Over the last ten years, I have been fortunate enough to travel, as far as New Zealand not only once but three times, explore bits of Asia and spend time living in NZ, the UK and Norway. I have travelled through my home country, Germany, and have seen fair bits of Europe. I travel a lot and I see a lot and the more I do so, the more I get asked if I have specific tips and inspirations. For one, it is not easy to keep track of everything and for the other, it also gets tiring, talking about memories or trips over and over again so I began to write them down in a Word document.

Some may know, I have had a website for my photos, much like a portfolio or virtual postcard for friends and family to look at and visually follow my journeys. As of my latest trip to Russia, after my own frustrations about retrieving information about traveling in the country and meeting more and more people asking why I just wouldn’t publish my own experiences in a blog – I did it and created this.

I am not making money with this

My blog is not intended to make money through “travel blogging” or fund my next adventure. I was not sponsored by any tour operator, tourism company nor my parents. It is based on my opinion on how well things went, what I wish I had known before or what I have come across that I think is useful to know. Especially in times like today, where influencers and bloggers tell you mostly what ever they have to say to get the payment, lots of blogs write about what you should do and where you should go, without having the actual struggle of finding the right offer, rather than getting a tourism company paying for it and giving you special treatment so that you will write some nice words about the tour on your blog.

I will tell you the (ugly) truth of my travels

My stories are raw. I will tell you the ugly truth of my travels, what I loved and didn’t love, where i stayed, what was worth it and what wasn’t but most importantly for you to know is, that is my personal opinion, someone else might think about the same situation completely different. I just want to share my experience, be honest and help you enjoy traveling as much as I do, with all its good and bad, just the truth about things, create a laugh or two for you while reading my probably a bit too witty blog posts.

I had been thinking about blogging for a while but never serious enough because it is a lot of effort. It takes time: the set up, the writing and keeping it up to date. Since I won’t make any money with it, it was important to find the real reason why I really would want to write about my experiences publicly. The main inspiration is probably coming from my experiences with the trip to Russia. I had done a massive amount of research, searched through many blogs and had read a lot about traveling the different Railway options across Russia before I began my journey. But there was so much information that ended up being inaccurate, or not thorough enough as well as dozens of other little things that I wish I would have known earlier. Of course one doesn’t always have to know everything, and yes, there should always be something new you learn, but especially on trips so unique like Russia – something so off the normal trip choices -I think I would have felt more comfortable in a series of situation, just avoiding some mistakes, packing the necessary and useful stuff, being prepared enough to not worry about these kind of things and just enjoy the trip. I made mistakes which I will learn from for the next time and now I am sharing them with you, so you might not make the same or feel a bit more prepared if you ever decide to do similar adventures. Until then, I wish everyone who is genually interested in following me, a pleasant time, get in touch with feedback or questions and yes, I know there will be some formatting issues and spelling mistakes, just bare with me and understand – I don’t do this professionally, just when I have some spare time on my hands to update this.

Happy reading and happy travels, Franzi