to call home

Today, 9 years ago, we departed Finland for a journey that was supposed to last six months.
Journey, that quietly turned into a life without a place to call home.

It’s been a few years since I wrote this piece for my minimalism blog.
Now, the memories feel both distant and vividly alive. 5 years without home.
How did we end up living everywhere and nowhere?

I’ll start at the beginning.

From a 6-month trip to
5 years of nomad life

This is what I wrote four years ago in Finnish, now translated into English without editing.
My original thoughts and emotions back then, unedited. 5 years without a permanent home – Originally posted in October 2021, in Minimaattori

It’s been exactly five years since we set off on our “round-the-world trip” that was supposed to last six months.
So, how are we doing now? What has it been like to live without a permanent home?

October 31, 2016
Helsinki International Airport

The screen lights up with the words Gate open.
We sling our small backpacks onto our shoulders and step aboard the plane to Doha.
Our minds are buzzing with curious excitement.

We have no idea yet how much this trip will change our lives.
A long journey always changes a person – you never come back quite the same.
We just… never came back at all.

My life partner had finally been granted the long-dreamed-of sabbatical. At last, we could travel together for an extended time.
Until then, our everyday life had been a rhythm of me traveling for work and stopping home mainly to swap shirts before the next departure.
Ismo joined my trips whenever his job allowed, and we spent all his vacations traveling together.

On the last day of October 2016, our long-held dream finally came true.
We set out on a long journey together.

Round-the-world in debt

Our so-called “RTW trip,” as we already called it during planning, wasn’t technically a trip around the world.
We decided to go wherever we felt like, without chasing a certain number of countries or a full circle around the globe.

We had no savings; quite the opposite, we were in debt. But it was our first and last time to do this, as the sabbatical laws in Finland were changing. We had no time to wait, and to save money.

We rented out our home and swiped the Visa card with a shrug.
Who cares if we rack up a little debt? We’d only be gone for six months.
Let’s live the dream now, not someday.

Ubud, Bali
– The birthplace of all nomad stories –

We flew from Helsinki via Doha and Singapore airports to Bali — practically the required starting point for every story about nomads and life transformations.

Not that we had any romantic notions about Bali.
No Eat, Pray, Love lifestyle dreams.
No searching for ourselves or spiritual awakenings.
If you’ve lost yourself, you won’t find that “you” somewhere out in the world.

We’d been to the island before and liked it.
All we wanted was warmth and rest — and Bali offered both, at a reasonable cost.

We rented a room in a small homestay for a month and focused mainly on just being.
We listened to the chirping of crickets, read books, and of course, practiced yoga.
Between lazy days and gentle hikes, we made a trip to the Gili Islands.

On Gili Meno, we met an Australian couple — and two months later, we ended up housesitting for them.
From there, we traveled through every Australian state and continued to New Zealand.

Fès, Morocco
– a hint of a permanent life change –

We’d had a fun day in Milford Sound, then returned to our then homebase Queenstown. We had just decided to enjoy a glass of wine in a pub when my partner’s phone pinged with a message.
“Negotiations are starting,” his boss wrote.
Time to think about the famous Plan B.

We were already sitting at breakfast in a shabby Moroccan riad in Fès when the final message came.
He’d been laid off.

There was no shower in our room. There was a bathtub, but no plug.
And no towels either.
Not that we had any in our tiny backpacks.
It somehow suited the mood perfectly.

Read more: From Marrakech to minimalism: the babouches that started it all

We returned to Europe and spent six weeks in Spain reflecting on our situation. Then we traveled to Finland to downsize our belongings and to consider whether Spain might become a more permanent base.
There was no reason to stay in Finland anymore.
Ismo’s cherished job was gone, and my work as a photographer had already taken place around the world for years.

Embracing slow travel trans-Siberia

Financially, we were almost at rock bottom. So our next base had to be affordable.
I remembered our short Balkan trip the previous summer, and Belgrade, a city we’d fallen in love with at first sight.
What if we stayed there for a month to start with?

That summer month turned into three, nearly the whole summer of 2017.
We might have stayed longer, but sad news from home called us back to Finland.
Besides southern Finland, we traveled to Kuusamo – my grandmother’s birthplace – to fish, pick berries, and marvel at bear claw marks on the trees.

In September, we boarded a train from Helsinki to Moscow, then continued on the Trans-Siberian Railway.
We might not have had much money, but we had more time than ever before.
And I could continue my Japan-related book project in Japan itself.

Two freelancers in the same household isn’t exactly the most secure financial setup, but there were always some stories to sell for our clients (magazines).
And working in the same field also had its perks: we could collaborate as a team.

We traveled all the way to Vladivostok before crossing the Sea of Japan.

That month on the Russian railways remains one of my most memorable travel experiences.
There was time to think, to read, to gaze out at the landscape.
No more rushing.
No schedules.
Just life – and dreams.

Read more: Zen & the Art of Travel

Familiar returns and finding a home

We spent another three months in wonderful Japan.
We’d planned to go back to New Zealand as well, but first needed to balance our budget and thaw out a bit.
So we returned to where our nomad life had begun: Bali.

After eight months across Asia and Oceania, we started longing for Europe, for French food, and for our Belgrade home.
When spring arrived, we returned there once again.

After a few months, we hoisted our backpacks again and set out on a three-month trip through our favorite countries in the Mediterranean Europe: Italy, France, and Spain.
We made a brief family visit to Finland, but our hearts were still calling us back to the Balkans.

By November, we were walking once again down the familiar streets of Belgrade, back to our home.
Since then, we’ve only left for short trips: A couple of weeks in Italy, a week in Slovakia, a few yoga retreats in Montenegro, and occasional visits to Finland.

Nomad life gradually turned into remote entrepreneurship, expatism (is that even a word? No, it’s not) and life abroad.

Belgrade
– Empress Nero –

In November 2018, we were walking along our street, Đure Daničića, when a faint “meow” came from beneath a parked car.
We stopped.
A tiny black cat crept toward us and sniffed our hands.

I said to Ismo, “If we ever had a cat, it would be this one.”
But that wasn’t possible, not with our lifestyle.
We left the cat and continued to have an anniversary dinner in one of our favorite restaurants.

On one freezing cold Sunday morning in February 2019, I looked out of our living room window.
Was that… a black cat in the courtyard?
But how could it be?
We live in a small old townhouse, surrounded by high walls and apartment blocks. No way a cat could get in.

I grabbed my glasses and squinted again.
Ismo came to look too.
Yes, there was a cat in our yard.
And not just any cat, but the cat.

That autumn, we went to Finland to sell our house and clear our debts.

Autumn 2021
– Slow life now –

We haven’t been to Finland for nearly two years.
As travel restrictions ease and with both of us vaccinated, we’re finally heading to visit family and friends.
But soon, we’ll return home.
To Belgrade.

We know now, more clearly than ever, that we won’t be moving back to Finland anytime soon.
We’ve already spent several years here.
Empress Nero sleeps on my feet every night and cries when we go out, even for a few hours.
This isn’t the time for long trips.
Our nomad life, at least for now, has come to an end.

What have 5 years of nomad life taught us

What is it like to live without a permanent home?
Not always easy — but rewarding.
Like life in general.
Rich.
Simple.

Material-free existence

A wonderfully material-free existence for a minimalist on the extreme side (aka me).
Except for the constant irritation about how much stuff furnished rentals tend to have.

That’s the only reason I sometimes long for a home of my own (wherever that may be),
as long as it’s small and free of clutter.
Just a mattress on the floor and a lamp on the ceiling.
No kidding.
I easily tick all the classic boxes of an extreme minimalist.

It’s been enriching — mentally and spiritually.
Full of realizations.

Fulfilling childhood and teenage dreams.
Testing boundaries.
Living the life I once dreamed of — with just four boxfuls of stuff.
Or less.
Now, all I own fits into a school backpack.

People. Letting go

We’ve made many new friends.
Some we’ve met again — sometimes unexpectedly, after weeks or even years.
Just last week, I received an email from the host of our first guesthouse in Ubud. After five years of silence, he wrote to ask how we were — and to tell us their family had grown by a third child.

Letting go — that’s perhaps the hardest part of nomad life.
On the road, you meet kindred spirits – people who feel like childhood friends the moment you meet them.
And at the same time, you know this might be the last time you see them.
Maybe you’ll never meet again, but they’ve left their mark on you.

Some meetings are brief,
just one night together (though not in that sense).
That’s part of the lifestyle, part of being a nomad.

You share stories over a beer, and you think: this person could’ve become my new best friend.
But there isn’t enough time.
“It was great meeting you, have a wonderful life!”

Peaceful. Ordinary.

In the end, nomad life or living abroad isn’t that different from everyday life in Finland, or anywhere else.
We sit on the couch with our laptops, working.
We ask each other every day, “What should we eat today?”
In Belgrade, in Málaga, in Irkutsk.
That’s the recipe for a good life.

It’s not yet time to return.
Whether that time will ever come, we don’t know.

The story continues…