From the title you may wonder what the heck necessitating the use of ropes is.. well that was our same question a couple of nights ago as we were reading the lengthy policy wording for Southen Cross Travel Insurance.
We had nearly decided on Southen Cross for our travel insurer but on reading the fine print it turns out we are not covered for the following:
We had nearly decided on Southen Cross for our travel insurer but on reading the fine print it turns out we are not covered for the following:
- Extreme Sports
- hunting
- parachuting
- rodeo
- competitive downhill snowboarding
- bungy jumping
- mountaineering or rock climbing necessitating of the use of ropes
...and that is just a small portion of the long list. We could have worked around these exclusions, but then Jaz read "Any work (including volunteer work) undertaken, that involves manual activities or work". As we are planning to do mostly volunteering and HelpXchange to get around Europe, this is not really an exclusion that we can cope with!
So it's back to the drawing board with researching Travel Insurance fine print!
The next hurdle seems to be Visa's. We've just heard back from the Dutch Embassy that Jaz is unable to get her Dutch Passport, they seem to have pretty strict rules on dual passports.
Now we have to look at other ways of getting income and being able to settle in Europe. Without a EU passport, our other options that we know about are Working Holiday Visa's and volunteering in exchange for accomodation/ caretaking. We're thinking of trying for a Spanish 1 year Working Holiday Visa; where we can work for 6 months within a year. After that we'll look into a Working Holiday Visa for the Czech Republic as we can apply for it in either Paris or Berlin. Normally you have to be in your home country to apply, but we found the CR doesn't have this requirement! Yay!
Money... ahhhh! After our years of savings being halved into Euro's, we're freaking out. We're selling everything we can bear to part with and saving as much as we can until we leave. We're now researching the most economical way to take money over, whether it be Credit card/ Debit Card/ Travel Card or CashPassport.
All that, along with reading Lonely Planet guides and blogs at any spare moment! Any thoughts or comments about our worries would be choice!
-Rick and Jaz
2 comments:
Czech Republic is mean, but you'll be limited as to what jobs you can do - often schools will only hire EU citizens as teachers.
Don't underestimate getting a visa for UK or Ireland! Being in a country that speaks English is a huge plus (removes loads of stress and makes it heaps easier to make friends), and will mean you can get a much wider range of jobs. Plus the UK one goes for a full two years and you could live in Wales with the crazy Welsh people!! It's super easy to go travelling around Europe from there too.
Credit cards are a great source of cash in an emergency - totally worth getting one. I used that and Visa Travel Money, which my travel agent told me about. It was really good. But there's cards now that store like 5 different currencies, they're really good.
And don't forget to ask travel agents about insurance for volunteer work,] they're paid to know this stuff and they are really useful! STA Travel are amazing with info about working holidays :)
But that's just my 2cents. Love you guys!
I think the Visa travel cards are the best way to go coz you can get them in the currency you need it in and then can check the balances really easily on them through an atm or online. We found it easiest to open a bank account in Aussie before we came here and transferred money over so it was here when we got here but to do this you would need an address in the country you're going to first. Having a bank account set up also helps in terms of ID in a new country as well as it provides a local address even it's not where you are living (we used my uncles address when we got here but weren't living at that address). It also really sucks when you see your money drop significantly with the exchange rate as ours did too but make sure you write a list of things you need to buy once you get over there like phones, transportation etc. and set that money aside, so people will be able to contact you regarding work and what not. It's going to be such an amazing adventure for you guys and will definitely strengthen your marriage and faith coz your spouse and God is pretty much all you will have to start with.
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