My name is Katja. I am 23 years old and I was born and raised in Düsseldorf, Germany. I’ve always loved traveling the world and was lucky enough to be able to start traveling at a young age (as you can see in that picture of me as a little globetrotter). I just love discovering new places, exploring new cities, and experiencing different cultures.
The Trip that Started it all
Up until August of 2018, I had only made trips for up to a few weeks (well, except for 10th grade, when I spent half a year going to school in Toronto, Canada). But a few years ago, I decided that I would take a gap year in between my Bachelor’s and my Master’s degree to go traveling for a few months. And in 2018, that time was finally here! I had finished university at the end of June 2018 and made my way to Bali at the end of August. Bali was the first stop of nine months of traveling by myself.
As you can imagine, I was quite excited about this. Never having backpacked before, always having to plan everything down to the detail, and being quite introverted at times, this was going to be a big challenge for me. But I did it, I managed to survive living out of my backpack for months, learned to go with the flow and made some amazing memories with great strangers who became friends.
Safe to say that on my trip, I got bitten by the travel bug. Even though I returned to Germany in June of 2019 and started doing my M.Sc. in Performance Psychology just three months later, I still try to go on many fun adventures. After all, I spontaneously decided to move to Edinburgh for my Master’s degree, moving here just 7 weeks later never having been to Scotland before.
This Blog
When researching destinations (of course I did, I want to be prepared for everything after all!), I had to read in a lot of different places in order to find out everything I wanted to know. That’s why one of my intentions for this blog is to give detailed guides to the places I’ve been to.
In addition, I’ve been eating a plant-based diet since April of 2016 and I’m usually traveling alone, both of which can be challenging on the road. So I will be giving tips on that as well. Finally, I’m going to write about my journey and the experiences I’ve made to keep my friends and family (and hopefully you!) updated on what I’m doing.
To get to know me even better, here are some random facts about me:
- I am an introvert. When I am in a new situation/ surrounding/ group, I always observe at first before joining in on the conversation. At times, I also find it hard to approach strangers to ask them for something or just make new contacts. (Traveling helped me to get better at that, though!)
- Yet I love to be on stage; I’ve never missed an opportunity to perform something in front of an audience. As a kid, I wanted to be a singer, dancer, and actress.
- I’m a sucker for self-development books and would love to be a coach, motivational speaker, and/or author someday.
- I’m a perfectionist which can suck. I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself during high school and university which resulted in quite a few breakdowns. Luckily, I’ve been much better about it during my Master’s degree.
- I’m an optimist (most of the time). I’m very trusting that things are going to work out. Some may even say I’m naïve; I only applied to one school in Canada and one university (for both Bachelor’s and Master’s degree) – but so far, it has always worked out.
- I’ve been to 35 countries so far but obviously plan on increasing that number.
- New Zealand is the furthest I’ve ever been from home. The longest time I’ve ever been away from home was 9 months during my backpacking trip.
- I love living in the city but when it comes to traveling, I’d take beautiful nature over a cool city anytime.
I think that’s it for now. If you have any more questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. You can do so here or click on the social media icons that will bring you to all my profiles.
Please stay tuned to hear about all of my future adventures!
