Road trip through Namibia

– March 22, 2018 –

This year everything will be different. When Emmi starts school in August, one chapter ends and a new one begins. We have thought a lot about what the new era will be like. The time when our travels are tied to the vacation season and we can no longer spend the winter months in the sunny south. Everything will be different. But you know what? It feels right and good. There is a time for everything. And now we are building a real home in Cologne. Starting in May, we are opening an office in a very charming corner store in Cologne-Neuehrenfeld and have many exciting ideas in mind for it. This is going to be so beautiful! Office, school and home are then within a radius of four hundred meters. Our Base. From here we will continue to set out on journeys into the wide world. But one thing is different: we are no longer looking for a home. We become real Ehrenfelders.

And that is the reason why we are writing this to a Namibia blog post. Because when we booked the renewed 3-month trip to South Africa and Namibia a year ago, we also did so to find out if we wanted to move to Cape Town. That’s how much this beautiful place had captivated us in recent years. We’ve been on the phone with visa agencies, researching schools, looking for housing online, and making plans to start a business down there. In the long run, it drives you crazy – these constant thoughts of “what if”. And so we embarked on this trip not so much as a vacation, but to finally get some clarity.

Even as we boarded the plane, we secretly knew what we wanted. But it remained unspoken for now and we let the next few weeks take their toll. Again, we had an incredibly wonderful time. The sun, the light, the vastness, the sea, the laughter of the people – everything that is often missing in Germany, all that does so much good here. Cape Town is and remains our Happy Place. But now it’s clear to us: Cologne is our home. The difference between rich and poor, between black and white, the increasing water shortage and crime in Cape Town are too blatant to really live here. We cannot and do not want to get used to that – and we would have to. Above all, it doesn’t feel right to leave our family and friends and everything we’ve built in Cologne. That is quite clear to us now.

Now a new chapter begins. And we are so excited for everything to come. Nice that you are here. 🙂

Enjoy the pictures from Namibia – the first of three blogposts about our last long trip to Africa for now.

Julian, Emilia and Nancy.