Ask Us Anything: How Much Travel Planning Do We Do?

Also: What non-English-speaking countries do we recommend? And how did our first few nomading years differ from the last?

For the audio version of this article, read by the author, go here.

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Welcome to a new feature here on Brent and Michael Are Going Places: Ask Us Anything — a column where we’ll answer all your travel-related questions. If you ask nicely, we might even answer your non-travel questions too!

Have a question for a future column? Ask it here.

How big a challenge has nomading been? Do you intend your writing to be merely inspirational or could anyone do what you do? — Thom

A great question to kick off this series!

Not that challenging, honestly. We don’t see ourselves as especially adventurous. We’re just two guys who took a leap of faith into this new lifestyle of nomading — only to find out it was much easier than we expected.

Part of this column will be about that.

In other words, we do see our writing as inspirational — and also informational. Because we think more people should know about this lifestyle as a possibility at least.

Of course, nomading does mean making some sacrifices, and there are definitely some challenges. We’ll write about these things in this column too.

Of all the places you have been where English is not the primary language, which have been the easiest places for English speakers to get by? — Dave

This is a really good example of how our travels have been so “easy.”

Brent and I have studied different languages, but we both only speak one language even halfway well: English. When we set out on our travels seven years ago, we were very worried about traveling to countries where they don’t speak English.

But then we traveled to those countries and quickly learned that English is often widely spoken even in these places, especially among young people. We’ll often compliment a local person on their flawless English, and they almost always laugh and say the same thing: “I learned it watching American movies and television!”

And if English isn’t widely spoken — like, say, in rural areas in Turkey or certain cities in Spain — there is always Google Translate.