Why Bulgaria? (Part II)

I started writing this on a train from Plovdiv to Sofia, kept on writing on a plane, then on a balcony in Athens overlooking a tangle of other balconies. I spent a month in Bulgaria, and now that I’m looking at it from another place and culture, I’ve finally reached a kind of answer to that question, often posed before we came.

Which is that it’s a terrible question. 

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Favorites

The first section of our nomadic lives was driving around the US. We had our streamlined nomadic luggage, but we also had stuff in the car–food, extra clothes, spare shoes, all kinds of this and that.

So the real test has been these last two weeks in Sofia and Plovdiv, Bulgaria, when we each have a carry-on suitcase and a backpack and that’s it.

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Why Bulgaria? (Part I)

We get asked this question a lot. 

In fact it’s rare that–when we mention that we’re on our way to Bulgaria–the response is something other than “Why Bulgaria?” We’ve come to refer to it as The Question. 

If you were asking The Question, I could give you a list of reasons, such as these: 

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A Countable Number of Things

No Side Bar just published a piece I wrote called Transforming Stuff Into a Countable Number. Many thanks to the editors there! I’ve found a lot of wisdom on that site and appreciate having my writing alongside pieces I’ve admired. Go see why I put an image of the ocean here, then come back to comment if you’d like.

Thanks for reading, and by the way, I love comments. Bookmark fieldtripnotebook.com for more on travel, minimalism, and do-it-yourself hikes. For daily postcards from, well, wherever we are, subscribe to launaatlarge.substack.com. Justin’s insightful writing on personal finance, early retirement, and minimalism is at Living the FIgh Life.

Snakes (and other needs for courage in my nomadic life)

We’ve been full time nomads for 2 ½ weeks now, which makes us nomad infants, squinting at our new lives. We’re goofy with joy, given to big grins at each other. In our tent in one of the beautiful national parks we visited, we gestured grandly at the nylon roof and exclaimed, “Honey! Right now, this is our HOUSE!”

We feel as proud as artists whipping the tarpaulin off our marvelous new work, this handcrafted, crazy thing we’ve labored to create: our new nomadic lives. 

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