How did we end up in DACH? Two different stories

From the Spanish warm Latin environment to the cold German reality in Austria.

From the nomad hipster life in Bali to the open yet conservative Swiss lifestyle.

She left a freelance job that made her sometimes wake up at 5AM because of the deadlines.

I got out of a "long turned into wrong" relationship and wanted to take a break.

She moved with her new boyfriend to the border of a tiny peninsula called Gibraltar, without having a job.

I had the corporate job that allowed me to work remotely from a faraway volcanic island called Tenerife.

it's 2020.

3-4 years have passed since then and a lot has happened.

She’s now a great graphic designer with experience gathered in two very large companies. And that’s amazing because she started with zero experience.

The deadlines she used to work on were in a different field, copywriting. Well, she always dreamed about design, always regretted not going to an art school. And look at her now, taking a leap of faith, moving to another country and challenging that impostor syndrome once again just because she needed the change, wanted to move and taste other experiences, another country. I know she can do it, because I believe in her more than she does in herself. I’m also proud she made the change because this will also help her climb another step in her career and not feel stuck.

We met in our first year of college, from staying on the same floor in the students' dorm, to accidentally become roomies, we had no idea the friendship will be alive after 14 years.

After both being pretty active and involved in multiple freelance projects in a city that grew together with our dreams, working in 9 to 5 jobs in corporations became our new reality, but in different parts of the world.

Entering huge office buildings every morning and sometimes forgetting to leave them made us develop similar coping systems. It gave us financial security and a limited number of days off, that we learned to manage pretty damn well and stretch to the max.

She took so many short breaks to all those amazing places she had close by, or just took countless planes and enjoyed new places for a few days.

I, on the other hand, made sure to have a few days of holiday but was putting together plans to make summer last longer.

The 2 months working remotely in Tenerife made me want more. I tried 5 months in South East Asia as a next step. After those months and being with the same company for more than 3 years, I started feeling that there is more to be done and craved for a change.

It came in an unexpected way, most probably because I really wanted more of the island life, less of the winter well seasoned with Asian flavours. I got a job in Bali!

I didn’t do the Bali dream as it was trending, as a digital nomad. I did it differently and it opened my eyes about what I really wanted, something more stable, which unfortunately has to include a bit more cold.

Love lasts around 3 years.

We could say the same about our corporate experiences.

That’s our curse and also a blessing, that we always want more and fear to be bored or not make something significant, to at least feel that we grow a bit every day.

After all these 3-4 years of living not so linear lives, we realized that we both synced major changes personally and professionally once again in September 2019.

Our old friends and newly met acquaintances mostly know us from our colour-coordinated, "wanna be curated" Instagram feeds and shoot us messages that they wish to travel more.

She’s in a city she never knew much of, in a country she briefly visited, which even has a language she was never drawn too, and recently joined for the first time a coworking space and will work the way I used to.

Her new expat home: Graz, Austria.

My new expat home: Lugano, Switzerland. (until September 2020)

I went back to the industry that makes my heart skip a beat, doing a work that motivates me, also in a country, I only visited once but fell in love with, in a region with a language I never thought I will have to actually use (but really loved as a kid).

We were and still are fuelled by passion.

We are no dreamers, we are doers and if we want more experience, we go for it.

If we want more autonomy, we quit, if we want to see and enjoy an island in the Philippines we buy those tickets and plan that adventure.

We also make sure to sync all our plans and meet at least once a year somewhere on this round world.

And we both had to deal with finding new jobs with the global pandemic above us.

But that's another story.