Nomad Life: Downsides After Almost 10 Years Without a Base

---

Note: I wrote this in June 2013, when I was approaching ten years without a permanent base. It records that point in my life, so references to Berlin, the United States and my plans for the years ahead are historical rather than current updates.

In less than two weeks, I was going to reach the tenth anniversary of giving up a permanent base. I had a laptop and a roof over my head almost all of the time, but that roof had changed more times than I cared to count.

I was packing up after four months in Berlin, with the 23 kg that made up everything I owned, before heading to the United States for the summer. Travel had given me a wonderful chance to learn about the world, pick up some strange habits, meet fascinating people and learn languages. But no lifestyle is perfect.

As I prepared to move again, I started thinking about what I did not get to have because of that lifestyle. These were the downsides of long-term nomad life as I experienced them then.

A note from the Fluent in 3 Months team before we get started: You can chat away with a native speaker for at least 15 minutes with the “Fluent in 3 Months” method. All it takes is 90 days. Tap this link to find out more.

The “you have it so easy” assumption

Some people thought I was not entitled to write about the difficult parts. I travelled full time, so what could I possibly have to complain about?

That assumption was frustrating. Travel did not remove ordinary problems from my life, and it certainly did not turn every day into an adventure. A change of scenery can be valuable, but it does not automatically change how you think or solve whatever you hoped to leave behind.

I was not running away from anything. I saw those years as a long learning process, complete with bad days, bureaucracy, difficult neighbours, transport strikes, rain, rising prices and buses that seemed to arrive in groups after a long wait. The details changed from place to place, but normal life still came with me.

People also assumed that constant travel meant I was wealthy. When we compared incomes, that was rarely true. I had simply learnt to travel frugally, and I owned very little.

I did not believe that I had it worse than people with a settled life. I had simply chosen a different set of trade-offs, including some that were easy to miss from the outside.

No permanent address

In 2013, receiving post was one of the most obvious problems. When I moved every week or two, I could not reliably order a book, a replacement camera part or anything else that needed to be delivered. I often had to wait for a longer stay, ask whether somebody local could receive it, or decide that I did not need it after all.

I rarely received postcards either, because friends never knew where to send them. I love technology and usually prefer digital communication, but that did not make every bit of post replaceable.

For official post, I used my parents' address in Ireland and my dad scanned important letters for me. That was my practical arrangement at the time, not general advice about banking, tax or residency.

Stuff you can't buy or travel with

I still believe there are real benefits to travelling light. The difficult part was having to consider the size and weight of almost everything I bought. A minimalist with a home can choose a practical desktop computer or a full-size piece of equipment. I had to ask whether the item could survive my next flight and fit in my luggage.

My furnished Berlin flat had a printer and scanner, which felt wonderfully convenient in 2013. Usually I had to find an internet café whenever I needed to print a ticket or send back a signed document. I also wanted a sturdy, eye-level tripod, but the light one I could carry was too short unless I balanced it on furniture.

Gifts created a more personal problem. People sometimes gave me a lovely memento of a place I had visited. I either had to turn it down, which could feel rude, or accept it knowing that I might not be able to take it with me.

The uphill battle to make deep friendships

The people I travelled to meet could also be reluctant to get close to me. In some places, telling somebody that I would leave in a few months seemed to rule out a friendship before it had begun.

Romantic relationships could end at that same first hurdle. The possibility of leaving made a relationship seem pointless to some people, even when neither of us knew how long it might otherwise have lasted.

I also encountered the assumption that a long-term traveller must have only superficial friendships. Once people got to know me, they sometimes said they were surprised by how down to earth I was. It made me wonder what caricature they had expected. Giving each other enough time to get beyond that first impression mattered.

The same conversations over and over

For much of my travelling life, the question “What do you do?” had an interesting answer. I had worked in a youth hostel, as a translator and as an English teacher. By 2013, though, this site had been my work for more than three years. I found myself repeating the same explanation about blogging and language learning whenever I met somebody new.

I tried to wave the question away with “just some writing job” or “boring internet stuff” so that I could learn about the other person. Work can be an interesting subject, but I did not want it to be the only route into every conversation. Language learning was a means to an end for me: it helped me talk to people about the rest of life.

My TEDx talk gave curious people an easy place to hear the language-learning story. In social situations, I was often happier discussing a shared interest, a ridiculous T-shirt or anything else that let a new friendship develop naturally.

Behind the glamorous image of a constant traveller was a normal person trying to make friends. Reintroducing myself every few weeks could be exhausting. Once a conversation moved beyond that introduction, it was usually worth the effort.

A helping hand

Long-distance friendships mattered enormously to me, and I stayed in touch with people I trusted. But those friends were not necessarily nearby when I needed practical help.

During a trip to Egypt earlier in 2013, I became so ill that I spent a week in bed and lost 5 kg in the first few days. I was alone, with nobody close enough to bring food, medicine or a bit of reassurance. The video I recorded that day shows how little energy I had.

After laser eye surgery in Taiwan, I needed somebody to guide me home. I did not yet have a local friend I could ask, so I hired somebody to meet me, drive me back and walk me to my flat. It worked, but it made the absence of an established support network painfully obvious.

There were emotional needs too. A chat message or video call helped, but it was not always the same as having a trusted person in the room. Some years, social-network notifications were the only reason I noticed that it was my birthday.

Solo travel made me more independent and self-reliant, but those qualities did not cancel my need for other people. I rarely felt lonely for long, as I explained in my post about long-term solo travel, but loneliness still happened.

I tried to make at least one close friend in each place and to care about the people around me, rather than treating them as scenery in my trip. I wanted a real human connection and, where possible, to leave a place a little better than I found it.

When friends were nearby, I appreciated every favour. A helping hand could turn an awkward or frightening problem into something manageable. That kind of long-term, local support was one of the parts of settled life I missed most.

Long-term, non-portable learning and clubs

My Berlin flat also had a piano, the first one I had lived with during my travels. When I was 13, I could play part of the third movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. I had always wanted to practise again and perhaps move from classical piano into jazz, but a piano was not something I could carry from flat to flat.

I loved dancing too. I took salsa and tango lessons when I could afford them, as well as modern and hip-hop classes in Brazil and Quebec. Then I moved. Finding a good school and starting again with new teachers slowed everything down.

Languages were unusually portable. I could keep speaking through video calls wherever I was. At lunch in Berlin, an Italian friend told me that my Italian had held up even though I had not lived in Italy for years. Regular remote conversations had helped me maintain it.

Other interests demanded a longer commitment to one place. I would have loved to act and sing in a musical again, join a non-religious choir or work towards a dance competition. Those projects take months of rehearsals and shared practice. Moving between schools all the time was possible, but it was hardly ideal.

At the time, language learning and online projects seemed like the only skills I could pursue consistently. I missed having room for the many worthwhile things that cannot fit into a suitcase or continue through a screen.

Consistency

Routine is one of the things people often hope to escape by travelling. I found that I missed it.

Every time I moved, I had to find a supermarket that stocked what I wanted, a walking or running route, a good regular social event and somewhere reliable to eat. More importantly, I had to find friends I could confide in. Just as those pieces began to feel familiar, it was time to leave.

By the end of a stay, the person who served my coffee might recognise me, or familiar faces at a weekly event would wave when I arrived. Those small connections take time to build. Being able to ask for “my usual” felt like a rare luxury.

Pets

On a lighter note, I had always wanted a cat. A life of deserts, mountains, flights and wildly changing temperatures was no life for the cat I imagined, so that wish had to wait. But still: cats.

---

Having no home forever was not for me

After almost ten years on the road, I knew that I did not want to live without a base forever. I expected to keep travelling for several more years, but I had begun thinking seriously about where I might eventually make a home.

My ideal at the time was a base I could return to for six to nine months a year, with perhaps three months left for travel. I still wanted to explore other cultures, but the trade-offs in this essay had accumulated. That was my plan in 2013, not a statement about where or how I live now.

I had no regrets. University had taught me how to think about science and the technical side of the world. Travel had taught me how differently people could live, and how much they still had in common. I knew there were other lessons I could learn only by beginning a new chapter.

The lessons I had learnt would stay with me even if I eventually kept my hat in one place.

I did not see travel as a prescription for everybody, or permanent nomad life as the natural end point for every traveller. A short trip, a year abroad or decades on the road offer different things to different people. The useful question is what the experience adds to your life, and what it asks you to give up.

For a much later snapshot of how my travel philosophy developed, read my 2026 update on going deeper instead of counting countries.