Creating a Home Away From Home

Photo: “Relaxing in the Mountains with Gabi” by: The Simien Mountains Guide on Flickr

One of the most challenging things about long term travel, or moving overseas, is making a new place feel like home. When you’re constantly packing your bag and moving from place to place it can be a real struggle. Often you’re dealing with a new language, new culture, new food, new climate, new public transport and the list goes on. It can be really, really exciting, but equally overwhelming. One downside to reading travel blogs, is that often you’re given only the happy side of things – the cheesy photos, the reviews of all the great things that bloggers did and so on. Sometimes being an expat or traveler is hard, but there are little things you can do to make things feel a bit easier. Here are the ways I like to create a home away from home:

Photo: “Shopping at IKEA” by: John and Bente Bunæs on Flickr

 1) Shopping

Head into a shop and find a few photo frames to fill up your walls with photos of friends and family from home. When I was living in Spain as an au pair, I missed the birth of my nephew. It was really hard, but I knew it was the right choice for me. Keeping photos of your friends and family around your new home will really make it feel more homely. Buying a few nice pieces of furniture also goes a long way to making a new home feel like home. Find somewhere that offers comfortable furniture, and treat yourself to a few pieces. Shops such as Nick Scali offer beautiful furniture that can transform a house into a home. 

2) Find a Job

If you’re not lucky enough to have already landed a job before you go, finding a job overseas is a great way to get things feeling a bit more like home. You’ll meet a bunch of new people, start earning some money (for more travel) and it will give you a bit of a schedule as well. Look locally for job search websites and start the search before you arrive in the country, it’ll make the whole process a lot less stressful. Technology has made this easier than ever before, as you can 

3.) Meet Some New People

When I lived in the Czech Republic, I used Couchsurfing in order to find people my age who might be interested in meeting up. When I was an au pair in Spain, I used Facebook groups for meet ups to get to know other people living in Madrid. The tricky part is meeting the first few people, once you have a couple of new friends in your city then things will snowball and before you know it, you’ll have a bustling social group. 

Photo: Cafe colours by: Andrew Davis on Flickr