I bought a satellite dish. Five months later, I gave up my apartment.
August 12, 2026.
I was standing in my empty apartment, about to close the door for the last time.
The furniture was gone. My belongings had been sold, stored, or packed into my motorhome.
There was no new apartment waiting for me. No moving company. No new address.
I was excited.
And, to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what the hell I was doing.
Because five months earlier, none of this had been part of the plan.
I hadn’t decided to become a digital nomad. I wasn’t running away from my job. And I certainly hadn’t spent years dreaming of a minimalist lifestyle involving inspirational sunsets and suspiciously clean campervans.
I’d simply taken a satellite dish on a road trip.
And the bloody thing worked.
It Started With a Road Trip
In March 2026, I set off in my motorhome, the Ropewalker, on a journey through the Balkans towards the Peloponnese in Greece.
It was supposed to be a trip. Nothing more.
There was just one complication.
I had to work.
I’m an online lecturer. My classroom consists of a laptop, a headset, and a reliable internet connection. My students don’t particularly care where I’m sitting, as long as I turn up on time and do my job.
The laptop and headset were easy.
Reliable internet was another matter.
Anyone who has tried to work from a campsite knows that Wi-Fi can be an interesting test of human patience. Mobile networks are usually better, until you find yourself somewhere beautiful and remote, where the nearest cell tower apparently retired several years ago.
Missing a weather forecast is one thing.
Losing your connection halfway through a lesson is quite another.
So I brought Starlink.
I expected it to be useful. Perhaps good enough for video calls, emails, and preparing lessons.
What I didn’t expect was that it would outperform my internet connection back home in Germany.
But that’s exactly what happened.
Five-Star Internet. Ice-Cold Plumbing.
Somewhere in the Bosnian countryside, I encountered one of the more memorable showers of my travels.
It consisted of a large water tank, a corrugated metal cabin, a couple of curtains, and a rope.
The operating instructions were refreshingly simple.
Pull the rope.
Water comes down.
You get wet.
Unfortunately, the water temperature was somewhere between miserable and a personal insult.
But when you’ve been travelling long enough and start smelling sufficiently unpleasant, your standards become remarkably flexible.
I used it.
And afterwards, I felt clean.
That’s all a shower really needs to accomplish.
Fortunately, Bosnia also offered a traditional response to the temperature problem.
Two or three glasses of Slivovic.
Not exactly central heating, but certainly helpful in improving one’s attitude towards the situation.
And here’s the ridiculous part.
While I was adapting to the plumbing arrangements of rural Bosnia, my Starlink connection was delivering faster internet than I had in my apartment in Germany.
I could happily live without hot water. I could even live without the internet.
But I couldn’t do my job without it.
And that distinction was about to change my life.
The Question I Couldn’t Ignore
As the journey continued, something became increasingly obvious.
I could work from almost anywhere.
I could teach my classes, prepare lessons, communicate with clients, and run my business.
The view outside my window changed.
My working day didn’t have to.
And somewhere along the road to Greece, a rather inconvenient question appeared.
If I can do my job from here, why exactly do I need an apartment?
At first, it was just a thought.
The sort of idea you entertain over a coffee before returning to the sensible business of being a responsible adult.
But it refused to go away.
My apartment was comfortable. Familiar. Convenient.
Yet my work no longer required me to be there.
I wasn’t trying to escape responsibility. I enjoyed my job and intended to keep doing it.
I simply began to realise that my profession and my home address didn’t have to be connected.
Starlink hadn’t given me freedom.
It had removed one of the practical obstacles to choosing how I wanted to live.
And that turned out to be a rather significant difference.
More Than a Change of Address
There was something else I began to notice during that journey.
I enjoyed the places I visited, of course. But increasingly, it was the ordinary moments that stayed with me.
A conversation at a campsite. A local meal. A few words exchanged in a language I barely understood.
Even a ridiculous shower in the Bosnian countryside.
I found myself becoming more interested in how people lived than in how many famous places I could visit.
I liked discovering local routines, trying unfamiliar food, listening to stories, and occasionally realising that the way I’d always done something wasn’t necessarily the only sensible way.
Sometimes I understood what was happening.
Sometimes I didn’t have the faintest idea.
Both could be interesting.
I wasn’t developing a grand philosophy about how everyone ought to travel.
I was simply discovering what made travelling meaningful to me.
And I wanted more of it.
Not necessarily more countries.
More time. More encounters. More opportunities to experience everyday life somewhere different.
The idea of returning to my apartment after every journey began to seem less appealing than the possibility of simply continuing.
Making It Real
Of course, deciding that you might not need an apartment is considerably easier than actually getting rid of one.
There were belongings to sort through, arrangements to make, paperwork to deal with, and all the other administrative delights that come with changing your life.
I still had a business to run.
Bills wouldn’t disappear simply because I was parked beside the sea.
And living in a motorhome wouldn’t magically prevent bad weather, mechanical problems, or the occasional spectacularly stupid decision.
But the biggest question had already been answered.
Could I work reliably while travelling?
Yes.
I’d tested it.
Not in theory. Not by watching someone on YouTube explain how wonderful remote working could be while sitting in a perfectly staged campervan.
I’d actually done it.
The rest was a matter of making a decision and dealing with the consequences.
So I gave notice on my apartment.
And gradually, what had started as an unexpected thought during a road trip became a real plan.
I began calling it Project Nomad.
Not a holiday. Not an escape from work.
Just an attempt to build a life in which I could keep doing the things that mattered to me, without being tied to one particular place.
Day Zero
August 12, 2026.
Five months after setting off on what was supposed to be just another road trip, I was back in my old apartment.
For the last time.
The rooms were empty.
Outside, the Ropewalker was waiting.
I didn’t know whether I would enjoy living in a motorhome permanently.
I didn’t know where I’d spend the winter, which places I’d discover, or which problems were waiting somewhere down the road.
There was uncertainty.
Quite a bit of it, actually.
But there was anticipation, too.
I was looking forward to finding out what this life might become.
Then came the final moment.
I handed the keys to my landlord.
He looked at me and asked a perfectly reasonable question.
“So, where are you moving to?”
I smiled.
“Wherever life feels right.”
I walked out and closed the door behind me.
For the last time.
I had no idea where this journey would take me.
But I couldn’t wait to find out.
Day Zero of Project Nomad had begun.