We have been talking about it for a while and now we have decided to just do it!
The excitement and the speculation that lasted for months earlier this year about whether we might get an opportunity to go to Stuttgart with Nicole’s work and then disappointment of the eventual bad news that the deal never got signed left it’s mark on us both. One conclusion we had once we had the bad news was that if we were to leave the country it would be better if it was a decision that we had made and were in control of than if it was in someone else’s hands.
So back at the start of November we had a chat about our future options and decided that we would like to leave the country and do it based on our own decision. We decided that we would take some risks and just leave, try to make money from the various on-line work I am doing and just see what happens. In the worst case we decided we would end up back in Milton Keynes again.
So here I am only 7 weeks later - Nicole has resigned from her job, and we are in Valencia, Spain on phase 1 of our project looking to see if this is the place for us.
There are so many things to comment on at the moment - but I will leave my reflections on Spain for the moment and mention a little more about our plans.
Nicole’s notice period was 3 months - so this means that she will finish working for her current company on the 19th February 2008, and our aim is to leave the UK on the 1st of March to then spend 2 months in Nicole’s village in Germany (Serrig). After that we are going to move on to warmer places and Valencia at the moment is the place we plan to head for.
Between now and March we have a lot to do - fix up the house for renting out, rent it out, buy a new vehicle, sort out all sorts of legal and tax issues and throw out loads of the junk we have accumulated over the years. It is our aim to get the essentials bits and pieces of our lives down to a small enough amount that we can fit it all into a van / people carrier (possibly with a trailer) and then if we don’t like Valencia, we can try Barcelona, if we don’t like Barcelona try Madrid etc - without it being too much hassle.
That’s the plan though … but stay tuned to find out what might actually happen - more news as it comes