Wanderous Intro
Meet Anja and Martin, adventurous partners and perpetual travelers from Germany who epitomize the digital nomad lifestyle. Since 2021, this duo has journeyed across various countries including Paraguay, Colombia, Cyprus, Spain, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and currently Vietnam.
Anja works as a health consultant, helping people overcome chronic conditions through holistic methods. She also runs a copywriting business focused on holistic health topics. Martin is an audio engineer specializing in post production for cinema, streaming, and TV. Though work keeps them grounded, Anja and Martin prioritize escaping the 9-5 grind to explore new cultures and landscapes.
Through openness to change and personal growth, Anja and Martin have discovered more freedom living life on their own terms. However, they share an honest perspective on the realities of long-term travel, from accommodation challenges to maintaining healthy habits abroad. Their advice for prospective nomads? Educate yourself thoroughly and don’t believe the hype on social media.
Curious to learn more about this nomadic couple’s unconventional path? Read their full interview below for an inside look at the joys and hardships of perpetual wanderlust. Anja and Martin’s story shows that with courage and flexibility, you can live out your travel dreams.
Background on the Digital Nomad
Part 1: Basic information about who you are. 🙂
Please introduce yourself – name, where you are from originally, and what you currently do for work.
Hi! We are Anja and Martin, perpetual travelers and digital nomads from Germany. Anja is a health consultant, specialized in intestinal cleansing and detoxification for people who suffer from (chronic) intestinal disease, diffuse (intestinal) ailments, fatigue and burnout. She works with nutrition, micronutrients, plant medicine and also methods that some would call “unconventional”. This business is new and developed out of her own history of chronic illness and burnout, but is of course backed by education and further training in the health sector. She is also a copywriter and content creator for health-, spiritual- and plant medicine topics. Martin is an audio engineer. He currently mostly works in the dubbing industry: Post-production editing of recorded vocals of artists and pre-production preparing parts of the process, necessary to record vocal artists for German dubbing of movies, series and documentaries for cinema, streaming platforms, and tv. Besides, we are working on bringing some side hustles to life, that would add some money to our pockets in the long run.
What is your home country and what places have you lived/worked from remotely? Which travel destination has been your favorite so far and why?
Germany is our home country and we left it in September 2021. Our first travel destination was Paraguay, because we organized the permanent residency and cedula there. It was a lot of work already in Germany, because we had to organize a lot of papers from local authorities and also from the embassy of Paraguay. To finalize the process, you have to travel there and do all the paperwork and payments with an immigration helper. We did all this to – just in case – have a place, where we can be without restrictions. As perpetual travelers we are not registered citizens of Germany anymore and also don’t want to go back there. The next destinations then were: Columbia, Cyprus, Germany, Spain, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and now Vietnam. We are slow travelers, because work does not allow us to hop from one place to another every few weeks and we also don’t like to do that, because it is always a lot of organization that eats up your time and causes stress. Spain was definitely one of our favorites, because we absolutely loved the energy there, the laid back lifestyle, the architecture, the landscapes and the overall vibe. Vietnam became one of our favorites, also because of the energy, the “live and let live”-vibe and because things are very easy here for us. We have only stayed in Hoi An so far and will keep our base here for the next four months. We don’t know yet where we will travel after that, but it will very likely be Europe.
What does your current remote work entail? What roles, projects, or clients do you handle?
Concerning the health business Anja is working with people who want and need to fix their health issues and who are passionate about diving deeper into the functions of their body and taking their health to the next level. The copywriter job is focused on businesses and the main emphasis lies on articles and interviews.
As mentioned above, Martin mostly handles projects from the leading streaming platforms, but also tv productions and sometimes cinema productions. He comes from the music industry originally as an audio engineer for recording, editing, mixing and mastering music. During the process of learning all these skills, he found his passion in music mastering.
For the music production part of his work, which took place mostly stationary in Berlin and Hamburg, he handled different kinds of artists from newcomers to main acts, doing different parts of the audio production process from recording, editing, mixing and mastering. At the moment this part is not the main source of income, but he wants to come back to his roots in the future, when we have found a suitable place to live (semi)permanently again, since this is his passion and he loves working with music.
Do you work for a company remotely or are you a freelancer/business owner?
Freelancer/Business Owner
How long have you been living and working in a nomadic manner?
We started this lifestyle on the 1st of September in 2021.
Do you travel solo or with others?
Other: We are a travel couple.
What websites, companies or blogs can readers find you and your work on if they want to connect?
If you want to read about our travels and topics that come with this lifestyle, you can visit our website hellopachamama.com and our Instagram channel @hello_pachamama. If you want to inform yourself about health, plant medicine, spiritual topics and Anja’s work in specific, you can find everything about that on her blog anjas-weg.com. We also have a youtube channel @hellopachamama3014, but as this is not our priority, we are behind with the content.
Part 2: Let’s get into the deeper questions!
What led you to first pursue this nomadic lifestyle? Was there a pivotal moment or realization?
We were thinking about this lifestyle and specifically about cutting our ties to the German authorities since 2017. It all came up when we met a fellow traveler in the Dominican Republic, who told us about this specific model and wanted to do it as well. Since then we kept this whole idea in mind, because we loved traveling and did not like the fact that traveling was always limited to us. We already were self-employed back then and had more possibilities than other people but still, we could travel just during holidays. The idea then got very concrete in the early summer of 2020, when things went down rapidly. Anja lost her business during that time and slided into a burnout. Martin had his best business year, but as he always dreamed of living abroad and we felt that life in Germany would not ever be the same again, we agreed to take action. We informed ourselves very intensively, had a consultancy on how to live the perpetual traveler-lifestyle, organized the Paraguay-papers, sold everything we didn’t need anymore and left one year later.
How do you handle challenges like insurance, phone plans, banking, and other logistics on the road?
We both have international private health insurance with pretty good coverage and the possibility for upgrades if needed. And we really recommend everybody to get suitable health insurance, because you never know what can come up.
Concerning the phone at the moment we just buy local SIM cards.
We still have banking accounts in Germany and also use WISE. In the future we want to have more banking accounts in countries, where this is possible with this lifestyle, like e.g. in Georgia. The idea of being a perpetual traveler is to put up different flags (property, investment, banking accounts, permanent residencies, etc.) in different countries, to have more security for future global developments.
For internet connection we always search for accommodations with WIFI, that is strong enough for our work. This can be very limiting and stressful. Someday in the future perhaps we will integrate Starlink in our travel equipment.
Besides that, as every other traveler, we try to pack everything we need the most in our backpacks, which can also be challenging. 😉
What have been some of the most challenging obstacles you had to overcome in this lifestyle?
Well, there are some. Without having your own home, where you can come back to every time you want, life can be complicated and one of the biggest problems is accommodation. As we need a place to work and can’t always have a look at the places before arriving, we have to trust the hosts and the reviews. We have to believe that everything is like they present it and that all our questions are answered truthfully. In reality a lot of times the total opposite happens and we would say that most of the places we booked caused problems. Mostly concerning very poor hygiene, mold, noise (especially at night) and an unhealthy sleeping situation. Sleep is crucial for your overall health, but not many people know or think about this. We know that accommodation is an issue for a lot of travelers and one of the reasons why they search for a new base instead of living the digital nomad life any longer.
After a very stressful first year of traveling we needed a break to restore our health. As Anja still had to deal with the burnout, which just got worse again during our time in South America (mostly because of what we mentioned before) and Martin also developed health issues, we flew back to Germany, to restore our health. Anja developed a program for both of us that enabled us to leave again a few months later. Especially considering nutrition, living abroad is not always easy, because the standards for water, food and also the variety of foods are lower than in Germany. And even there (and in the neighboring) countries the standards for toxins in food are already poor. Unfortunately this is the world we live in today and for us a major challenge while traveling. For example, we know that here in Vietnam, we consume a lot more toxins than in Europe and this stops us from building a long term base here.
How do you balance work and leisure time when you’re constantly traveling?
As we are not traveling constantly, it’s basically the same for us like when we were self-employed in Germany. For Anja, though, there are more different tasks to fulfill, as she, in addition to work, takes care of the blogs and social media. That can be stressful and overwhelming.
Martin on the other hand is very bound to his projects, because they always come with a deadline. So when everything comes in at once, some days he might sit in front of his laptop the whole day.
It is important for us to go out at least once a day for a walk, a trip or to grab a bite and we normally do that in the afternoon. For Anja, workout is also important and that as well takes place in the afternoon. If possible, we do whole-free days every week, to have a better work-life-balance. The thing is that, when you do the things you really like to do, it is fun and you just want to achieve your goals. So, you also have to be responsible for your leisure time, which is very important not only for yourself but for the relationship. And of course, in the long run, for health and well-being.
What misconceptions do people have about the digital nomad experience vs the reality?
Oh this is a good question and so important! First advice: Don’t believe everything you see on social media or you read on blogs. This isn’t a very popular opinion, but most travel channels offer a distorted picture of reality, because they are afraid of losing followers and reach. What, unfortunately, is what happens when you are being honest. On our channels, by the way, you will find the unfiltered truth.
Also, looking back at what we were thinking before we started, the first thing is travel organization. We never thought that this would be so hard and the reason for that perception was that before we only booked holiday accommodations. And we were younger. 😉
As stated before, finding the right accommodation for your needs can really be a pain in the ass. Especially when your budget is limited, which is the case for most of the digital nomads, and when you don’t want to live in hostels. Airbnb is not reliable, but it’s the only platform where you can contact the host (something you really should do before booking something). Over the time we developed a checklist for accommodations and asked the hosts all the questions in advance. Also to check their attitude towards things like this. And even then, you unfortunately can’t be sure to get what you have paid for.
Some of the social media audience then takes things like that as a reason to bully you, according to the motto “What is your problem? The poor host does his / her best.” It is very convenient to judge from the comfort of your own couch and if you don’t have any idea what it is like to live a life always on the road and with nothing to rely on but the honesty and integrity of other people. While living a life like this, you learn the hard way, that a lot of humans lack these qualities. As stated before: this is one of the main reasons why digital nomads search for a new home. We would be very happy with having our own van and being independent from hosts. But at the moment and in the near future this is not possible for us.
This lifestyle is also something other than doing just a world trip, that you start with a certain calculated budget and that doesn’t have the need to work regularly and earn money. Being a digital nomad is having a normal life but on the road and one has to understand that this fact itself is already a big challenge. It is not just fun holidays, cool and glamorous, like a lot of digital nomads sell it to the public. Unless you really have a certain budget or don’t want to save money for the future.
Our advice is, to do your best possible travel-and-location planning and try to avoid as many unwanted situations as possible. Ask the host all the questions, if possible, have a look for accommodations on site, check the surroundings with Google maps and streetview, read blog articles about your destination (in the hope, they tell the truth), ask people, who have been there before (e.g. via Instagram). Airbnb now offers a good troubleshooting service if problems get too serious.
Reality check: Anja once saw the results of a survey in a digital nomad group and surprisingly most of the nomads did not earn more than 1000 – 2000€ / month. We don’t know if this value is gross or net, but this is not as much as you can imagine and doesn’t quite mirror the lifestyle that is promoted online by the majority.
Try to work at the beach – one of the most sold perceptions of this lifestyle. Well, you want to carry your starlink everywhere with you, if you have one? Do you have a proper sun protection-screen to see what you are doing on the screen? Are there proper tables and seats? We can go on with this. Otherwise, you have private accommodation with suitable WIFI, a hostel with a community space or you go to a coworking space or coffee shop. For coworking spaces you have to buy at least a day pass and even here this costs around 10€, what is a lot. In a coffee shop you have to invest money in drinks and food, so think about how you want to handle this. We only work in our apartments.
Thinking about the future you should also consider changes in global affairs, like the limitation of flights, upcoming global events and how certain countries react to them, etc. Just get yourself educated about some important stuff that could affect your life(style).
Also, if you are as health conscious as we are, make yourself aware of the fact that maintaining a healthy lifestyle can be very challenging, depending on where you live. When it comes to this, for us Europe is still the best area to live a lifestyle according to our standards.
How has being location independent changed you as a person? What inner growth have you experienced?
This is hard to say, because change and growth happen automatically when you embrace them and are open to them. Irrespective of how you live your life. Also we think that these two words are hard to separate, because they go hand in hand somehow.
We have definitely experienced inner growth and some of it might have its roots in our lifestyle. What was really freeing for us is the fact that we live a life outside the system (as far as possible) and aren’t attached to a specific place. This amount of freedom is very special. But of course, as mentioned, it also has its shadow sides.
Also we managed to distance ourselves more from the opinions of other people and are more than ever passionate about walking on our very own and individual path, which is not suitable for the classic models of society and cult-ure (not a typo).
When living and traveling like this, you experience a lot and your life becomes very multifaceted. That means learning a lot of new things and this for sure is not possible when you are always at one place, living the average life. The more you get around on this planet, the more you learn what you want and what you do not want to have in your life. You also learn a lot about yourself, which enables you to position yourself better in this world step by step. Concerning the different cult-ures, you also learn about what mentalities suit you more than others. This is also very important. All the countries and the people living in each of them are so diverse and we, until now, experienced everything: from things that we really did not like and things that we like a lot. And we are always honest about this, because when you’re searching for a future place to live like we do, you have to.
Your flexibility-muscle also gets very trained and you are forced to leave your comfort zone a lot. As logistics can be a problem. For example, it became normal for us to walk extreme (and exhausting) distances in the heat, just to buy some groceries and water. Keep in mind that you have to carry all the stuff back. Could be that we walked around 45 minutes or even more one way. The more you have to deal with things like this, the more you appreciate, when life is easy and a bit more comfortable again.
What are your go-to tools or resources for being productive and inspired?
If you mean special software with this, to be honest: None. Martin does his work according to customer needs and deadlines. Anja naturally is very disciplined and never had problems with structuring her day. So besides the obvious Apple calendar + notifications. We keep ourselves updated about some topics and developments that are important for us and our side hustles and that’s it.
The most powerful resources for being productive and inspired for us are still: being outside, exploring nature, meeting people, doing workout and yoga, having time together, collecting moments, meditation and shamanic work. The normal, natural stuff, if you will.
How do you meet new people and make connections abroad?
As we don’t work in coworking spaces or live in hostels it is harder for us to meet new people. Most of the time it happens in our accommodations, when there are other rooms or apartments. Some connections also develop via Instagram but then of course it can be that you never meet in person. We are still on the search for a place where we can meet more and really like-minded people, which is also a mission when living this lifestyle and when certain things are important to you.
What advice would you give someone hoping to transition into the nomadic lifestyle?
First off: Get yourself educated very well about the lifestyle as a digital nomad. Find networks and resources, where you get honest and authentic information about it. If you want to live the special model that we have, feel free to contact us for further information. No worries – they are free.
Be brave, follow your dream and don’t let anybody – including your close family – tell you what is or is not good for you. It is your life and you have to be happy with it. You are not here to fulfill the perceptions of others. And if it does not work out or you realize that you need a solid base more than you thought, this is okay, too. Because you learned something important about yourself.
Be prepared, because you will have to be very flexible in a lot of situations. Be prepared that some things won’t work out as you wished and that you have to change plans at short notice.
What motivates you to keep pushing your own boundaries and stay on the road long-term?
It is the lust for exploring new countries and places that keeps us going. We are always looking forward to new destinations and what we will experience there. Also, it is just that level of freedom that we really enjoy. But as mentioned before, for specific reasons we won’t do this forever. Before we started, we thought that our timeframe for this lifestyle might be max. 5 years and it looks like we will fulfill this idea.
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THANKS FOR READING!
Photo Credit : André Akito
All photos in this article were captured by André Akito.
André Akito is a photographer and videographer from São Paulo, Brazil. André graduated in business and worked for 4 years in finance and business consulting before deciding to become a digital nomad. He currently travels the world documenting stories of people, places, and cultures that he meets along the way.
See his work online at: https://andreakito.com/
Contact him on Facebook at : https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100069327171171
Excited to learn more?
-> Read the introduction article about the Wanderous Project : https://breakoutwards.com/blog/digital-nomad-conversations-wanderous/
