Join us, a couple of …

… of Ausländer*, as we embark on a midlife adventure and set up home in a humble abode on a wild and lovely peninsula in Greece. We are Wendy, who is infected with a chronic case of wanderlust and is vivacious and outgoing, and Jonathan, an author and introvert, who just hangs on and enjoys the ride.

We grew up, lived, worked, and raised our children in the Southwestern United States—where we remain rooted. But in 2010 we quit our jobs, sold just about everything we owned, and moved to Berlin with our two daughters. After a stint back in the States we followed Wendy’s teaching career to Sofia, Bulgaria, where we’ve been ever since.

When it was time to leave Sofia, we thought about doing the sensible thing like following jobs back to the U.S. (or Chile). But the U.S. is too damned expensive, we’re on the wrong side of the horrible wealth inequality, our kids are off in college or on their own, we’re not getting any younger, and there was a house in the Pelion region of Greece that cost $200 a month for rent. How could we say no to that?

So now we embark on our journey and you’re invited to come along for the thrilling, sometimes mundane, often challenging, terrifying, and hopefully enlightening experience.

*Auslander: German for foreigner or outsider. It’s not the perfect term for us, but it’s better than expat—we aren’t that glamorous and we have to work for a living—or immigrant, which doesn’t quite fit, either.

Follow along …

… via periodic dispatches which will arrive in your e-mailbox at least once every week. The missives will include unfiltered diary-like entries and observations; essays about travel, the peripatetic lifestyle, the meaning of home, culture, and history; recipes and cooking tutorials; and even photos and videos of Wendy plying the waters of the Pagasetic Gulf on her SUP.

Sign up for free …

… and get 90 percent of the dispatches. Subscribe and get the premium content, too, (i.e those recipes and SUPing videos).

Subscribe to Ausländer

Dispatches from a life, abroad. By Wendy and Jonathan Thompson.

People

Writer, editor, runner, roamer, author of River of Lost Souls, Sagebrush Empire and Behind the Slickrock Curtain.