We’re back with another post! This time, we’re writing about our 2023 summer in Europe. Before officially starting our honeymoon in France, we first headed to Germany to see Stefan’s family along the way. See below for a video of our travels as well as a write-up with photos! As we were planning our trip to Europe, castles made it to the very top of my must-see list. I had never been to Europe, but I’ve certainly seen photos of beautiful German castles and I loved hearing about how Stefan used to explore them when he was younger and pretend he was in sword fights with his brother. There are…

We did it!! Just a little over 2 years (and 1 month :/) after parting ways in New Zealand, we’ve finally caught up on our blog publishing. It was right at the end of July 2020 that we returned to Auckland from our final adventure in Northland. The last days before Stefan’s flight were spent finalizing his itinerary once he was back in the US: having left his car with Dagmar’s parents in Cincinnati, he had a 3-day road trip to get to his aunt’s house in Denver. That planning was substantially complicated by the reality of having to actually deal with COVID after so many months of avoiding it,…

Once we had returned to Auckland, it was time to prepare for our final adventure before Stefan had to leave New Zealand! Having explored the highlights of the rest of the country, the last one on our list was Northland, the peninsula extending above Auckland. This had actually been on our list from the very beginning–known for its beaches + warm weather, and with place names like the “Bay of Islands,” you can imagine our interest was piqued! In fact, before we decided way back in February that traveling south > north as winter approached made a lot more sense than the opposite, we were eyeing HelpXs in Northland (principally,…

After our time in the Coromandel and some 5 months after we had left Auckland, we were back where our journey had begun! Not for long, however: this was just a brief stopover to catch our breath for a couple of days before heading out on our final adventure before Stefan had to start his job back in Denver. Our next post will talk all about that final trip, so this one will be a bit sparse: truth be told, it seems like we spent most of our time eating out, which doesn’t leave much to write about! On the list of objectives was finding a place to get Dagmar…

Having completed the rather exhausting Pinnacles Walk, we continued our journey which was slowly taking us back to Auckland. Rather than going straight there, however, we took some time to explore the Coromandel, the large peninsula east of Auckland and home to some of the North Island’s more interesting landmarks. In order to expore the peninsula, we looped around to spend several days in… Hikuai Refreshing our memory on Hikuai, we had to laugh when reading the description on Wikipedia, which includes the following statements: “It is prone to heavy precipitation and floods…which occasionally causes impassibility. The cellphone and electricity coverage is patchy but is intact.” As luck would have…

After our brief stopover in Rotorua, we were ready to make our way to the coast! Tauranga Still picking up the sticks from our Tongariro Crossing rescheduling, we had a variety of 11th hour lodging rearrangements. An AirBnB we had booked at the last minute canceled on us at the last(er?) minute, and we scrambled to find a same-day replacement from the Rotorua tourist information office. Fortunately, that replacement was hosted by an incredibly gracious couple who not only were quick to let us stay, but also prepared us fantastic continental breakfasts every morning with homemade muesli, yogurt, coffee, bread, and jam. Where so many places the website hosts are…

The Tongariro Crossing was something of a bittersweet turning point for us. Not only was it at the top of our list of goals we’d created before coming to New Zealand and something we had timed our post-COVID travels around, it marked the beginning of the last phase of our mutual travels around the country. We completed the Crossing on July 3rd, and Stefan had a flight booked for July 30th to go back and start the job he’d accepted at the University of Denver. Luckily for him, this was several weeks later than initially anticipated: he had originally calculated a month to move to Denver and find housing, but…

To start this post, let’s wind the clock back to 2018. We know the time is starting to blur together since it’s taken us over a year and a half to talk about our 2020 adventure, but 2018 was actually our first trip to New Zealand (well, actually Stefan’s third; his first two times were while studying abroad in Australia back in 2011). That had been a family vacation organized to celebrate the 70th birthday of Stefan’s dad, who had always wanted to visit. It was actually heading to the airport back from this trip that we first heard about the Working Holiday Visa which we eventually took advantage of…

After a very refreshing stay in the beautiful New Plymouth region, our next destination was the North Island’s interior. As we pulled out of our AirBnB and started towards the highway, we noticed a hitchhiker standing in the pouring rain on the street corner. With New Zealand having just recently emerged after so many weeks of the tough COVID situation, and with us having benefited so much from the kindness of strangers, we were feeling generous….or, more likely, just desperate to talk to someone else after so many weeks of isolation! Whatever the reasoning, we decided to offer a lift. The hitchhiker, Chris, was in his 20s, of Samoan/Maori descent…