This is the Romania that Most Tourists Never See

Plus all the essentials for life on the road

A little jet-lagged and bleary-eyed, this month’s newsletter comes to you from Canada. We waved goodbye to Europe a couple days ago and — after a short-haul flight, a night in an utterly charmless airport hotel in Amsterdam, and a trans-Atlantic hop — we’re back in our home town of Toronto.

That brings an end to our summer of overland adventures across Europe. We started in Prague, and then escaped the city for a trek through the Czech Republic’s Bohemian Paradise. Then it was Vienna, followed by a hike through Austria’s wine country, Bratislava, Budapest and finally a lengthy exploration of Romania.

All told, it was four currencies, five countries, a dozen trains, 9 Airbnbs and 19 hotels and guesthouses. Once again, we’re grateful to be documenting our travels on YouTube and Instagram as it would otherwise be a blur.

Our most memorable experience

While each destination offered something unique, the one we’re still talking about was our weeklong hike through Romania with The Natural Adventure. We spend a lot of time seeking out authentic local experiences; we really couldn’t have gotten any more authentic than going off-the-beaten-path in Transylvania.

We walked from one charming village to another, usually being the only tourists in town. We stayed in a series of guesthouses that seemed to have much of the original furnishings from the 1800s.

And our lovely hosts, most of whom didn’t speak any English, made sure that we were well fed and then some (we’re still reminiscing about those hearty multi-course dinners with free-flowing homemade wine).

If you haven’t seen the highlights from our week on the Via Transilvanica, here’s your chance to catch up.

Nomad life essentials

We had a really fun live Q&A last Sunday and, as usual, managed to cover a surprising number of topics. The questions ranged from big-picture thinking about nomad life (are we ready to call someplace home?) to the nuts and bolts of living on the road.

It turns out that many are interested in the logistics of full-time travel: how we take out cash, what we do for incoming calls and texts, how we rent cars, what we do for insurance, and so on.

If you’ve got similar questions about travel, you can check out the Q&A replay. And, just to be extra helpful, we summed up all our tips in a handy free download — just look for it in the video description or download it here.