Hello, everyone!
Here’s another episode of #FamiliesOutside and today we are interviewing Anna from The Family Without Borders.
This multicultural family of four has been to more than 30 countries. Anna shares her number one must-have item when traveling with really small kids – plus more! – so read on to find out more about that.
1. Give us a short background of your family.
We are a family of 4, who likes to be on the road! Mama – Polish journalist, papa – German photographer and 6-year-old Hanna and 4,5-year-old Mila. Our girls visited with us more than 30 countries! We try to travel for longer periods of time (6, 5, 4 months), cheaply (sleeping in the car, tent or in the hostels), to not that obvious places (Pacific islands, Caucasus, Maya villages in Central America, Transnistra or Bahrain are just few examples).
2. Do you travel full time or part time? When did you start and why?
We spend 1/3 time of a year travelling for longer and then 2/3 at home and on the smaller trips. Serious start was when our little Hanna was 6-month-old. We went for half a year trip around the Black Sea. And because it was the nicests time of our life – we decided to go this way!
3. How do you afford to travel as a family? Do you also work on the road?
First of all our travelling is cheap: we don’t spend much money on accomodation or food. We go to cheaper countries than Europe. We rent our flat for the time of travelling. And we combine our work with it: on the way we collect stories and pictures, which we can afterwards publish in different media. Anna is a freelancer journalist, Tom has his own web-design company.
4. How do you plan out your trips (and for full time travelers, are you always out or do you have days where you just stay in)? Do you particularly choose those “family-friendly” or “kid-friendly” destinations or are you flexible and just simply adapt to the place?
We don’t plan too much. We go with the wind and with the suggestions of local people: that is the coolest place? ok, so we turn! tonight there is a wedding? ok, then we stay! When you are travelling for 6 months, you have this comfort to be flexible.
The only border is the flight back home. And no, we are totally againts so-called kids-friendly places. We believe the kid can be happy anywhere and all depand on the parents: how much fun and how much life lessons he will get. And also we want to go to places which are intersting for us! Playground can be anything, really. Hitch-hiking on the boat from Tonga to Fiji, visiting Chechenyan villages or Srebrenica in Bosna, where the huge masacre has happened – those don’t sound like good ideas for family trips, right? But it’s real, close to the people and interesting for us.
5. What is that one item you can never travel without when you are with kids?
After those 5 years of travelling with babies and then kids, I can say that only baby carrier (like a backpack, just for a kid!) was something I cannot imagine a trip without. All the rest “gadgets” are not needed.
6. There are varied opinions when it comes to learning while traveling VS. formal schooling. What is your stand on this? Does travelling really give an advantage to your kid’s education, based on experience?
I’m sure they are learning by travelling much more than they would ever learn at home. They know what it means to save water (to have a choice: drinking or taking a shower, in the places, where people collect rain water to survive).
They know what it means animals in danger (when the hunters try to kill tourtles on the beach and a little girl – friend of our girls – is hiding it from them). They know how different people can be, can speak, how different food they can eat and why. They know how voulcano works, why the cenotes are under the ground, that some monkeys don’t eat bananas. They know which country is where on the map, how many hours away by plane. Etc etc.
But they will go to school! We believe that school gives not only knowledge but also a very important lesson of social life and building relationships with the others. This they can’t have, while sleeping every night somewhere else. Plus we are not patient enough to be their teachers 😉 We gonna combain school with travelling, that is the plan.
7. What advice would you give to families who want to start out a travelling lifestyle?
Start slow and with little steps. Go our of your city every weekend. Make sure your kid learns to eat different food. Show him different things: people speaking other languages, having different traditions, going to different churches. And while traveling: take into account the needs of all the group, each member of the family. And be flexible – planning much doesn’t make sense with kids. Who might know how long they will want to play with a cat, they met on the street? 😉
8. Where else can we guys read about your family adventures?
Follow Anna, Tom, Hannah and Mila at:
Happy Travels!
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#FamiliesOutside is an interview series to help encourage families to go out and explore places, near or far. Bi-monthly, we feature families who love travelling – full-time or part-time – or who simply love including the outdoors in their daily activities.
