The best-laid plans

 And whither goest thou, tell me where? 

During the Auckland lockdown last year, when we were stuck for months in a house with up to eight other cabin-fevered flatmates, we started thinking about living and working in another country.

We discovered that once you are over the age of 30 (which both of us are), there is only a very short list of countries to which kiwis can apply for a working holiday visa. They are: Finland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Canada, and somewhere in South America... maybe Argentina? Apart from Hungary, who operate through the German embassy in Wellington, all the other European countries have their embassies in Australia rather than New Zealand, and all of them except for the Czech embassy required applications to be in person. That was impossible for us at that time, as we would have had to get an MIQ spot to return home, and those were rarer than hen's teeth.

So, we began to consider the Czech Republic. As we went on our daily walks around the suburb, our conversation about going to Czechia became less hypothetical, and more and more like a reality. Neither of us had been there before, but it is not too far from Munich, where I have close friends. It is also really central to the whole of Europe - only a few hours from other major cities like Dresden, Vienna, and Budapest - and therefore a perfect base for travel in all directions. We decided to watch a video on speaking basic Czech and our resolution quavered slightly; even counting to 10 was difficult, and we decided that if we did move to Czechia we could never have anything to do with the unpronounceable number 4 (rent no apartment with a 4 in the address, buy nothing costing 40 koruna). Still, we persevered, and began to learn Czech on the Duolingo app, which taught us many useful phrases such as "Why are you not looking for the last pear?" and "I cannot see those donkeys."

The Czech 12 month working holiday visa is open to New Zealanders aged 18-35, which was the next hurdle, as Mike was about to turn 36 in March. After much to-ing and fro-ing with the embassy in Sydney, we established that as long as he applied before his birthday, the application would be valid. We therefore had to time our application perfectly; the 12 months begins from the moment the visa is approved (not when you enter the country, or anything logical like that, although you can request a start date on the application which they might take into consideration), and it could take up to 60 days to get approval. We didn't want the visa to start too early either, as it would mean our year would start and finish in European winter - not so good for road tripping. We ended up sending in the applications off in mid-February, and luckily received the approval a month later in mid March, a few days after Mike turned 36! It then took nearly two weeks to get our passports returned to us (very stressful), and once we had them back in our hands, we booked flights for just two days later!

During the months before that, we (mainly Mike) had been planning our trip. We will have residency in the Czech Republic for 12 months, during which time we can work there, and travel elsewhere in the EU. Interestingly, the Czech Republic is closed to visitors from outside the EU at the moment, so without our visas we would not have been able to go there at all. As we got more excited about the possibilities, our plan became far less working and far more travelling! Luckily Mike has a huge collection of travel books amassed from op shops and library withdrawals, which helped us plan. 

The Plan:

Fly to Prague, and register with the Alien Police Inspectorate (part of the deal of having a visa as a foreigner).

Buy a car in Prague then drive to Munich and stay with friends there while we get set up - buying a mattress and setting up bedding in the back, figuring out a platform to store our bags on, creating curtains etc). This part has not actually worked out, as it turns out you have to have a registered Czech address to buy a car, and it takes 30 days to get official government registration. Our new plan is to get our friend in Munich to buy a car and register it to her German address, and insure it so that we can drive it. We'll pay her, then sell it again at the end. As I write this we are on the train to Munich, so stay tuned to see whether this goes as planned...

Once we're set up, we'll drive speedily south through Lichtenstein, Switzerland and Austria to the north of Italy, through the Alps, and to Lake Como. From there we'll do a loop all around Italy, in an anti-clockwise direction! We decided to go to Italy first in the hope it would be little warmer there than the rest of Europe in springtime. After much research and reading, Mike has plotted all the points we plan to stop on the route below:

We anticipate that this trip will take up to two months. If it looks like it is taking too long, we will probably skip Sicily, and as I've been to some of the big cities before, like Florence and Rome, we will only spend a day or two in those places and concentrate more on the more out-of-the-way spots we can only get to by car.

Once we finish Italy we'll head back up to Munich (calling in again on my patient and generous and conveniently-located friends), then begin the second major road trip: Scandinavia! Around early June we will drive up through Poland to the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. From there we will get a car ferry across to Helsinki, and make our way up through Finland (Finland, Finland! That's the country for me!) to Nordkapp, the northern-most point of continental Europe. We hope to cross into the Arctic Circle in time to catch the midnight sun - the nights in midsummer where the sun doesn't set at all. 

From Nordkapp, we'll make our way back down through Norway, where there are plenty of amazing walks to do and fjords to pine for, then cut across into southern Sweden, and drive down to Denmark and back into Germany. We think this trip will take us about three months. Once we've picked up our things and the back seats of our car from Munich, we'll head to Prague to live for the remaining seven months of our visa, and try to find some work to replenish our probably highly-diminished funds.

At the end of the year we hope to do some more road tripping through Eastern Europe - but more about that in another chapter. For now, na shledanou!