If you’ve read, Why You Absolutely Should Date a Girl Who Travels you’ll  better understand and appreciate the context of this blog. I decided to write this for my husband because he had shared the article with me when he was my boyfriend.

Dear Damian,

It’s been 3 months since we said “I do”, a day I will forever cherish in the depths of my heart. A day I said yes to you being you and you said yes to me being me. Thank you for accepting all that I am.

My love for travel doesn’t mean I don’t want elements of a settled life, it just means that I’ve travelled and set up my life in enough countries to know that home is always where your heart is, and a place to come to, not only when the laundry needs doing or in between trips.

And even though my impulsive travel schedules have taken a back seat, it’s only because I realised the frenzy of just feeling the need to MOVE, resulted in a total burnout. There will always be space in my life for a random adventure, but I want our future travels to be full of purpose and slow. Let’s build a pensieve of cherished memories to extract from when we’re older.

I’m glad that we’ve spent this year travelling mainly in England, and the way you’ve introduced me to a lifestyle that is now mine. I like how you’ve grown to appreciate things that you’ve  taken for granted but are so new to me, like my first autumn – the leaves are all kinds of tangerine orange and fiery reds. and how I find it absolutely beautiful that trees go through this metamorphosis every year. A sign of winter preparation before the cold sleep and spring resurrection. Autumn to us now is an ethereal kind of magic, wrapped in the realm of golden and sepia hues.

I look forward to all the countries and places we will visit together for the first time, each discovering and unravelling at our own pace, yet discussing our appreciations over pillow talk. There is something very beautiful about waking up next to someone you love in a new country. It brings with it a sense of fulfilment and certainty of having one’s back!

Someday I’d like to revisit some of my old adventures with you. Tell you stories of how they were different when I travelled solo, and how I wished back then I had someone to share that moment with. I want to be caught up in that moment in an almost romantic deja vu with a twist.

It’s some kind of crazy happenstance that we met while you were travelling and on holiday, and I was getting ready to leave my country to live and work abroad. It only goes to show that our travels have brought us nothing but good and has taught us to accept and respect the diversity of our past experiences. It also teaches us enough to get by at Trivial Pursuit and pub quizzes 😉

Our priorities may change after we’ve crossed Machu Pichu off our bucket list, but with you by my side, I think life is going to be one beautiful journey. Psst I’ve also added Nepal on our bucket list. I know that our dates may not always be as extravagant as they once were, like when we travelled to new places to meet each other half-way while we maintained our long- distance relationship. But let’s never forget to enjoy the simpler things in our life, like cooking up a meal from a different country or putting on that Spanish love songs record I picked from Argentina, to slow dance to in our living room. Over time we can stick to our oath of gifting travel and experiences to each other, rather than material goods that may someday lose its value, and work our butts off towards buying that mobile-home caravan we can someday drive through New Zealand.

I promise to be tolerant of all your Transformers, if our bookshelf always has space to add a few more travel books and if it doesn’t… I call dibs on all unclaimed corners in our home. 

Everyone keeps asking me “What it feels like to be married?” So here goes…. Being married feels like in this wide, often overwhelming, largely incomprehensible world you have someone on your side. One person who understands you, knows where you come from and is a witness to your life. The right person makes marriage feel like the wind beneath your wings, pushing you to soar and be the best you can be. The adventures of this #tinylady has been kicked into overdrive since I arrived in England not so many months ago, but at least it now comes with a +1 that is you, and our journey has only just begun.

Being from different parts of the globe meant our two roads converged into one, didn’t necessarily take the scenic route. We’ve had to live apart and wait to be together in the same place and time. We’ve had to work hard towards our common goals, and that’s what makes it so much more precious. We’ll always have something new to learn about each other, and I’m sure there are many culture clashes and similarities to still be drawn out. But we’ll face them together, hand in hand.

With luck, our little family will expand eventually, but that won’t ground us. Let’s make a pact to bring them up as responsible and travel lovin’…minions. If anything there will be adventures of a tiny lady + 2 since any child of ours is already one that will suffer from an incurable and hereditary case of wanderlust.

Who knows where life will take us?

Thank you for colouring my life with love, happiness and adventure. For all my adventures big and small, I’d like to have with you. And for the few times, I do get away to explore on my own, know that I will always come back home.. to you. 

Love, Nickolai.

PS: I should probably use this space to apologise for the hundreds of photos that I’ll ask you to take of me/us. In my defence, my eidetic memory only works well with photographs I can go back and refer to. Hence hoarding the massive amounts of our server space for every picture I’ve taken since 2000.

PPS: Thank you for proofreading everything I write to publish. You’re the best!