| HN Mirror

I did this for a year but with countries, before ultimately deciding that for me and my given circumstances, my starting country was my choice to put down roots. But then after flying back to my home country, did a mini version of the same strategy of my home country but didn't wanna leave the second place after I was there and ended the tour early (which might have been largely motivated by the fact that I'd spent a year moving between airbnbs and was sick of relocating).

The one thing that's difficult is that when you are already living out of a checked luggage + carry-on, its easy to do this. But once you've put down some roots once and accumulated any significant furniture or larger possessions, it's so hard to do it again. Unless you are truly motivated or you have nearby family with storage space to keep your most prized larger possessions. That and Airbnb prices in the markets I've looked at have gone way up in the past 5 years relative to longterm apartment rental prices in the same markets.

5 years ago you could move to NYC and find a room for rent for the same price a similar room would cost if you subleased from someone, with maybe a few hundred dollar premium extra for the convenience of Airbnb. Today it seems like the 'Airbnb' price for a month is $500-1000 more than the same room would have cost if you'd found it the old fashioned way.

One funny thing was that in 2016 when I did this (and I will admit I was fairly price-unconscious and more excited about adventure than about finance) it seemed like there was remarkable consistency of prices regardless of country. I kept paying right around $1000 USD a month to live in fairly nice to extremely nice rentals (they were all studio apartments) whether that was in gayfield square in Edinburgh or near Mariatorget in Sodermalm Stockholm (I think I got truly lucky on that one) or staying in city centers of second tier cities in Poland or at a beach hotel on the Black Sea or even staying in Mapo in Seoul or Chapinero in Bogota. I kept paying around $1000 a month at the time it felt like no matter the 'on paper' cost of living of the country. I think I was definitely paying a tourist tax in many of the lower cost of living place (whether I was paying 50% more or double what I would have if I'd booked locally or triple or what I don't know), but at the same time it's surprising I was able to stay in such nice places in higher COL places like Stockholm and Edinburgh without a higher tourist premium. I would guess though that the same accommodations on Airbnb would cost double today.

Airbnb seems both more hated and less useful today for longer-term stays than it used to. Still better for tourism than a hotel in most places though. Still waiting for something similar to Airbnb that was designed (from both product perspective but also legal/regulatory/compliance perspective) for long term month minimum to year long stays so that the antiquated apartment rental system was more instant and not so shady.

I wouldn't advise anyone to follow the '1-3 months in each city/country for a year' strategy after living it out myself unless you are doing it with a friend or loved one. I do think it broadened my perspective but went from the most exciting adventure at the beginning to a bit soul-crushing by the end in terms of how impermanent all of my friendships and relationships felt. First country I went to I invested in language learning to interact with shopkeepers, I made a decent network of couchsurfing/international meetup/language exchange friends, and had some youthful encounters with love and lust, but 10 months and several countries later it was like 'why should I try going out tonight to befriend that dude, I'll never see him again next month anyway' or 'I shouldn't text that girl, I'll probably just end up breaking her heart since I know I'm leaving in a few weeks' (which while not something inevitable with all of my prior experiences hooking up or dating while traveling, is a painful enough experience that at that time I couldn't easily brush off when it did in fact happen). By the end I was going to far fewer social events / mixers and far more sort of cerebral, maybe sentimental people watching walks through cities alone.

If I knew what I knew now and wanted to do a 'life geography reconnaissance mission', I would do much faster and shorter hops to far more places initially (even if it cost a lot more for transportation and cause of not getting long-stay discounts), and then after visiting 4-10 places quickly (maybe 5-7 days in each country/city to just get the initial/basic feel/vibe?) I would pick my top 1-3 and visit for longer. 6-12 months at my favorite one or two places from that year or travel would have been much more fulfilling (although maybe the goodbye would be even more painful?), but then again if I hadn't visited so many places I wouldn't have known which resonated most with me.