It’s February. 2016. New year. The most amazing journey of our lives (so far!) started almost a year ago. It’s also not ‘this year‘ anymore it’s ‘last year‘… unbelievable how time flies… It’s been about 5 months since we’ve been back and it has been the most amazing and horrible 5 months. Being back from a trip of a life time is hard. Obviously we are talking about ‘first world problems’ hard, nevertheless, it’s been tough. Why? Ok there we go…
I really don’t mean to sound lame and corny but trip like that does change you, you want it or not it just does. Yes, all the clichés that you hear people say are actually true… it broadens your horizons, it makes you realise how lucky you are just by the fact that you have been born in a country ‘of plenty‘. A country like UK or Poland even, where there is no ongoing open conflict, with fairly stable economy, access to food, healthcare, education, latest technologies and numerous opportunities. Yes, you get to see the bigger picture. You get to see how people struggle without things that you simply take for granted. But you also get to see how these things, goods and technologies make it harder for you to enjoy the life in its purest. You get to see a lot of people who have little but are much happier than many of us in the so called ‘first world‘. So you travel around and you learn about life balance, you see that it is our attachment to things that causes our suffering and that really, for months, you are able to happily get by with only what you can carry in one backpack.
Flashpackers vs backpackers?
I
‘ve also learned that I’m no hardcore traveler, that I really like air-con, western toilets and that – with passion – I hate insects: f**king mosquitoes spreading
diseases!!! and who the hell has created cockroaches and even more wings?! cockroaches with wing, really??! WTF?! 
why!? WHY?!?!?!!!
So you learn a lot about life and mainly about yourself. You are free and enjoy yourself (for most of the time) and then you are back…
Back to the reality
You are back and usually you are pretty broke so there is no time to mess around you really need to get back to it, get back to the so called ‘real life’, ‘back to the reality’, find a place to live and get a job!!! It could be exiting but it’s also very daunting.
The truth is that going travelling for 6 months has helped me to take on new challenges not only in my private life but also in my career. When we came back, mentally I was not ready to have a full-time, permanent position – that sounded as if it 
was a death sentence. So I was finally ready to start freelancing and run my own business. I would definitely still be in a permanent job if it wasn’t for travelling!
Travelling changes everything because it changes you
Somehow, now I have more courage to try new, challenging jobs, I’m more confident, more relaxed and don’t get so hanged up on details. I can only hope that this will not be just a temporary change.
So on a personal level and career wise, the trip has actually put me in higher gear. It has worked out pretty good.
Also luckily for us we are surrounded by good people. Jakub’s family let us use their garage for storage while we were away and let us stay at one of their spare bedrooms when we came back. Since then we were going back and forth, deciding if we should rent a room somewhere and try to save up or should we maybe rent one bedroom flat and start ‘thinking seriously about the future’… or maybe just stay for a bit at the spare bedroom, save up as much as we can and decide what to do next.
Needles to say we are still at the same place, saving up and figuring out our next move. But that’s a subject for a whole new post. Let’s just say I was very naive to think that if we travel once we’ll be done with traveling, that it will cure me from the ‘travel bug’. Obviously it has done just the opposite. 🙂