Why I left Zagreb and moved to Spain?

For a long time I haven’t posted anything on my blog and there’s reasons for that. I won’t get into the way too personal details, but I do feel like I want to explain at least why I left Zagreb. Why I didn’t buy land somewhere in the Balkans, because yes, I really really love this part of Europe and for a few years I really really thought that was where I wanted to live.

Let’s travel back to 2019. End of 2019 I got a job offer, a remote function for an online travel agency. I took this opportunity to start earning some money. For years I had been living on a very small budget, based on donations I got through my blog. That was amazing, it gave me the possibility to do what I loved and my “job” was sharing that. All good, but when I say small budget, I mean really small. Not more than 100,- EUR a month. Although it came with a lot of freedom, it also had its limitations as you probably can imagine. Besides that, I completed my Via Dinarica journey (I hiked the White, Green and Blue Trail plus several alternative routes and the extensions in Kosovo, North Macedonia and Albania) and I needed a change. The online job was the change. Oh my.

Lock down

Shortly after I started working, the world shut down. Not only my world, but yes the whole world. Of course I’m talking about the Corona-virus, the COVID-19 pandemic. Until then I had been taking my laptop with me and worked while home sitting in Mavrovo and Sarajevo, visiting friends in The Netherlands, the UK and Zagreb. But in Zagreb I got stuck. Life moved inside. I worked from home. As you might remember, the borders were closed, traveling wasn’t possible anymore. So, I focused on work. My world became very small. I stayed in there until June 2022.

There has been a little adventure here and there, I rode a cargo bike from Amsterdam to Zagreb (while working almost full-time online), I hiked the Via Adriatica in Istria, walked the Camino Krk on the island of Krk and I visited a friend on his homestead in the Dalmatian mountains. But that was about it. And I didn’t write about it, because I was already spending a lot of time working my laptop-job. I’m not even sure if I posted things on Instagram then, I don’t think so.

June 2022

I couldn’t stand it no longer. Not another summer in the city, this was not the life I had in mind when I started working an online job. I wanted to be able to move around. Naturally, I got on my bike. I cycled from Zagreb to Gdansk where I took the ferry to Sweden. Right on time for the Mid Summer party my friends near Stockholm organized. Such a wonderful time!

Because of the extremely long summer days, it was easy to ride my bike and get enough working hours in. I got up early, biked a few hours, opened my laptop at 9AM, worked 4-8 hours, got back on my bike for a few more hours and headed towards the next camping spot. Oh wild camping in Sweden is amazing! Somewhere in the South of Sweden I took a ferry to Germany and continued my trip further South towards the Alps. It was somewhere in the Italian Alps that I decided to quit my job. I had saved up enough money to last for a while and it was simply not worth the stress to continue working a job that was not making me happy.

Zagreb

Okay, now I’m actually coming closer to the part where I’m gonna tell why I didn’t go back to my life in Zagreb. In Zagreb I shared an apartment, but I didn’t want or could move back in. My life in Zagreb started with the lock down, as I said, I got stuck. But when the borders (sort of) opened, I still didn’t leave. For a while I maybe thought I wanted to stay, build up my life there, look for land on the countryside, but if I’m honest, I didn’t only got stuck because of the lock down. I was stuck. It wasn’t a great period and it was not easy to break out.

Once I got back on my bike, cycled a few months through Europe and quit my job, it felt like I escaped just in time. I’d like to think I avoided another burn-out, but I actually felt completely exhausted. Mentally.

My stuff was still in Zagreb. I had accumulated more things than I intended to, but not too much to fit in a van. That was my plan, van life. Looking for land while living in a van. A year earlier I bought a Volkswagen T4, but it needed repairs. I took the T4 to the mechanic, waited and waited and waited. Went on that bike trip, but when I came back, nothing had changed. The mechanic never did its job, he left my van rotting away and I found it in undrivable state when I came to see what was happening. I got 500,- EUR from the mechanic for the metal, but that was not even a little consolation. My back-plan was gone.

Looking for land

I’ve been looking for land in Croatia, but at that time it wasn’t possible for foreigners to buy rural or agricultural land in Croatia. I would have to buy a house on the country side, something that was much more expensive and not really what I wanted. Another issue with buying land in Croatia and all over the Balkans, is the fact that there’s often several people owning part of one plot of land. Sometimes it’s divided, but oftentimes it’s just that there are lots of people registered to that property and you will have to find all these people willing to sell the land to you. That’s very difficult, even for locals. If you find land, usually the plots are small, because they have been divided amongst different family members. It is not uncommon that you will have to buy many different plots from many different people so that you would have an acre or two. A lot of hassle and a lot of paperwork and again, foreigners couldn’t even buy rural or agricultural land. Legally.

My savings weren’t enough, there were too many legal restrictions and I simply did not have the energy to enter the bureaucracy hell in Croatia or Bosnia where it would be even worse. Sure there are people who’ve done it before me, but not that many. I couldn’t find information online, the information I did get, was in Croatian and that made it even more complicated. So, I gave up.

Homebase

I gave up looking for land in the Balkans, but I still had the dream to create a homestead. A homebase somewhere on the countryside, where I could live and grow food and build a tiny house. A place where I could welcome people, host friends and family and who knows what else. Preferably somewhere close to the mountains, but with mild winters, Mediterranean. The misty months in Zagreb really did do me no good. I need daylight. Naturally Spain and Portugal came on my radar.

Before I started the actual property hunt, I spent almost two year in Spain. I needed time. Time to process, time to recover. Time to figure out what I wanted, what I needed and of course where I wanted all of that. I cycled around in Spain, when I got bored with roads, I hiked across mountains. I did some volunteer work and started to learn Spanish. Somewhere along the road, I picked up climbing again and I realized that I had missed that a lot. So yeah, I’ve been all over the place, but I did find what I was looking for.

I don’t have the keys yet, but I’m super excited and so happy I actually found a place where I can see myself living. I’ve never been so sure about a property or a location as I am now. And I can’t wait to get started.