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Travelling Slow with Mozart: Interview with Jeanne from SoulTravelers3 (Part 1)

Plenty of parents take their kids travelling. But how many parents go into early retirement, sell their home, and head out with their young child to travel the world, slowly and for as long as they can?

That’s precisely what Jeanne and her husband are doing with their daughter Mozart (her internet nickname). Since the middle of 2006, they have been travelling through Europe and northern Africa – with no end in sight.

In this interview, Jeanne shares why they decided to embark on an open-ended, long-term travel adventure. In part 2 (to be posted early next week), Jeanne talks about some of the ups and downs of travelling as a family.

When you set out on this trip, what were your goals and ambitions? Have these changed over time?

Our main marriage and family goal is to co-create heaven on earth together (which you can see on our logo), so this journey just seemed like the next step for us. We were pretty open ended with our travel goals for this journey, so not tied down to specific time frames since freedom is our main objective. Given the state of the ever weakening dollar, it would have been more logical to start on another continent than Europe since we choose to live on a tight budget. Our child’s education was and is a primary goal, so we thought the rich history in Europe made it our first choice to start even with the dollar challenges. We actually used that to our advantage by getting mostly out of the dollar in 2005 as we felt it would continue to weaken for some time. I see it has a blip up now, but with the deficit and crisis, I think the trend is downward, until things balance out.

We wanted our child to be raised as a global citizen as we think that is something that is very important for children of the 21st century.

We wanted to live large on little while being shrewd in our business and investments, so that we could actually increase our net worth as we travel. There was some risk in our strategy, but thus far this area has worked out well. The changes in the world economy and those continuing to come, impacted and will continue to impact our travel choices. It might have been easier to do this in Southeast Asia, but it is not the area that pulled us the strongest. We thought if we were thoughtful in our choices and took a risk, that we might be able to have our cake and eat it too and thus far it has worked.

We did have a general idea of how long we would be in Europe and we have added to that. We found that we really love Europe and our style of traveling mostly by RV for about 6 or 7 months following the good weather, then immersing deeply in a small, authentic village in a rental village house in Andalusia, Spain for a warm winter.

Our goals have changed slightly because of what we have learned as we traveled. We find that slow travel is by far the best for a family and that Europe is large with so many great things to see and experience. Our mode of travel also makes it cheaper than we anticipated, so we will add on time to Europe.

We had to cut short our time in Eastern Europe due to my taking an ambulance in Vienna to a hospital with a severe loss of blood from a bloody nose that cost us several weeks while I recovered. We still want to see those places and others, so will not leave Europe until we feel complete.

We also were not sure how we would visit Africa and South America, and are still looking into those logistics. We originally thought we would sell our RV when we left Europe as we can sell it back to the company where we bought it or we also have a buyer in Spain who is interested. We so love traveling by RV as our main mode of travel, that now we are seriously looking into shipping our RV to Africa for a long stay after Europe and then onto South America.

As parents, why did you want to make travel and seeing the world such a significant part of Mozart’s childhood?

We wanted our child to be raised as a global citizen as we think that is something that is very important for children of the 21st century. Travel has always been an important education, but is needed even more today as our world shrinks due to technology. We went to great lengths to raise our child as a bilingual from birth (neither parent was a fluent bilingual) and always had plans to immerse her in her second language, literature and culture.

We are big believers in experiential learning and life as a field trip allows endless opportunities for learning through hands on experiences. We knew travel would be a good experience for her education, but the extraordinary, limitless opportunities and scope of learning through travel has blown our minds. We expected a lot, but it is far richer than we ever anticipated.

Mozart has always been a fast learner (taught herself to read at 2 and was reading Harry Potter on her own at 4 etc), so that impacted our decision as well. We felt that even the best schools would limit and confine her learning abilities and would not be a good fit for her. We homeschool her year-round in English, with curiculum and reading materials that are connected to our travels. Thus she can be reading such things as Homer in Greece, Astrid Lindgren in Sweden, Harry Potter in England etc, which grounds the travel experiences and opens up greater learning in both the cultures and the writing!

She was reading her beloved Homer and Greek myths when we toured ancient Troy, Ephesus, Pumukale, Aphrodisias, Pergaman in Turkey, saw Agamenans mask and parthenon in Athens, toured Knossis in Crete, mycenia, Satornini etc in Greece. She was reading archeological and gladiator books in the Roman coloseum and Pompeii in Italy. They are not just names in books to her, but real places that she knows well by our slow, deliberate travel. I can not even fill in all the names of the ancient civilization sites that she has visited. How many kids get to pretend they are an acheologist and dig up ancient shells in Troy while touring with an archeologist there or watch and talk to working archeologist at Ephesus and Aphrodisias?

Not very many adults have been to all of these places, how can it help but mold her life? It seems like a normal life to her, but it is rich beyond compare and our hope is that it will enrich her life and those she touches. How many 6 year old kids ride in on a camel to the Sahara to give a violin concert to 6o Berber kids who live without running water and never have heard a violin? We brought nutritious food as well since it was a service and cultural connecting purpose. That is an experience that she (and they) will never forget, despite their young ages and I think will affect the future.

As she gets older, we plan to do more and more service projects as there is much to be learned in that as well. We also volunteer with the award winning non-profit Reach The World that connects disadvantaged students to world travelers and we take many schools with us virtually. These are kids that will probably never travel, so can learn through our experiences and can especially relate to Mozart which makes these foreign places seem more real. If your readers are interesting in donating to Reach The World to support this important work, please do so in our name.

We also volunteer with Teddy Bears Around The World that connects school kids from around the world. We have been amazed by the opportunities available for connecting and collaborating with other students and home school families from around the world. Recently I did an interview with Steve Hargadon from Classroom 2.0 and am excited about what is happening on this level in education.

We did not fully realize until we started this trip that Mozart’s education would include around the world wide web2.0 as well as the world. We have been astounded by the opportunities through web 2.0 that enriches Mozart’s world travel and allows us to connect and collaborate with others around the world. As she gets older this will come more and more into play, but it is already significant in our travels. She can take an online workshop with The Lukeion Project after touring an area in Greece, do regular interviews with school kids on another continent via skype webcam, radio interviews with a show about traveling kids and education or take piano lessons with a teacher on another continent through skype. We were quite shocked when our first YouTube video got almost a million views and the people we met through it and our others.

We feel we really have the best of all worlds. I did have some concerns about her education before we took off but now that we are starting on our third year of travel, I am convinced that she could get no better education than she is getting. We also really appreciate her time in the local school in our winter village in Spain. She leaned reading and writing in Spanish better than any other method would allow. She also gets the social aspect of spending 5 or 6 months out of every year with the same kids, so has that level of normalcy with things like play dates, sleep overs, football practice and Flamenco lessons.

Stay posted for the second part of Jeanne’s interview, in which she talks about some of the ups and downs of travelling as a family. You can subscribe to TravelBlogs for free to receive new posts as emails or in your feed reader.

Visit SoulTravelers3 or watch their videos on YouTube.

Subscribe to TravelBlogs Posted by Eric Daams on November 13th, 2008 in Interviews.
Tags: Africa, Europe, family travel, Morocco, parenting, travel with kids