We are Alex and Tamara
a couple living out of backpacks just to be together.
"We’ll run away on broken shoes and live off of juice. It’s worth it if we make it."
One warm evening in Granada, Spain I sat on a hostel floor scribbling these words in a worn journal. The pages were filled with memories from months of backpacking alone through Europe. I had been ‘that girl’ my whole life, obsessed with becoming perfect in every way imaginable. Ultimately it cracked me and after a long struggle I realized I had no concept of who I was. So I left an apartment, an unfinished college degree and an eating disorder behind. At the time I believed I had given up everything to set out on my search to find myself.
I am Tamara, Danish. He is Alex, American.
He was accustomed to leaving as well. Alex was born an American but with a European heart. America was too fast, too loud, too unreal for who he was. Ultimately his heart dragged him away from his previous life on a wild adventure that lead to a kiss under Granada moonlight.
The very day we met we talked about coincidence, how amazing it is to think that you could walk out your front door any day and meet your soulmate. When he left Spain I realized I needed to chase him. So I did. We crossed countries and oceans to be together, desperately attempting to halt the hands of time whenever we were back in each other’s arms. Somehow time seemed to pass even faster the harder we fought it and we would once again face the anguish of being apart.
We sat by a lake in Austin one sunny day, dreading my looming flight back home. One of our typical intense conversations turned towards priorities in life. During a moment of silence it suddenly dawned upon me that the place I was going back to was not as important to me as the human in front of me. I had found myself within another person, and he was more home to me than anywhere in the world. We could be together if we wanted to, all it would take was the bravery to give up everything else. It seemed a small price to pay. Alex had searched for his place and I had searched for myself. Right here was what we had both been looking for. We had found "us" and together we were home. And come to think of it - we were "old enough to repay and young enough to sell".
There was no question about it really. We quit our jobs, sold our things and each packed a carry-on sized backpack. In the beginning of August 2014 we took our first flight from Copenhagen to Granada, Spain where we had first met. Since then our journey has taken us across the planet. Now here we are, somewhere in the world finding home in hidden corners of beautiful cities. If we stay out here for long enough, if we gather enough documentation, then maybe we'll be able to get Alex a spouse visa to stay with me in Denmark. It's a long shot and quite ironic, but it seems there's no other way for us to ever be able to stay together than if we run away indefinitely. We want to share our life trying to out-run visa laws, in the pursuit of love and finding our place in the world.
Complete Honesty Mode.
Here's the whole story of how we met...
