11.09.22

I saw a post recently from a friend who was in Athens, and she shared a few things that showed that she is traveling as a tourist, rather than a traveler, which is perfectly fine. Here’s the tells.. .

• she’s staying in a boutique hotel…which is great when you are on vacation, but usually not practical–or affordable—when you are a traveler. For those that have deep pockets and good cash flow, a boutique hotel is great, but sometimes not practical for 2, 4, 6 weeks or more.
• she is near music everywhere (and wanted to be)…which is GREAT for a few days, but when you LIVE somewhere, music–especially late at night–gets annoying. In Antalya, Turkey we had a great room which unfortunately was close to a nightclub. About 6:00 pm the music started and went into the night and thankfully the city required music to END at midnight. We have stayed other places that have no restrictions, and music would drone on until 3, 4, even 5 o’clock into the morning.

I have written about this distinction in the past, but now that Kat and I are going on 5 years as nomads I thought it worth a revisit. Travelers live a whole different lifestyle because for them/ us, travel is not a holiday, but part of life. After 26 countries in four years we still have many more to go, and will be in number 27, Albania, shortly.

Another term that can be confusing concerns the difference between Residency–both short term and long-term– and Citizenship. As a general rule, and certainly throughout most of Europe, most visitors can stay for 90 days. If you are familiar with the term “Schengen,” it is a collective of 26 (soon to be 27 countries) that all share common border guidelines. That means you can travel back and forth between those countries a little easier than crossing most borders in the world. The bad news is that these collective countries are tied together as one so most visitors can only stay for 90 days out of a collective 180 days: three months out of every six-month period. If you stay in France for 89 days, you can only stay in Italy for one more. There is more to it than that, so here’s my old Schengen Chess Game report.

If someone wanted to stay beyond 90 days, the easiest step is to gain residency. That gives you the legal right to stay longer, usually one year, sometimes longer. It does NOT grant citizenship, nor the right to a passport. That residency process can be very cumbersome, and we started it in a few countries, and got it in Turkey, which was quite reasonable.

The other option, which is harder to get, and only under specific circumstances, is citizenship. Many people do this through their family bloodline, called Right of Descendancy, which I also covered a while ago. That rule book is also very fluid, but worth considering if you have parents or grandparents from a country you would like to live in. Details of all these are available online, but remember that rules and requirements change, and many who post information are legal firms looking to be hired by you to do the work. Which may be worthwhile.