A flowzoom World Trip - Part 1

April 2017. Florian and Ildikó are standing in Munich with fully loaded bikes. No flight route, no return ticket, no fixed plan - just a rough direction for a world trip with no set end date: East. Overland to China. Through cultures that build up layer by layer the further you get from home.

Almost two years later, they return - with broader horizons and an idea in their luggage that would eventually become flowzoom. But that is the story of Part 2.

First things first: how do you travel around the world, and how do you prepare for it?

What is a World Trip, Exactly?

The Oxford dictionary is succinct: a round-the-world trip is simply "a trip to a place and back again" - just at a rather larger scale. Wikipedia takes a more expansive view, describing it as a journey defined by its duration, covering multiple continents and as many countries on each as possible. Travel industry shorthand has its own answer: RTW, or Round The World - a term most commonly associated with multi-stop airline tickets that cross both the Atlantic and the Pacific. Three definitions, three different ideas of what counts. None of them is truly precise.

What is clear is that the appetite for longer, more immersive travel is growing. More and more of the people taking gap years are now over 30 - career breaks, sabbaticals and extended trips are no longer the sole territory of students. Yet for most people, the average holiday still lasts under two weeks. A trip lasting several months, across multiple continents, actually arriving somewhere - remains a exception.

Florian and Ildikó made that exception in 2017. Not to tick off a bucket list, but because the cultures along the road to China simply cannot be flown over. Was it a world trip? Florian says it himself: "We never even made it all the way around the world." But perhaps that is exactly the point.

The Route: Bicycle, Ferry, Night Bus

For Florian and Ildikó, the journey begins on two wheels. From Germany through Austria and along the Danube to Hungary, to Ildikó's family. The bikes stay there. What follows is no typical route, but a remarkable one: the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus, Central Asia, western China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand. And at the end, after a year in Chiang Mai and two months in Bali, the return to Germany.

The goal was clear from the start: to reach China overland. Florian had spent a lot of time in China during his studies and wanted to really experience the cultures in between - not fly over them. "The idea was to do everything overland and never take a plane," he says. Over the full two years, they only boarded a plane three or four times, always out of logistical necessity.

The timing was a deliberate choice: a spring departure, to travel through the Central Asian countries while they were still in summer. "You want to be there in summer, not winter," Florian explains. "That didn't quite work out - but it was still one of the main reasons we started in spring."

The Start: Too Much Luggage, Too Much Plan

In hindsight, the first chapter of the trip was also the most instructive. The enormous rucksacks - which could double as rolling suitcases - quickly proved too heavy and too full. "We had things with us that we never ended up using because the weather turned cold again," says Ildikó. A lot of it eventually got sent back to Florian's parents.

After three to four months, when they briefly flew back to Germany from Bulgaria, came the reset: two new, much smaller rucksacks. Those lasted them nearly another year and a half on the road.

The Paperwork: What to Sort Before You Leave

Preparing for a world trip means more than packing and planning routes. The really draining part happens before you go - in government offices, insurance paperwork and termination letters.

Flat, Furniture, Registered Address

Florian and Ildikó's first step was cancelling their Munich flat and moving out. In hindsight, the right call - keeping a flat running during a world trip, even when sublet, rarely fits within a travel budget. "We didn't necessarily want to go back to Munich after the trip either," says Ildikó.

The furniture - mostly still from their student days - went into a storage room at Florian's parents' house. A few things were sold to friends. They used Florian's parents' address as their postal address, but officially deregistered, to be administratively truly gone. "We wouldn't do much differently in hindsight," says Florian. "We're very grateful we had my parents' place as a base - for post, for stored belongings, for quick trips back."

Insurance and Vaccinations

With an international health insurance policy, long-term travellers can officially deregister in Germany and save on statutory health insurance contributions. One important detail: the policy should include home leave cover of two to four weeks, so you are also insured during a brief visit back to Germany.

For vaccinations, Florian and Ildikó started a full year in advance - around eleven or twelve different jabs, with several weeks between appointments. Anyone planning a world trip should factor this in early enough.

Mobile Data on the Road

When Florian and Ildikó set off in 2017, eSIMs didn't yet exist. They picked up a local SIM card in every country - cheaper and with better coverage, but time-consuming. They switched so often that the SIM slot on one of their phones eventually broke. An Aldi Talk contract ran in parallel as backup. "Today you'd probably use an eSIM," says Florian. "That would have been so much more practical."

WiFi in accommodation worked well - even in countries with less stable infrastructure. Bring a laptop: yes. Ildikó had initially hoped a Kindle would be enough. That turned out to be unrealistic pretty quickly.

Finances: What a World Trip Really Costs

Around 30,000 euros for nearly two years as a couple. That sounds like a lot, but for a trip that long it is actually fairly modest - the result of a deliberate choice of route: the countries along the Silk Road and in Southeast Asia have significantly lower living costs than Western Europe or North America.

Banking on the road also needs some thought: one DKB card each plus a backup card per person, so there is always a working option if one is lost or stolen. Cash is still essential in many countries, but leftover currency should always be spent before crossing a border. A small reserve of US dollars and euros is worth having, since the dollar is the de facto currency in some countries. They also brought American Express Traveller's Cheques as a safety net - and never used them.

Visas: The Underrated Adventure

Travel to many countries and you quickly learn: visas cannot be planned far in advance. Most validity windows are limited and application deadlines are tight. "It was always fairly spontaneous," says Ildikó. "We'd find out what we needed just before crossing a border - and then act."

The China Visa: Including a Flight Home

The most demanding regular visa was for China. It could not be applied for from within the Central Asian countries - so both of them had to fly home to do it in person: Ildikó to Hungary, Florian to Germany. "That was a detour we would have gladly avoided," says Florian. "But there was no other way."

Turkmenistan: Four Weeks of Waiting for a Rejection

The most frustrating episode of the entire trip was the Turkmenistan visa. The plan: take the ferry from Azerbaijan across the Caspian Sea, then travel through Turkmenistan - the most direct route into Central Asia. For this visa, Florian and Ildikó waited four weeks in Baku. And in the end, they were rejected. Turkmenistan issues very few individual visas and strongly prefers organised tour groups.

The consequence: a much longer ferry crossing from Baku to Kazakhstan, followed by a 24-hour train journey. The kind of detour nobody needed - but one you can at least tell the story of afterwards.

On the Road: Life Between Train Rides and Arrivals

Getting Around: Trains Win Every Time

Day trains, night trains, buses, share taxis - and only three or four flights. That was the transport philosophy. Their clear favourite: the train. "You can get up, go to the toilet, there is more space - and it is the safest option," says Florian.

Their longest train journey was around 28 hours, with bunk beds and no seating option. The train really came into its own in China, where distances are vast, and in Central Asia. "Get through it, breathe, remember it ends eventually," says Ildikó. Sitting in slow vehicles - especially share taxis that stop to pick up passengers and wait for others - was the biggest comfort disadvantage of budget travel.

Accommodation: From Couchsurfing to Budget Hotel

They tried everything: hostels, hotels, Airbnb and Couchsurfing. In the Balkans there was one unpleasant Couchsurfing experience, after which that option was largely dropped. Hotels were affordable, especially in Asia. Airbnb came into play rarely but deliberately, when they needed a little privacy.

Booking was almost always spontaneous - often the day before or even the same morning. That occasionally caused difficulties, but mostly worked out. "Day by day" was the planning principle once they had left Hungary behind.

Travel Fatigue: Real, but Manageable

"The constant adjustment to new cultures, the organising, the not-knowing-your-surroundings - it is very tiring," says Ildikó. "Whether you travel cheaply or more comfortably."

Their strategy: stay at least four to five days in one place, usually a full week. That gave them time to arrive, get their bearings and recharge. "That really helped," says Florian.

In Part 2:

The highlights of the trip - from the Balkans to Georgia to Cambodia. Unforgettable encounters. And the story that followed: how uncomfortable night trains and sleepless long-haul journeys gave rise to the idea for flowzoom.