When I first got into building and running websites, I followed a lot of bloggers and gurus who touted “the laptop lifestyle”. They made it sound magnificent: “Live and work from anywhere” they would say, suggestively illustrating it with palm trees and swimming pools.

As it happens, I’ve worked on my own terms from a laptop for a decade now. Mostly it’s just meant sitting in my lounge room, or on a nice day, the backyard. You’d see more of the world showing up to an office.

And you know what? I honestly haven’t minded being a homebody. Up to a point, anyway. When Winter comes, it gets too cold to want to venture out on weekends, and the same four walls can get a bit old.

Throw the football on top, and for a few months Melbourne is just an unpleasant place to be.

The Balinese Manoeuvre

So last year I spent from mid-September to mid-October in Bali, taking my laptop with me. Mostly, I just really needed to get out of town even though I couldn’t take an actual holiday.

But it was kind of a test run. Would I still get things done while forever distracted by the tropical island? Could I sustain this longer term?

As it happened, I actually was better able to focus and make my time properly count there than at home. I suppose it helps to be less miserable.

Going for a month though meant paying rent on my room back home. That definitely blew the cost out. To make this work longer term, I’d have to give up my home in Melbourne.

So Where to Now?

In a few weeks time, I’ll leave to spend 6 months overseas, mostly in Europe.

For half of that time – from May to July – I’ll live and work in Berlin. To stay longer, I’d need a visa – which doesn’t look at all out of reach, but it is rather a lot of effort. I might delve into that in a later post.

Because Germany is in the Schengen Area, once my 90 days are done there, they’re done in 25 other countries too. This rules out a lot of other places I might have gone on to next – Prague, Budapest, maybe even a quiet beach in Greece or Portugal.

The Balkan peninsula has many countries that aren’t yet in Schengen that I’d like to visit. Most of them give handsome Australians like myself 90 days visa free. With each new country, that ticker resets.

One of those countries is Croatia. As a beach-inclined chap, my initial plan was to spend 2 months on the coast. But it turned out that I was hardly the first guy to suppose it might be nice here in August – this is a rush season, with crowds and prices to match.

So what about August in Zagreb, then September on a beach somewhere? The capital might not be such a tourist magnet. There’s so many other places to explore though, so in the end I decided to just spend a couple of nights in Dubrovnik, a week in Montenegro, and then keep traveling east.

Where I’ll end up in Bucharest – a place I know very little about. It seems to be safe, affordable, and have fast internet and warm September weather. I could probably handle a month there. I can even visit Transylvania 🙂

Then with a little more traveling, I’ll end up in Thailand for a week or two, before landing back in Melbourne in November.

But That’s All Still in the Future

Right now, I’m pretty busy just trying to organise everything. I still have a couple of flights to book, accommodation plans and so on.

I’ll update when there’s more news 🙂