Preparations

The dream of this trip to Switzerland began many years ago. Colby, with his Swiss heritage, had Switzerland on the agenda and was only waiting for the right conditions. They arrived when Julia came into the picture and the collective envisioning began.

We both wanted this trip to be a journey of self exploration and new experiences. The trip’s extended length spoke to our desire to connect with new places and communities on a deeper level. As we journey, we are hoping to find ourselves and our place in the world. Asking the question: How do we be our best selves and contribute towards a better world? But for all the conversations that we have had about the purpose of the trip, we still don’t have a single specific goal. Instead, we are opening ourselves to meander down whatever winding channels appear in front of us, and see what they have to offer.

We joined the Swiss WWOOF organization in December 2015 and started to plan. A ways into the research we realized that the open-border rules of the Schengen Zone were going to get in the way. The existence of the Schengen Zone makes border crossings easier, but means we can only be in Continental Europe for 90 days before having to leave for another 90 days. Therefore, we couldn’t spend all summer in Switzerland as we had hoped. Fortunately, we found a workaround that appealed to both of us by adding 3 months in Scotland and Wales to our itinerary.

Armed with our new outlined plan, we dug into the details. Once we found flights with Icelandair and decided to take advantage of their free layover program, we also had a 4 day excursion in Iceland to plan. With a departure date of May 1st, Iceland would only just be coming out of its winter. Deciding to rent a car allowed us to plan a more “off the beaten path” route that would hopefully avoid the tour buses and crowds.

Since we would be in Switzerland for a much longer period of time, the necessary planning was more loose. The main challenge was the all-important decision of which farms to volunteer on. This took some time, as we had to pick farms of interest and then email back and forth for awhile to see if it would work for us and them. We ended up arranging to be at farms scattered around the country for most of our time in Switzerland. The only times we won’t be WWOOFing are the first week staying with Colby’s cousins and a couple weeks in July for touristing (which for us mostly means extra hiking).

Wanting not to be too structured, we left the planning at the basic decisions of where and for how long. We figured we could plan specific evening and weekend outings based on locals’ suggestions. However, that in no way meant there were no logistics to figure out. Food and accommodations would mostly be covered by the farms in exchange for our volunteer help, but transportation remained. Switzerland has an extensive public transit network including lots of trains. The challenge was that they also offer lots of different ways to pay for that transit, all of which are expensive. After many lengthy and confusing research sessions we decided we probably wanted to get 15 day flexible passes to avoid the headache of buying individual tickets.

In tandem with the trip planning, we were also doing an exhausting amount of gear research and purchasing. Colby in particular had been getting by with lots of “good enough” gear for wilderness trips. While our upcoming trip was not planned to be “wilderness,” we were going to be living out of one backpacking bag each for almost a year, so most of the same gear requirements applied. Wanting to pack light since everything would be carried on our backs, and to make room for all Colby’s camera gear, we slimmed down our itemized gear spreadsheet. If we buy quick-drying wool and synthetic clothing, can we get away with only 2 pants, 5 shirts, 5 underwear, and 5 pairs of socks? The answer: we must make it work because more would be too much to carry. The other gear challenge had to do with the length of the trip - meaning we needed clothing that could keep us warm in the deep of winter, cool in the heat of summer, and dry in the wind and rain of Scotland.

Julia, being cold-blooded, debated about raiding her family’s best layers but after some testing ended up buying a full set of expensive brand layers on clearance. We felt a little uncomfortable donning the logos of such expensive brand names. We even found the tent we had just bought new in the REI sales tent for $200 off. REI is a very fun store for outdoor gear lovers such as ourselves, but by the time our bags were packed for the final time we were very ready not to go back ever again.

Given the varied conditions we expected to encounter along our trip, we practiced strict layering principles while designing our wardrobe: warm wool base layer, 2 mid layers, and a rain/wind layer. Just as we were getting to the finish line with gear shopping and research, we began thinking about what we wanted to do in Scotland. This lead us to the decision to bring wild camping equipment, which meant much more gear to gather.

Slotted in between our sometimes harried and sometimes chill preparations we said our goodbyes. Julia met up with friends she hadn’t seen in years for farewell meals and Colby had a big sauna and ice cream party. With all the bags packed and re-packed and the task lists checked off, we finally got our final send off at the airport.

Farewell Minnesota, Farewell USA, Farewell family, friends, and pets… Onward to grand adventures...