_livin’ la vida loca_

First, figure out what you want. If you have a remote job and just want to travel around the world or if you want to live in europe forever, there are steps to follow. You can get a Freelancer/self-empolyment visa in some coutries and live there(like Germany or Czech Republic). For me, I decided to travel and live around the world for a while, so I won’t stay long on any country.

If your case is like mine, avoid to stay too long in Schengen area if you don’t need to. Go, visit Paris, Rome, Lisbon, Madrid and all other tourist-trap… er… well known cities you want to, stay there for a week ( less then this, will be too stressful ), buy from markets, cook where you are hosted, avoid spend money with unuseful things and get ready to a real travel. Don’t get me wrong, these places are awesome but they are also old, expensive and you gonna have a way better experience on different places like eastern europe and small countryside hidden places.

Don’t forget to get a very good travel bag. It will make things more confortable than using a rolling luggage. A cheap one will do, like any 50L from Quechua/Decathlon(about 40EUR). Also, if you need clothes, Primark is your friend and you can buy 3EUR tshirts that you can throw away if you want. My personal choice is a 40L backpack with running clothers.

On this first part ( and idk if some more will come ), I’ll cover 3 basic problems: communication, banking and a place to work.

COMMUNICATION

Grab a Vodafone CallYa pre-paid SIM card, got mine in Berlin. It’s 9EUR but somehow they require you to charge 40EUR and it stays as credit for the future. It works around the whole europe, you don’t pay for data roam and the network is pretty good. There is also an application where you can control everything on your sim card, data and money spent, and so on. I also have a Lebara(deutch telekon) sim card from Munich. It also works everywhere but you pay for roam.

BANKING

There is nos discussion here: N26! As soon as you get in Germany, download the app ( https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.number26.android ), create an account( https://app.n26.com/register ), go to post office with your passport and a printed version of your data verification request, sent by email, and ask for PostIdent( it’s free ) and you are all set. Pay extra 25EUR to receive your card in 2 days and send to your airbnb or whatever(If you gonna stay more than 2 weeks in Berlin, ask the free delivery). I recommend you to get the N26 Black as it also giver you traveling insurance BY Allianz for just 5.99EUR/month an also free withdraw around all europe. The craziest thing about N26 is that you can deposit money on supermarkets like REWE (maximum 100EUR at once, otherwise you pay a fee). To transfer money across countries, I suggest you to use Transferwise.

A problem I found, working for a US company, is that N26 doesn’t support SWIFT transfer, just SEPA. In this case, the second best option is Payoneer! Yes, they get 1% of the money but this is something that worth the advantages to get cash from everywhere.

Another thing to note is, although getting cash from ATM on some countries using N26 will charge you something(like in Argentina), buying with N26 Card won’t! You pay no single tax, it’s amazing.

PLACES TO WORK

Although there are a lot of sites like nomadlist or laptopfriendly, you have to check it by yourself. Things changes all the time so don’t trust sites. But one thing you can be sure: Fast food is, ALWAYS, your friend! And Starbucks’ coffee tastes like dirty water to me but this is always a good place to work from, so find your nearest fast food, check the internet and let it as a backup link for emergencies.

This is the basic stuff. From this point on, is up to you and I hope you have an amazing adventure. Try to document everything so that the next ones will have something to follow ( like places where you can work and things like that, that’s the whole idea behind this place ).