In January 2024, we left Sweden behind. We quit our jobs, sold our penthouse apartment in Uppsala, and let go of almost all our belongings. Much of it was sold, some was dismantled and packed away into storage. The rest was carefully packed into two backpacks — everything we needed to carry our new life.
This is the story of why we chose to leave Sweden behind to travel full-time and create a life with more freedom.
For many, it sounds crazy. For us, it was the only thing that felt right.
Behind us, we left a long chapter of slow mornings together, the sound of the coffee machine humming as the first sunlight hit our kitchen above the rooftops of Uppsala. We would drink our coffee from Moomin mugs and then go for walks along the frozen Svartbäck River.
A now-empty apartment is all that remains. The apartment that, just a week earlier, was filled with laughter and voices from our going-away party now echoes with silence. We don’t even have time to hand over the keys to the new owner before we need to check in for our flight.
n the fall of 2023, we both quit our jobs, sold our penthouse apartment in Uppsala, our car, and all our furniture, and packed everything we owned into a few moving boxes that are now sitting in storage, gathering dust. We officially swapped our 57 square meters — along with its view of a concrete backyard — for the entire world as our backyard.
Our home, whatever it may look like in the months or years ahead, will still be our home, whether it’s a bed in a shared hostel room, a tent, a campervan, or the homes of people who have warmly welcomed us into theirs.
Ever since we landed at Arlanda after our first backpacking trip, we had been dreaming about this — the day we could travel again, but this time without a time limit. Nothing (except our families) telling us we had to come back. Our bodies were craving something completely extraordinary.
For restless souls, routines can feel like prison bars, holding you trapped inside a cardboard box made of concrete within a concrete house. Don’t get us wrong — we loved every square meter of our apartment, the location, the fact that it was our home. But at the same time, we couldn’t shake the constant feeling of being stuck. Of not moving forward. Of waking up every morning, leaving for work at seven, coming home at five, and always asking ourselves: “Is this it? Do we really have to live like everyone else just because it’s expected of us?”
There was guilt in leaving everything and everyone behind (because we miss you too). But sometimes you have to follow your own path, no matter how much it hurts. It’s impossible to fully explain, impossible to truly understand, how you can leave the people you love behind in order to follow your own way.
Guilt over missing milestones in our families’ and friends’ lives — birthdays, school graduations, weddings, and even funerals.
And yet, it’s impossible to silence that voice inside that keeps screaming, or the pull that drags you further away from the hamster wheel, from the bubble of manufactured safety. The anxiety of trying to meet the expectations of the world. The stress of fitting into a norm that feels more and more distant, and increasingly impossible to reach.
But as time went on, the feeling became almost unbearable. It itched in our fingers, in our entire bodies. The restlessness we both carry grew too strong to ignore. That autumn, the only time we truly felt good was during a week of hiking in Sarek. We were back in calmness. In stillness.And then again — weeks and months of not feeling a sense of belonging to anything.
Marika was on full-time sick leave, while Daniel worked extra shifts at his job and at home, trying to tie up the final loose ends of our dismantled life.Now we dream of peace again. Of stillness in motion. Of being able to breathe freely once more. Of living without constant demands.
At the same time, we are grateful for the six years we had back in Sweden — years where we made new friends, spent time with old ones, and shared life with our families while also welcoming new family members into the world.
Many people think it’s unnecessary, or even foolish, to leave Sweden. We’ve been told more than once that we’re crazy for giving up stable lives and secure jobs. But we realized that the life we had built didn’t suit us as well as we had long tried to convince ourselves it did. Because no matter how you twist and turn yourself, you don’t always fit into the square-shaped world we live in.
The final months in Sweden blended together, and the last weeks became a kind of race — trying to see everyone we cared about, selling everything we owned, packing it into a few moving boxes, and deep-cleaning 57 square meters. The last night in Sweden we barely slept fifteen minutes after playing Tetris in the storage unit. The night before that, barely three hours. In the final week overall, we only got a few hours of sleep each night.
And already after just one week away, the guilt crept in — guilt over not missing what we had left behind. Instead, we miss what we have yet to experience.
We want to get lost. We want to feel the euphoria of traveling blindly. Of taking the wrong bus. Of getting off at the wrong stop. Of being misunderstood by taxi drivers and ending up at the wrong hotel with tuk-tuk drivers. Of changing hotels in the middle of the night because of bed bugs, of being double-booked, of not knowing where we’ll sleep.
We want to discover timeless places and walk paths far away from the noise and rush of the Western world.
Maybe that is what draws us the most. Not the perfect days, but the unexpected ones.
For the first time in a long time, it feels like the world is wide open in front of us.
And the adventure has only just begun!
