Tdsnapshots

Hallo Friends.

I know I’ve been MIA for the past few weeks, but I promise it’s all for good measure. Especially for you all because, drum role please… I’ve been out of the country traveling and getting more cultured. Which means you have a lot of reading to do in the coming months. I’ve been living my best life. First before I tell you where I was, let me give you a brief backstory and share with you what I learned from this crazy adventure.

So here it goes. I quit my job a month ago, packed all I needed for a three week vacation to Europe in a carry on suitcase and enlisted my mom to join me along for an incredible adventure. All with in the span of a week. Right about now your probably wondering Taylor, “What about how expensive that plane ticket will be”, or “where do you plan on staying? Shouldn’t you book hotels weeks in advance”, or maybe you’ll hit me with this very important question, “where in the world do you plan on going, for how long, and how will you jump between country to country?”

I hear you and all of those questions that flowed through your head sure did cross mine, but did I care? Nope. I knew in my heart this was something I needed to do. Plus, my mom was with me, so what’s the worst that could happen?

We didn’t have an end destination in mind and that was the most thrilling part about it all. We did however plan what countries we wanted to visit. Our hit list of countries included: Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic, and The Netherlands.

A big part of the trip was to visit some missionary friends who live in Salzburg, Austria. They dedicate their lives to serving refugees who left their home countries due to crisis situations and came to Austria for a chance of starting over and finding hope. Don’t worry I’ll be writing a separate post about this because it weighs heavy on my heart. Anyways, they had a week availability for my mom and I to come stay with them, so we knew we needed to be in Austria for that specific amount of time, but the rest of the trip was up in the air.

With that in mind we finally had plane tickets booked and a place to stay for the first week of our vacation. All the thanks goes to my mom for that because planning is not in my vocabulary. So the plan was to fly into Amsterdam, then switch to a connecting flight with a final destination of Vienna, Austria. We stayed in Vienna for a day and then took the train 2 hours south/east to Salzburg where we stayed with our friends for the rest of the week.

That was all the planning we had done. The rest of our trip was still unknown. Where we were going, how we were going to get there and where would we sleep when we did get there were some of the problems we had to tackle. And most of the time those problems were solved the day before, or even the day of.

While the thought of planing something only a day in advance made all the alarms go off in my head, thanks to my type A personality. The other side of me, the adventurous side, was psyched beyond belief of how not having any plans could turn into some crazy adventure that would create stories I would one day tell my grandkids.

I conjured some of those stories up in my head. Like, maybe we won’t find a hotel room and would have no other option but to sleep on some random mans houseboat in the middle of Amsterdam. Or maybe we will miss our train stop and find ourselves, who knows…in the country side of Italy. Much to my dismay we found a place to stay with out fail every night. Always were able to secure train/plane tickets and even some how managed to not end up on the streets of some random town because we took the wrong train.

Will all this being said, I think we can learn a lot about life through travel. Sometimes the destination of our life and what we are “destined” to do don”t add up or aren’t necessarily planned. We fall into what we are passionate about because of discovery. Traveling with out any plans and living a life with out any set in stone plans are one in the same. You never know what life will throw at you next. Where God wants you to be next. What job he wants you to work at next.

So the best advice I can give you is don’t get too attached. Don’t turn down opportunities because you are afraid of the unknown and you feel settled. Best of yet, don’t over plan your life. Things, people, jobs, ect. will fall into you life when you need it most. Also, remember when you need it most and when you think you need it most are two different things.

Live the life that makes you feel alive. Live a life that is not attached to long term planning, but better attached to sporadic last minute decisions. Because when you live your life free of planning long term, what is meant to happen will fall into place. Just like it did for my mom and I on our trip. We didn’t have have plans set in stone, instead we went with the flow and guess what? Things fell into place. So, why worry about whats next. Focus on the opportunities in front of you now, live in the moment, and remember planning is overrated. Things will fall into place and if they don’t, at least you’ll have a great story to tell.

X Taylor
Instagram @tdsnapshots

Follow along for the rest of my travel adventures. I plan to post a few of my stories, including where we went in more detail and the joys of the people we meet along the way.