Getting ready

It has now been a week since we stopped working and it is about a week until we will leave. A few people have said something along the line of “enjoy the leisure time”. Not quite the case here…

We are taking time to meet a lot of friends before heading out and it is really nice to do that without the pressure of work. But we still get up early to tick off the sheer endless amount of things on our various lists. Here is an overview on the key list items:

• House handover: We will be subletting the apartment during our trip, which is mainly a good thing in our book. First, it saves us a lot of beaurocracy since we keep our address. Second, it provides a welcome source of income. It doesn’t fully cover the rent, but it is certainly better than nothing. Third – and most importantly – it means we don’t have to remove everything from the house, since our tenants have obvious use for many general household items. Nonetheless, even with “only” two bedrooms we have a surprising number of items that want to be looked at, sorted and stowed away.
• Car readiness: While pretty new, this is the first time the camper will be fully tested and we start in Iceland, where roads don’t have a particularly good reputation. So step #1 is to make sure everything is in good technical order (small fixes, retighten screws, fill up water, etc.). Step #2 is to prepare the camper for the trip. For example, we want to prevent things flying around so need to find a way to secure everything properly. And lastly, we have never actually packed the camper full of things – we’ll see how that goes.
• Paperwork/Appointments/Shopping: Rental contracts, new SIM card, dentist appointments for everybody, 4 year checkup for Liam, finally filing taxes, forward paying taxes since we changed to a C permit, checking insurance covers, final gear shopping (thank you team for the generous contributions!) – each item doesn’t take too long but in summary it is a lot of work.

In general, it is amazing how seemingly simple tasks evolve into pretty complex and time consuming endeavours.

Example #1: From “set up the bathroom for the tenant” to “where do I get two Firalux 20-60W transformers to replace the broken lights that have been broken for years and that we never bothered to fix.” (answer for those who care).

Example #2: From “pack away stuff in desk area” to “identify content of 7 usb sticks, go through an inordinate amount of old paperwork and finally fix the stupid dual wifi router setup that has annoyed us just not enough to be dealt with.”

All will be good…