"After our graduation ceremony, Suzanne and I are going to San Francisco," I told my mom at age 14. "By ourselves, of course."
My mom was very skeptical, and I was very angry at her for being skeptical. I was determined to show her that I could travel the world without her and my dad. But by the time I graduated high school, Suzanne and I were no longer on speaking terms. She went to the same campground in France as every year, I ended up going to Peru with my parents. A year later, I went camping with them; it wasn't like I'd made any friends at college who would want to travel to the end of the world, or even the end of the street, with me. I swore it'd be our last family vacation though. But the summer of 2016 saw us travel to the Baltic States and Russia. We went to Southeast Asia in 2017. Last summer, at age 23, I traveled to Africa with my mom and dad. It's awkward at times, and people do give us weird looks. I've had people ask if the "we" in many of my blog posts really refers to my parents and myself (the answer is yes, unless I've mentioned other people by name, I do travel with other people). I'm not ashamed to admit these things, because honestly, traveling with my parents has its perks.

Before I go into the main reasons why I still travel with the people who raised me, I want to get one minor reason out of the way: finances. I'm a full-time student with the worst freelance job in the history of freelance jobs, so when my parents and I travel together, we usually make a deal. I'll pay for my plane ticket and food, they'll pay for accommodation and excursions. My parents make sure I can keep traveling; they know staying in one place for too long does a number on my mental health.
Of course, I would not travel with them if they were horrible people, no matter how much money they'd throw at me. But my parents are pretty amazing, especially when it comes to traveling.

This is my mom in Vietnam, in the early 90s. Vietnam had only just opened its borders to Western tourists and the Vietnamese were still suspicious of Western faces (with good reason, in my opinion). My parents didn't risk their lives, but it wasn't the safest destination out there either. When they traveled by train, they had to sit in a compartment that had iron bars covering the windows, because locals were known to throw rocks at the compartments designated for tourists. Still, my parents couldn't be talked into picking another destination, because they wanted to know what the other side of the world looked like. They traveled through Yugoslavia with their own car, which they once had shipped to Iceland so they could go on a road trip. They went to Latin America, decided to skip Venezuela when they spotted automatic rifles on every streetcorner. They saw Mexico with practically zero knowledge of Spanish and they'd been to the US, Asia and Australia long before those places became standard destinations for every high school student confused about life. They traveled the world together for more than a decade before I was born. Honestly, why wouldn't I want to travel with people who have so much experience exploring the world?

My parents' experience also takes an enormous weight off my shoulders. When I travel by myself, I'm responsible for every part of the trip, which is overwhelming at times. With my parents around, I don't have to worry about every little thing. My mom is usually in charge of luggage, keeping our clothes clean and reigning my dad in when he wants to go completely off the grid and risk our lives for an adventure. My dad is responsible for finances, transportation and us not dying in dark alleys. I'm his right hand, I help in making the program, picking activities and I help out with language barriers when I can. We're a good team (most of the time) and I do not see why I should not be part of that team from time to time.

My dad on an Egyptian street at 3.30 am, waiting for his bus to Israel (1984)

Although my parents and I get along and we usually work together pretty well, I don't want to travel with them all the time. It usually depends on the destination. Had my parents retired from traveling and decided to go to the same campground in Germany for the rest of their lives, I wouldn't be tagging along anymore. In that case, you'd see me traveling the world on my own. But I'm lucky with parents who still want to go to uncharted territory. Some places are simply not safe enough for me to visit on my own, but my parents are often interested in those places too. It was their idea to go to Africa, they simply invited me to come along. It was their idea to go to Southeast Asia, they insisted I'd come so I wouldn't sink into sadness for good. And it was their idea to go to Russia just because none of us knew what that would be like.

The fact that my parents know me so well is also a reason why I like to travel with them. They know what kind of museums and activities I'm interested in and won't pressure me to go clubbing because they know it will make me miserable. At this point in time, I have not yet found anyone whose style of traveling fits mine. Don't get me wrong, I love my friends, but most of them have such different expectations and wishes when it comes to traveling that I just know we'd end up fighting before we're halfway to our destination. I'm fine sleeping in hostels and sharing my bus with locals, but I know that makes some people uncomfortable. I like to have a vague idea of what I'm going to do at my destination, others want to have every minute planned and confirmed, or they don't even want to know what they can do at our destination until we get there.

Mom always has my back

Apart from that, I know I'm not the easiest person around. I stress, I freak out, I get depressed. I can be a handful, both at home and abroad. The past four years have not been easy on me and my mental state, but my parents, especially my mom, know how to handle me and how to keep me in a good headspace when traveling. It's a burden they are still willing to carry, for which I'm eternally grateful, but I don't want to put this burden on anyone else yet. I see traveling to destinations in Asia and Africa as a big commitment, and I need to be sure someone can handle both the destination and my mood swings before we end up in a major existential crisis in the middle of nowhere.
At the end of the day, I do wish I'd found a permanent travel buddy who isn't related to me. But the truth is that I haven't, so I travel either alone, or with my parents. It's not the situation I hoped to be in at 23, but it could have been much worse. I think of myself as one of the luckiest daughters in the world. My parents have taken me everywhere from Madeira to Australia when I was underage, and they continue to explore the world with me now that I'm older. I understand that I'm not expected to travel with them anymore, but in 20, 30 or 40 years, I will look back on this time in my life and count myself more than lucky for having been given all these opportunities to make beautiful memories with my parents. Those memories are irreplaceable and worth all the sneers and stares.

I used to read all day long when I was a kid. In high school, I could be seen walking down the hallways with my face buried in a book. I even cycled home one day while reading Harry Potter in the middle of traffic. Reading was my life, but that changed after I graduated high school. I was so stressed and tired that I couldn't stand the thought of reading while I was enrolled in a teacher training program. Whenever I picked up a book, a wave of guilt hit me. I couldn't justify spending even 10 minutes on reading while I still had papers to write and classes to teach. Those feelings slowly faded after I quite that program. Once I'd started university, I began to feel much better about reading again. Still, I wasn't exactly having fun. A lot of books I read were on the reading lists for my literature classes. I struggled through Pride and Prejudice. I hated every page of J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace. Sylvia Plath's poetry wasn't exactly my thing either...

With the start of my second year at university came the freedom to read whatever I want. I quit the literature classes and focused on linguistics instead. Yet still, I didn't read the books I wanted to read. My parents have literal mountains of second-hand books just taking up space in their house, so they wanted to read away that mountain range in the spare bedroom. I did my part, but it took a lot of the fun of reading away. Last month, I decided to do a reading challenge to make reading fun for me again. I literally went with the first one I came across: Book Bingo.


God, I feel old and pathetic, admitting that I play and enjoy bingo. But if it works, it's not stupid; And it works. I drew inspiration from book bloggers that have shared their bingo cards online. I took a square here, borrowed a row there... The end result is a card that'll challenge me without making me read genres I really don't want to read, like picture books and historical fiction. I'll have to read in all the languages I'm fluent in. I'll have to pick up books I'll struggle with, books I never thought I'd like, books that'll change my perspective on the world. I literally can't wait.

As of right now, I've already checked five squares off with the three books I've read since making my card. In my version of the game, you're allowed to use one book to cross off multiple boxes as long as it fits the criteria. I've read a book with a female main character, a book written by a female author, a fiction book and a book that takes place in the USA. My required read for my Life Writing class at university took care of the autobiography and my current read will cross off "a book set in the past" and "a book that takes place in another country".


One thing I don't so is playing for prizes. Since I'm the one paying for it, it would be more of a reward than a prize anyway. So playing for rows is not the main objective here. It's a fun extra for which I'll happily read a fantasy book with a male main character written by a male author next. My goal, however, is to complete the entire card. I've put myself on a book-buying ban for new books until I finish the whole thing. I simply don't have the disposable income to keep spending money on random new books like I've done for years. From a sustainability point of view, it's better to buy books second-hand. The piles of second-hand books in our spare bedroom almost touch the ceiling anyway, so I literally have no valid reason to go out and buy brand new ones. So no new books until this entire field has been checked off. When that time comes, I'll go to the local bookstore to buy Slated by Teri Terry. That book has been on my wishlist since the summer of 2012 and Cora from Tea Party Princess recommended it to me recently as well. It's about time I get my hands on a copy.

Knowing I spend about an hour a day reading on the train to and from university, I don't think it'll take me too long to finish this card. At this point, I'm pretty sure I'll be making a new card the minute this one is completed. Of course, I'll need new challenges and a new reward for the next one. Leave those ideas down below! I need something interesting to tackle next.

A little over a year ago, in the early days of 2019, I realized I didn't have any goals, resolutions or dreams for the new year. In a moment of panic, I tweeted some friends to ask them for help. It was Ella from Ella Was Here who then came up with the idea of the Twelve Cities Challenge. She challenged me to visit a new city every month of 2019. I added some rules of my own to that basic setup: a city counted as "new" if a previous visit was five years or longer ago; a visit had to last at least six hours to count; going somewhere for a track meet does not count. I was very excited to start planning. The challenge was not impossible, but difficult enough to get me out of my comfort zone. In January, I boarded the Thalys to Paris, confident that it'd be the first in a row of twelve successful, if short, city trips. Alas, it was not meant to be.

Like a lot of challenges and changes, the Twelve Cities Challenge seemed easy enough at first. My trip to Paris was already scheduled in December 2018, so I didn't have to worry about the first destination at all. Keeping my financial status and ecological footprint in mind, I made the conscious decision to stay closer to home in the months that followed. I explored the old city center of Dordrecht in February. March saw me visit The Hague, a city I had ambiguous feelings about prior to that month. I came in trouble with university deadlines in March though and almost let the month pass by without me going anywhere. I had to squeeze my visit into the last few days of March, but for a second I was convinced I was going to fail before I'd even made it to April. A crisis was averted at the last minute, mostly because I couldn't live with the thought of failing so early on. Luckily, April and May were easier. My parents and I had already planned a trip to Bratislava for April. Ella, being the mastermind behind the whole ordeal, helped me out by inviting me to Ghent in May. All was well, but I started to notice an issue: Content. While I had enough content to share on my Instagram stories during my visits, I often didn't have much to blog about. I enjoyed all my visits up until that point in the year, but really had to put a lot of effort into making my time in for example Dordrecht sound interesting enough to keep my small audience from falling asleep.


In June, my dad started asking when I'd post my Twelve Cities content here on my blog. I tried to avoid his question, said I was working on it. In reality, I was just counting down the days till we'd leave for Africa and I'd have actual material to write about. I didn't give up on the challenge yet, although that month's city trip once again confronted me with the content problem. I went to Breda to visit my college friend Stefanie. She gave me a tour of the city, we looked at street art, but most important of all: We talked for hours about everything that did and didn't matter in life. It was a perfect summer day that I have fond memories of. But let's face it: no one wants to read about friends discussing their former teachers and classes on what's supposed to be a travel blog.

Although I was struggling with the presentation of the challenge on my blog, I did not give up. My mom and I went to Gouda. We took a long walk through the city center while my mom shared her memories of the city from when she was a kid. We had a good time, but after lunch we realized we were practically done there. We'd seen what we wanted to see, we'd done what we wanted to do. I let go of my six-hour rule that day. What's the point of holding on to it if you're literally just waiting till you can go home?


August made things easier again. I spent a few days in Cape Town and thanked the universe for the stories I could write about it. Those stories are very dear to me, but at this point in time I'm finally ready to share them. They'll be here soon. You won't hear much about the city I visited in September though. I didn't visit one. Soon after the start of the academic year, I fell sick and couldn't travel much. Luckily the judges of the Twelve Cities Challenge (read: Ella and my parents) allowed me to visit two cities in October to make up for the missed month. I chose Zierikzee and Leiden, both of which I liked, but couldn't blog about without getting bored myself. By November, I'd lost most of my motivation. Nonetheless, I got on a train to visit the northern city of Leeuwarden. That was the city that broke me.

It was cold when I got off the train. As a cruel welcome gift, I got my period as I left the train station. Then I found myself, miserable and alone, in a complete ghost town. The streets were deserted. Most shops were still closed late in the morning. The city felt completely life- and soulless. I tried to like the place though, and told myself to keep following the signs leading me to various monuments and sights. None of them made an impression on me. I wondered why this city had been chosen as European Capital of Culture in 2018. Everything it had to offer, I'd already seen bigger, better and more beautiful elsewhere. Leeuwarden's only redeeming quality was its street art. Within two hours, however, I boarded the train home, almost angry at the city for wasting my time.

The silence in the city center of Leeuwarden was deafening

Too annoyed by Leeuwarden's disappointing existence to go anywhere else, I let November slip by. December came, and I was in no way ready to go anywhere. I had no ideas left, no motivation, no energy. I had to drag myself through the busy weeks at university. I collapsed the second my Christmas vacation started. Sleep won, travel lost. I swore I would not leave the house for two weeks. Ironically, the last days of the year saw me revisit The Hague, a city I never expected to see again so soon. A friend asked me to tag along, and I didn't even want to try and convince him to go somewhere else with me just so I could complete my challenge. I didn't care. I hadn't cared since October.

As I looked back on 2019 early in the morning of January 1st 2020, I noticed I didn't feel bad about failing the Twelve Cities Challenge at all. I made if far and learned a lot about planning and spreading myself too thin. Sometime after Africa, I'd become tired of constantly being on the move. I needed to stay in one place for a while until the travel fatigue was gone. That's what I've done since the disaster known as Leeuwarden. At this very moment, I finally feel excited about traveling again. I don't need a challenge anymore to get out of my comfort zone. Besides, I went to so many new places I hadn't counted for the challenge that I didn't care about not visiting a new city in December. I visited Swakopmund, Cork, Belfast, Brussels, Vienna and Victoria Falls. Seventeen cities in one year! That's without all the national parks, towns and places I saw for the first time in 2019. My goal with the Twelve Cities Challenge was to not get stuck in one place. I more than reached that goal. Sadly, completing the Twelve Cities Challenge didn't play a big enough role in that process to keep me going. I don't see it as a true failure. It was an adventure. I learned more than I'd expected, mostly about planning and logistics. If only I'd learned what to do with insufficient content, it would have been perfect (suggestions are more than welcome). And hey, I'm not dead yet, I might try again in the near distant future! It's never too late for a second attempt when it comes to a challenge like this one.