Travels with a language geek

After almost three years as an (unofficial, for the last year) member of the EuroTalk family, I’ve finally decided that it’s time for me to move on and take my passion for languages and cultures on the road. So, I’m hanging up my localisation project manager hat (not literally of course – there’s no designated hat for that) and setting off on a trip across Europe.

I have to say that at the moment my plans are pretty vague. My partner has a car, so we’re packing our stuff in the boot, getting in and heading off for a mega road trip across Europe: the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and Ukraine, for a start. Then the idea is to end up in Lviv, Western Ukraine and stick around there for a while until we decide the next phase of our plan. There’s no particular time-scale on any of this – we’re simply going to drive from city to city, visit a few friends, see some sights and move on when we feel like it. The only limit on how much time we can spend driving from place to place is money, and how long we can stand spending that much time together. When we finally get to Lviv, we’re planning to rent a flat there for a while and live the digital nomad lifestyle, experiencing life in Ukraine and using Lviv as a base from which to explore other parts of Eastern Europe.

You might wonder why of all places I’ve chosen to go and live in Ukraine. Well, I wish I could give you a really great and well-thought out reason, but the simple fact is: it’s really cheap to live there right now! According to NomadList.com, you can live in Lviv on $400 a month. That’s around £250 – less than half of what I pay each month in rent here in London. Which is pretty appealing to someone who is trying to live as a digital nomad for the foreseeable future. For those of you who don’t spend as much time as I do stalking travel bloggers on Twitter, a digital nomad is someone who lives abroad and/or travels indefinitely, funding themselves by working remotely via wifi and their laptop. A few intrepid travellers out there have managed to fund themselves all the way around the world just by blogging, writing or completing other online work. In my case I’ll be translating to earn my daily bread, whilst pretending to be a super-cool international travel blogger the rest of the time. It’s all about wearing expensive sunglasses and taking selfies, I’m assured.

But taking advantage of 30p beers isn’t the only reason I’m excited to experience life in Eastern Europe. As a language geek, of course I can’t wait to try my hand at picking up Russian and bits of other local languages: Polish, Ukrainian and Czech sounds like a start! Not to mention finding out as much as I can about the culture, lifestyle and places of this amazing region. Oh, and I’ll be bombarding everyone with updates and photos via my brand-new blog: postcardsfromukraine.com, which is already in the top ten blogs about being a digital nomad in Ukraine written by a Brit and an Italian. So, if you’re curious, feel free to catch up with us on Twitter @ukrpostcards or the Postcards from Ukraine Facebook page, and I promise to keep EuroTalk updated on my language-learning goals too.

Alex