Travel Tech

Green Hills, Armenia

We couldn’t be digital nomads without travel-friendly tech. Compact computers let us work from anywhere on the globe, modern smartphones are as adept at translating a menu as calling home, and the technology behind our favorite childhood video games now fits into a handheld gadget. Here is some of the…

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Travel Gear

Sewing Kit

Over 2.5 years of travel we’ve amassed a small collection of travel gear that Airbnbs often lack or that make our lives on the road easier. We don’t get to bring along everything we’d like, but the few small items we fit in our packs make a big difference. Clearly,…

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How to Choose an Airbnb

A Full Kitchen! Tallinn, Estonia

Since leaving our homes behind, we’ve lived almost exclusively in Airbnbs. Full time traveling would be a lot harder if we had to stay in boring, small, and expensive hotels. But not all Airbnbs are created equal. This is a good thing! Different styles suit different folks. Through painful experience we…

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Schengen Explained

Most countries have fairly straightforward visa (or visa-free) arrangements↗, where an entry stamp serves as permission to stay in the country for X amount of time. A month, 90 days, whatever. The Schengen Area↗ is different. Encompassing 27 European nations, the area abolishes most passport controls between the member countries. This means that, once a visitor has permission to enter one Schengen country, they can freely travel to any other as long as their visa is valid. It’s a common travel area. But there is a catch. The terms of the visa are more complicated than most countries, and make it basically impossible to repeatedly renew a travel visa (for example by visa run↗).

A Schengen visa permits guests to stay for only 90 days in a 180 day period. This means that a three month stay must be followed by three months away before a visitor will be allowed to re-enter the area. There are other configurations that could work (one month on, one month off, rinse and repeat), but for anyone considering a long-term nomadic lifestyle, these limits provide a challenging barrier to extended stay in Europe.

Alternatives that would allow longer stays (student visa, work & residency permits, etc) would require picking a country and settling down, so as long as we want to keep moving, we have to keep Schengen-hacking (which is a dorky way of saying we have to leave sometimes).