Going Home After Two Years on the Road by Joshua and Joana

We travelled the world on our Honda CRF250Ls for two years. We left Germany in 2020 and rode along the east coast of Africa to South Africa. From there we flew our bikes to Turkey where the journey east continued. Our route took us through Iran, Armenia, Georgia and back to Turkey before weaving through the Balkans and finally returning home to Germany.

We made a conscious decision to really take our time getting home by riding slowly towards Germany through Eastern Europe. So, we had many miles to prepare ourselves mentally and play out our arrival over and over again in our heads.

But it all happened so fast. Within a week, we had crossed the border into Germany from Poland, visited some friends on our way to Hesse and suddenly found ourselves surrounded by family and friends in our hometown.

A small welcome party awaited us, everyone was happy to hug us again and we were happy to have all our loved ones around us again. After all, we had been looking forward to this moment for some time.

But soon after the party we were quickly pushed back into everyday life. But it wasn’t the same. Everything felt… unusual, and we had to get used to being back in Germany.

For the first few weeks we slept on our camping mats, cooked on the camping stove and sat on camping chairs in our living room. The document war started soon after. Registering at the employment office, looking for a job and re-admission to the health insurance company were battles we had to take on. We had also already published our book about the first part of the trip, so of course we wanted to present it and sell it too.

While Joana started working full time again after about five weeks, Joshua organised a lot of talks, motorcycle fairs and meetings where we spoke about our trip. This massively helped us get by in everyday life because we were able to experience and process the individual stories again among like-minded people.

But the most difficult thing for us at the beginning was getting along with some of the opinions and attitudes of people back home. Our horizons have naturally broadened over the two-year journey, while people back home haven’t had the same experience. So, we can no longer understand some settings, problems or discussions.

In situations like this we quickly learned that it’s best to just stay quiet. Equally, it’s difficult for some people here to understand our points of view too as they don’t know what we’ve experienced.

So, you just end up having less to do with them as you don’t have that much to say to each other anymore – and it’s a shame because some of those people were good friends.

We had noticed this before on previous trips. But the core of our friends and, of course, our family are still behind us.

Now, half a year after returning home, we can finally say that we’re settling in. It’s not all so new and exhausting anymore. Our apartment is now comfortable, going to work is no longer difficult, all the documents and paperwork are in order and we’re glad to have all our family and friends around us again – they’ve always helped us through wistful days.

And as a nice end to those two years together on the road, boyfriend and girlfriend have just become husband and wife.

Joshua and Joana