riverside_maddie_and_shelby_raw_audio_sophie_epton_s_stud_0274_clean
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​[00:00:00] 

Speaker: and welcome back to another episode of The Away We Go, we Go podcast. This week was a really fun episode for us. It can be easy to romanticize the idea of moving abroad, but really no matter how you get there, it's an opportunity to grow, push yourself, and create experiences that may have previously seem out of reach.

So today, Sophie and I got a chance to sit down with Sophie's cousin, Maddie and her husband Shelby, who saw a [00:01:00] chance to use a job opportunity to fulfill their dreams of moving abroad, and they have not taken it for granted. From having minimal travel experience to moving to London, getting married in Spain and realizing travel goals to explore Europe, they're fun and super approachable.

Personalities make that grandiose idea of moving abroad feel like something anybody can do, which is the point. They share. Great advice, fun stories about people they've met and where they've gone. And and completely took everything in our power to make sure this was a reasonable length episode because we could have talked these two for hours and hours and hours.

So 

Sophie: Welcome to the podcast, Maddie and Shelby. We are currently just coming off of a major laughing attack with these two. These two are my people. I've known them for a very long time because they happen to not only be [00:02:00] amazing friends, but family. So I cannot wait to hear all about your story because I know we've talked about this over many dinners in London, but I want to hear from you and I'm excited to, I'm sure I'm, we're gonna like learn some new things today just about your whole life and like what's been going on the last four years.

So welcome to the podcast. Welcome 

Maddie: to the podcast. Thank you for having us. 

Jordan: All right. But seriously, lock in. Lock in, lock in. 

Sophie: So you guys have been living in London since 2021, right? 2021, yeah, correct. End of 21. Now I just kind of wanna start off with kind of the backstory. So how did you end up moving to London?

Because I remember the day we got the call from you that you were like, going to move. I was so excited for you. 

Maddie: I mean, really it was through Shelby's job, so I'll kind of let him tackle this question. 

Shelby: Yeah. [00:03:00] So we both always talked about wanting to live abroad, but we never really had the opportunity to.

We both studied abroad and loved the experience of it. I worked for a small firm in Seattle at the time and there was not really any opportunities, but late in 2019, my company was acquired by a much bigger one, and we kind of, I wasn't overly excited about it at the time, but then I realized what that could mean, it being a global company and having the ability to, to move abroad.

So continued with them and was just very excited for the opportunity. We talked through it, made plans, spent a good amount of time selling all of our stuff. Mm-hmm. Yes. Prepping for the move once we got the news that we could do it. Yeah. Um, relocating your entire life across, across an ocean is, is a big endeavor, but we were happy for it.

Maddie: COVID definitely played a part as well because we'd always talked about it and it was like, oh, that'd be fun. That would be great. And then post COVID was when we were really like, should we just do it? I'm so sick [00:04:00] of sitting in our backyard not doing anything, you know? We were just like, let's, let's go for it.

Shelby: We, we do like to say we had, we had the travel bug, but we just leveled up. Yeah. We just, we just took it one step further and said, oh, fuck it. Let's just move. Let's not travel. Let's just move. 

Jordan: Go big. Let's roll. Yes. Um, wait real quick. So where did you guys both study abroad? 

Maddie: I was in Switzerland, um, oh. In a little town called Brigg, which is near Zerat, kind of in between Zermatt and Barron.

And I was there for not too long, like half a year or so. 

Speaker 5: Okay. 

Shelby: Yeah, and then I studied, I studied in Greece, but it was a very short summertime trip, so I was just there for about about eight weeks. But I studied my travels around afterwards to to see some more of Europe and such, and had just been dying to come back ever since.

Jordan: That's awesome. So how do you think that like that, I mean that, did you guys feel like you had the travel bug to a degree before the study abroad? Was there like an inspiration to the study [00:05:00] abroad? Because I'm always curious about people's connection to travel, whether it's growing up or if you have like an experience that you're like, oh, that was like really fucking eye-opening and then all of a sudden it just like penetrated your veins and you're like, this is like, I need more of this.

Shelby: Yeah. I'd say it was a bit different for me than Maddie. I know Maddie had done some other trips prior to study abroad, but my study abroad trip was my first time leaving. The US and Canada. I'd never been anywhere. Wow. Other than that, so I didn't know that. That's crazy. I love it. 

Sophie: Yeah. 

Shelby: And, and Greece, like not, that's, that's a major one.

Yeah. So it was, it was quite a unique opportunity because we had a Greek professor at our college and he led a trip over to Greece during the summertime. So we actually got to see some of mainland Greece.

So we started in Athens, went to Delphi, went to mea. So kind of the monasteries up in the mountains are really cool. One of my favorite [00:06:00] ones was we went to his hometown, so very small town. And got to see that, which was really cool, really unique experience to see something that is more off the beaten path in, in Greece and then, yeah, that's not like a 

Jordan: touristy thing to do.

No. So you get exposed to like real life in a foreign country that seems, 

Shelby: yeah. And it was, and it was really cool. And it was one of the things I remember as well as it was his birthday when we were there and he was like really famous in this city somehow for some reason. I don't know what his backstory is, but they knew him well.

And I just remember celebrating his birthday at this little Greek restaurant with all these people around and singing songs in Greek that I couldn't understand a single word of. And I had to this day, the best chocolate kick I've ever had. And I still think about it and excuse my language brother and I have.

Literally gone on Google Maps in the town of Lamia trying to just like street view, find this restaurant because I can't remember anything about it. Um, I've, I've had no luck. I'll probably just need to go back someday and see if I can wander the [00:07:00] streets and find it Amazing. 

Sophie: Seriously. So you pack up everything, you say goodbye to friends and family back in the Pacific Northwest and you head to London.

So what were like the first impressions of London when you arrived and like. How do you really compare kind of your early days to how you feel about the city now? 

Maddie: Well, I think initially it was definitely one of the most surreal moments of my life. Probably yours as well. We were in the taxi on the way into London from the airport with all of our belongings in the taxi, everything we own.

And we'd just been so consumed with moving and packing and saying goodbye and selling everything we owned, that we weren't bringing, that it just hadn't sunk in at all. And so we're sitting in this cab and we just look at each other and we're like, oh my God, we, we've moved to London. And we had like a little bit of like anxious laughter fit and I think the cab driver was probably like, what is going on?

But we just, [00:08:00] it hadn't sunk in until then and we just looked at each other and we were like, oh my God. So that was definitely, um, that I will never forget that just being like, it, it was just go, go, go. You didn't even have a moment to process. We knew we wanted to do it. But it just hadn't sunk in until we were literally on our way into a city that we'd never been to before.

So that was the other thing. We had never been to the uk, we'd never been to London. 

Sophie: I'm trying to remember this. I feel like we talked with you about this when you were telling us, but 'cause that's right. 'cause when you called you said, how is London? And we were like, 'cause we had, you know, been through work a lot.

We were like, it's the best. It's still like my favorite city to visit 

Jordan: for sure. Yeah. Why don't you just name a kid after it then? Geez. 

Shelby: Do you think you could do that? You think that'd be okay? Hell yeah. Wait, 

Jordan: just really quickly, I'm also curious what was the timeframe from okay, it's happening, we're moving, let's start selling shit, getting rid of everything, getting all our ducks in a row [00:09:00] and then getting there.

How, how long do you think that was? 

Shelby: So I'd say I. Started the process of looking into it from, from work probably, I wanna say early 2021 or was it even before that? 

Maddie: Yeah, maybe even before kind of looking into maybe maybe asking people that had done it and whatnot, and then actually looking into the application.

Yeah. 

Shelby: So I'd say maybe, maybe it was actually partway through 2020. So as I mentioned, the, another company had acquired mine, right. And actually, one of the, one of the guys who worked there had done a previous secondment in London. So he'd done it. He was, he was really hyping it up, saying it was like a great experience that he enjoyed.

So I spoke with him quite a bit about it. And then we sort of started doing a, I'd say a little bit of pre-prep, just knowing we wanted to do it. Like, Hey, what can we do? Do we need, do we need to buy this thing? Or if we're gonna get rid of it in maybe a year, do we need it? 

Maddie: Yeah. It really changes your mindset.

Shelby: Um, so, so there was a bit of that, but then I wanna say once we got the [00:10:00] decision. We basically started taking an inventory of everything we owned. So everything we had at our apartment was going into a spreadsheet and we were organizing it. 

Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah. Classic 

Shelby: move. And, and we were categorizing it by beep store, sell, dispose of.

Mm-hmm. Just, just what, what we could do. Yes. Um, and I think it was probably between the time of decision and knowing we were moving and when that was gonna happen to, to doing it maybe, maybe six to eight months or so. I, 

Maddie: I would say from the time it was approved, it was maybe four months. It was really, 'cause we, we thought it was gonna take a lot longer for the approval with it being post COVID.

We were like, oh, there could be a backlog. Who knows how long it'll take for them to process a visa. And it was pretty quick. I would say it was just a couple weeks. 

Shelby: Yeah. Wow. But I don't think, but we did have an advisor helping and I don't think we were necessarily concerned that it wasn't going to go through.

So we were able to start that. Yeah. It was [00:11:00] basically to, I did the secondment application through my work. Got it. That got approved, and then it was just onto the visa and all of that paperwork and filing all of that information, providing the advisors proof that. We were together in a long-term relationship because at that point in time we weren't married either, which threw it added, which, um, this, this hadn't yet happened.

Yeah. That's, um, oh my gosh. 

Maddie: Surprisingly, when you're applying as a partner and not as a married couple, they value photos of you together over the years, more than a joint bank account, which we found to be very interesting. Yeah. 

Shelby: Okay, 

Maddie: good to know. They basically said our, our 

Shelby: joint bank account didn't really mean anything.

It didn't prove 

Maddie: anything. So 

Shelby: we, we literally put together a, almost a slideshow experience of, okay, here's, here's our first, um, here's Christmas. We first started dating, here's our first Christmas together, and it was just basically a two photos per year. One in the summer on a hike or something? Yeah. With the family and [00:12:00] then Christmas with the family, and it was just that for years and years, just to prove that, yeah, hey, we've been together and we intend on staying bank account and 

Jordan: legal stuff.

We get that, but can we see a photo montage? Yeah, 

Maddie: exactly. My mom was like, should you put music to it? Maybe just give it a little more, 

Shelby: they could make a nice little video. Everything of that sort. I mean, it'd have 

Jordan: to be with like the Beatles or something. Like, gotta be British. Right, 

Maddie: exactly. Gotta prove our right.

Shelby: Maybe the Ramon. 

Sophie: I love it. Um, yeah, so, 

Shelby: so we weren't overly concerned once we got all that through. Mm-hmm. But then, yeah, it was just a few months after that, that after that point that we were, we were up and out of there. And I still remember like, kind of the last dash, we still had stuff in our, in our apartment.

We weren't yet out of it. We had to quickly get out, leave everything, 

Speaker 6: go 

Shelby: back, go back home to our parents for a little while before moving, and then drive into the airport and 

Speaker 6: mm-hmm. 

Shelby: Moving. 

Maddie: It was nice that we didn't worry about overweight bags 'cause all of our bags were overweight. So [00:13:00] it was actually really like, I've never not cared.

So it was just everything we could stop into the suitcases. Wow. My gosh. Now I did learn that there 

Shelby: is a max overweight bag that they do allow, and I hit the limit on every single bag. Nice. Wow. But thankfully the company was, uh, thankfully the company was covered 

Sophie: prices, so Yeah. We, we like that. We like that.

So, you know. Thinking about when you first arrived to London to now, like what, what has changed for you in terms of just like how you kind of feel about, about London, because of course, you know, like for me, I visited probably 20 times now at this point. But, and I, and I love it so much, but it's so different when you, when you've lived there.

Mm-hmm. So like what has it been like for you over the last four years? I know that's like such a, that's a, a broad a question. Broad question, but yeah. 

Shelby: I'd say, I'd say there's some things that haven't necessarily changed. One of them being it is a massive city. It is [00:14:00] the biggest place we've ever lived, maybe ever been in some ways, depending on how you measure the city.

Speaker 6: Yeah. 

Shelby: And that hasn't changed. We still sometimes get overwhelmed with how, how big it is and how much there is to do here. Or you still ask someone 

Maddie: where they live and they say where they live and you go, sorry, where's that? And then they say something a little bit bigger nearby and you're like, oh, okay.

Okay. Yeah. 

Shelby: It's just, that was one of the challenges when we first moved as well, was just. Where do we live? Because as we said, we've never been here before. We had never, we, yeah. I thought that we would enjoy living here. We wanted to move over, be closer to Europe and such, and so it was English speaking, so it was easy for us to just come over here and mm-hmm.

Not have to integrate with that. 

Sophie: Yes, 

Shelby: I've always been a big football fan and I, I, I fancy the pub, so, um, it seemed like a good place for us to move to, but it's a good fit. It is a big city and we didn't know where we would want to live 

Maddie: Yeah. 

Shelby: Or anything of that sort. And we still, it's so 

Maddie: hard to look up like a review of a neighborhood online and get an actual feel for what that'll be when you're trying to figure out where you wanna live [00:15:00] when you haven't been there.

So I think there are a couple places that were really high on our list before we visited and looking back on it now, after having lived here four years, I don't even like to visit there for the day. So the fact that I thought I wanted to live there, like, it's just so funny. You have such a different impression.

And then once you live here for a little bit, and it's nothing against those places, but they're just not somewhere that I would want to, you know, surround myself. And we ended up getting really lucky with where we are. It's quiet, which was a big thing for us, but it has kind of that neighborhood feel with bars and wine bars, little coffee shops, things like that.

So just knowing all the different neighborhoods now and having a, a feeling to associate with them. 

Shelby: Yeah. I think one of the big things that has changed though is, I remember when we first moved, we thought, wow, how do people complain about the tube or the trains? Like it's just public transport here is amazing, and don't get me wrong, yeah, you can get anywhere on the tube, but it is hot, loud, smelly.

It's not the best. It is a, it is unreal coming from Seattle where there's hardly anything for public transportation, like a fantastic [00:16:00] network. But after being here a few years, if I can go somewhere without taking the two. I'll do it. 

Maddie: Or if I'm taking the team, then there's more than a six minute wait. I get irrationally angry like, oh my God, is this such, it's, do they know, like, that is so infrequent than this time right now, longer 

Shelby: than, longer than six minutes.

I didn't, I upset if I'm there for longer than two minutes. Um, and then, and then I'd say trains as well. We thought that the train network, obviously again, way better than, way better than Seattle or the US even, but the price of the trains in the UK is insane. So while you can get to a lot of places on them, if, 

Maddie: if you're not booking in advance, if 

Shelby: you don't book it well in advance, a train on the day, it could cost you a hundred or more pounds, even though the train's gonna go regardless with or without you.

Wow. 

Sophie: Yeah. 

Shelby: They, they don't care. 

Sophie: Yeah. 

Shelby: Wow. 

Sophie: No, I noticed that when we had to change our times for the channel. Mm-hmm. It like four times the price. 'cause we did it the day of. I was like, cool, cool, cool, cool. [00:17:00] That's great. Love, love that for us. Yeah. But you know, sometimes you have to do what you have to do. 

Jordan: So obviously public transport is a huge shift from being in Seattle.

Mm-hmm. Where you guys were. What other parts of your daily life feels like the most surprising or different from what you remember from day to day when you were back in Seattle? 

Maddie: The biggest one for me is just we don't have a car here, which I love. Oh yeah. I'm not, I've never been a huge fan of driving, so it's really nice not having to I's the designated always driver?

I'm the passenger 

Jordan: passenger princess. Oh, yes. We love that. We know all about that. 

Maddie: But like when you're commuting into work, you don't have to get in a car and sit in traffic For a while I was taking the tube or the bus, and then I actually got a bike and started cycling into work every day, which is something I would've never seen myself doing five years ago.

I think he tried to get me to go road cycling once and I told him I didn't know all the hand signals and he's like, there's no hand signals. It's just [00:18:00] laughter. Right. It, it just would've been, I would never have done that and so, and it found it was something I really enjoyed. And obviously I work from home now, so that's why it's past tense.

So I don't have a commute anymore, but when I did like, it was just so much better than having a car. So her 

Shelby: commute is, so you, her commute is now about five seconds around the corner. 

Jordan: You never did any sort of city biking in Seattle? 

Maddie: No, never. 

Jordan: But you definitely are city biking in London. 

Maddie: Yeah, I was gonna say that's, that's pretty bad.

Fair. The first day I made him go, we worked in different locations and I made him go with me to work to make sure that I could get there. Okay. And then he went to his own work. So she even found a way to be a 

Jordan: passenger princess and make you one too. Genuinely. Genuinely wait. So, okay. But tell me about the obvious right?

Different side of the road, biking expectations. How long had you lived there? Before you started biking? 

Maddie: I got my bike in the summer, so it would've been just over six months. 

Shelby: Yeah. And I think I [00:19:00] got mine a few months earlier, so. So by that point, 

Jordan: were you pretty acclimated to driving on east side of coast?

I've also, I've never 

Maddie: biked on the road in the US either though. So it was, I mean, if I went and got a road bike in the US now, I'd probably be more of a hazard because I've never, 

Shelby: you like lost us backwards? Yeah. I mean, we haven't really ever driven in the UK much, so we weren't really acclimated to mm-hmm.

Speaker 6: The left side 

Shelby: of the road anyways. But I think the, the biking aspect of it, with biking being a newer thing anyways, it was basically. Skilling yourself up in that mm-hmm. Aspect regardless. So I think 

Maddie: the bigger aspect to work out, work out was the tourists. Because even though they have signs on the ground that say, look left, look right, people just walk out into the street and I quickly realized my little tiny bell was not loud enough for them to hear me or you know, the attention.

So I found that it's embarrassing, but the best thing to do is just to yell in the deeper voice as I could. Boy, 

Speaker 6: get outta the way.[00:20:00] 

Jordan: That's hilarious. So I, I literally was thinking about making a joke of like, what would you do? Just scream out like, oh God, or something like that. But just to think about you screaming. O 

Maddie: Yeah. Oy. Especially in the winter when I'm all bundled up, they're like, 

Shelby: yeah. I say, I mean, people always think it's dangerous.

I, I feel like it's not really, I think the things you need to look out for are the pedestrians that just think they can walk anywhere they want to, the. The people who just rent a lime bike. Yeah. And don't really think about the rules of the road. They just, they'll just ride their bike through any intersection, wherever they need to.

And then the taxis. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Those are the, those are the three main things. But it's, it's really not that bad. There's a lot of designated cycle lanes and everything of that sort. And it's, yeah, 

Maddie: it's as long as you wear a helmet. Yeah. 

Shelby: Yeah. I'd say it's the easiest way to get around the city. I still do it on frequent occasions, uh, more often than [00:21:00] not, than cycle.

Sophie: Yeah. I mean, you guys are much braver, much braver than I in terms of that I drive here, but, uh, biking like, yeah, but you just can't drive in London, 

Shelby: so there's no other option really. Yeah, I 

Sophie: know, I know. 

Shelby: And I think, I think, Jordan, to your, to your initial point as well, we started doing that here rather than Seattle.

But you have to think about, the city itself is just, it's much more constricted here. Whereas Seattle. You're getting on a freeway to go mm-hmm. To where you live at. Right. You're not taking a bicycle on the freeway, so you need a car in the US to get a lot of places where here you don't. 

Maddie: So it's, and it's faster than driving a lot of times because you can kind of like scoot in between the cars and whatnot when they're stopped.

Not while people are driving. If there's a red light, you can just kinda make your way to 

Jordan: the front. We kidding, Maddie? We know how aggressive you can be driving through cars. People have their windows open, you just ride by them and just go, 

Maddie: oy. I did have someone ask me when I was cycling if I had smacked a bus yet, and I said, no, no, I have what?

And they're like, yeah, the bus drivers, they just get so [00:22:00] frustrating sometimes and they cut you off and you just give the back of the bus a a good smack. And I was like, no, that I don't think I'll be doing that. Not to mention they're covered in like the exhaust, so your hand would be 

Jordan: Right. That's gross guys.

I'm not doing that. 

Sophie: So besides obviously the, the car culture and just kind of changing those things, what are some other kind of like unexpected differences or even like joys that you found between when you lived in the US versus living in London? 

Shelby: I'd say outside of the car thing, one of the other big differences is the mountains.

We were both big backpackers and hikers and such back there, and so yes, it's quite different not being, you know, in a quick drive to the mountains. So that was, that was one thing, was kind of Wait, quickly, 

Jordan: what's, what's a quick drive? Can you define that? 

Maddie: Like one to two hours? Yeah. Yeah, 

Jordan: I asked that because when we talk to people here, at least in France, that's, I don't know how it is there.

[00:23:00] They say like, oh my God, like this is like, yeah, it two hours away. So we're not, we're not doing that again. 

Speaker 5: Yes, this is, this is true. 

Jordan: You know, in Austin we would literally drive to Houston, which is like about two and a half hours in the morning. You know, when we used to go and see her grandfather and then we'd drive back in the afternoon, we're like, that's, this is a day trip.

Yeah. You know, so you guys, same thing, right? You're like, let's go hiking, you know, you're leaving in the morning, come back that night, maybe one to two hours away versus here they're like two hours Yeah. Away. That's like a full vacation, not, 

Maddie: yeah. 

Jordan: Is it similar there? Yeah, definitely. Very much so. 

Maddie: Yeah.

We've had a trip where we, we flew into Glasgow to go to Isle and it's a two hour drive or so to the ferry. And we told people we were doing that to go there and they were like, why would you do that? You're gonna fly somewhere and then drive two hours. Like, that doesn't make any sense.

Shelby: Yeah. And then, and then you just think back to [00:24:00] when we were at, at college in the US and we would drive six hours just to get to college. 

Maddie: Not on a daily basis, but not on a daily, 

Shelby: comfortably. Regularly due six hour drives. Yeah. Yeah. 

Sophie: Right. Yeah. 

Shelby: That's wild. Yeah. So, so yes to that point. Maybe not super quick, but it was easy to do on a weekend here or there.

And then I think just sort of needing to adapt that to here. So there's no big mountains or anything, but there's countryside walks. Mm-hmm. You can do, you can take a train down or over to the coast and walk along the cliffs and just sort of adapting, adapting to those sorts of things, as well as just the, the ability to travel elsewhere.

Mm-hmm. To go to the airport and jump on a plane and within a two hour flight from London, you can be in 10, 12, 15 different countries. 

Maddie: Yeah. Whereas like this year we knew we wanted to do a hiking trip and we were like, do we wanna go to Switzerland? The Dolomites, like we had a, a bunch of places we haven't been to, we just got to kind of pick what we wanted to do.

So 

Shelby: Yeah. Compare that [00:25:00] to a two hour flight from Seattle. Yeah. You're barely getting out of the state of Washington. 

Sophie: Yeah. Truly. Yeah. So, I mean, there's some, you know, trade offs. There's some trade offs. Exactly. Exactly. Do you feel now that. You're kind of more of an American living in London after four years, or do you feel like you're a little bit more British?

Which I have, I have a side story first. I feel like you guys have definitely picked up a lot because I remember when I came la was it last year for my birthday, God, time is flying, or no, it was, it was around Shelby's birthday and we went for drinks. Yes. And you're like, I'm just, I'm, I'm gonna go, you know, meet with the, what do you say?

My, my, the lads or something for like a beer. What 

Speaker 7: did you say? Meet with my mates. My or your mates. That's what it was. Yeah. I was 

Maddie: like, oh, okay. Yeah. I would say Shelby's definitely picked the lingo up a lot more than I have. But I do find myself saying, I say keen quite a bit, which I've haven't even realized is [00:26:00] new.

I just kind of adapted and didn't even think about it. But that I get teased for quite a bit when I talk with my friends back home, or I had a conversation with my sister Courtney once, and I was getting home and we used to live on the 16th floor, so I would take the elevator up, but you call it a lift here, right?

And she was like, oh, what are you up to? And I was like, oh, I'm going home. I'm just getting in the lift. And she was like, well, where are you going? And I was like, I'm going home. And she was like, well, you're getting in a lift. Are you? Where are you at now? And I was like, I'm home. I'm just getting in the lift.

And it was this whole circular conversation. 

Speaker 6: She's like, Abbott and Ello. 

Shelby: That's great. I wouldn't say we necessarily feel British, but we have tried to just embrace being here in. Uh, you know, and enjoy living here and embracing the culture and everything. Mm-hmm. And yes, I have adopted the lingo. Yeah.

Quite frequently. We went back home to a, to a wedding back in Seattle when, this was a couple years ago, but we hadn't even been here all that long. And it was funny 'cause I remember when I went back, we had started out at the wedding and we were chatting to all of our friends and everything like that.

And I [00:27:00] was adopting the, the Seattle lingo and such kind of back into it. And then. The more beers I had, the more back to British lingo I was, was going to. So it was just a shift after, like, after like three or four drinks. It was just, oh, mate, oh, this, oh, cheers. Oh, everything. And my friends were just like, awesome.

When did, when did, uh, when did British Shelby show up to the wedding? Oh, about, uh, two beers ago. That's amazing. We do still have 

Maddie: quite a few little americanisms, though, I would say, like at work, I always, I feel like such an imposter if I try to say the lu, it just doesn't sound natural. So I'll usually, and if you don't say lu, they say toilet here.

But I have a hard time adapting to that as well. So I just said restroom and my British coworker is like, oh yeah. I always, whenever you say restroom, it just makes me like feel so exotic for having an American friend. Like is that an American thing here that like you hear that and you just think, oh, ding, ding, ding.

American. I think, I think you also had 

Shelby: a bit of trauma with the word toilet quite early on though. 

Maddie: [00:28:00] Yeah. My job, when I first moved over, we didn't have like a, like a staff room or anything like that and I asked where I should wash my coffee cup and my boss had told me, oh, you can go wash it in the toilet.

And my brain on compute for a moment that he meant the room, the toilet's in the bathroom. And I just pictured like something in the toilet 

Jordan: kinda hotel is this? Yeah. 

Speaker 7: I was like, what on 

Sophie: earth? 

Jordan: That's hilarious. 

Sophie: I love it. What. What do you guys find too about, 'cause people, I personally think that the food in London is amazing compared to probably what it was like 30 or 40 years ago when everyone complained about how bad it was.

But I mean, do you like it more than like living in Seattle or how, how would you prefer that to, or have you changed how you 

Jordan: eat? 

Shelby: Yeah, like when you eat at home kind of stuff. I, I mean fork, fork and knife at meal now, you know, super proper with the, with the cutlery. You 

Maddie: guys probably see that in France too.

It's the, uh, like the [00:29:00] continental way of eating versus, um, not, 

Shelby: not, not in this house household. They're eating with their hands. Just like, just like the, um, I mean, I think when people say that British food is not, is not good, they're just thinking of the very basics of a British cuisine in, its in its own right.

But. London is such an international city that there are so many options. Yeah. And I think people forget that they invaded places that had spices 

Maddie: thought out. I mean, 

Jordan: I mean, for the history side of things it's god awful. But in current times we are benefiting from having delicious, amazing food from all over the place.

So yeah, so there are, 

Shelby: there are just a ton of places to, to eat. And I remember when we first moved, we. We started a Google Maps, just adding places we wanted to go see. And now you look at that thing and it's just like the entire city is covered with pins and we're just like, [00:30:00] where 

Maddie: do we go? 

Shelby: No, just, that's actually not helpful anymore.

There's, it's, it's not, maybe when, when we go other places to other cities, we'll maybe save a few and that's helpful. When you go for a couple days you can actually get through the list. But when you look at our London list now, it's just a, it's 

Maddie: chaos. But I think it's interesting too 'cause there's just so much different cuisine and a lot of it is the same as what we have back home.

But the menus are different. If you go to a Thai restaurant here, it's not just, you know, pad Thai and a couple other options. It'll be, oh, is it Northern Thai food or is it southern? It'll, it'll have so much more variety to it that, yeah, I think we get just the basics a lot of time back home because, or at least the places we were going to.

I'm sure it depends on where you're eating, but Sure. 

Jordan: And what about cooking at home? I mean, do you eat similarly to what you were eating when you were in Seattle or. Is obviously, you know, there's probably some shift in ingredients. You know, they, you know, have, like, you know, we can't find bacon here to save, to save our lives fucking life.

[00:31:00] And trust me when I tell you I have tried or dill pickles, I've got, I can't find dill pickles, but I've, I've if tried look in 

Maddie: the international section, sometimes they'll have it in like the polish section for some reason. Oh no. Trust me, we went to the 

Sophie: biggest 

Jordan: grocery store. Oh no. I did find bacon there.

Sophie: It wasn't bacon. It was not bacon. So, 

Jordan: well, we, and that's what keeps happening. I keep finding like, oh, they sell bacon and they sell bacon and I try it, it looks like 

Sophie: bacon. It's not bacon. And then, then you cut it 

Shelby: up and you're like, this ain't this, 

Sophie: ain't it. Talking. Yeah, I understand. I mean, 

Shelby: that, that happens quite frequently here.

More often than that. It's, it's back bacon and so it's a lot thicker and it's more, it's more like a ham as we would know it. But we found that did take us a little while we found. What we know is bacon is just called streaky bacon here. 

Speaker 6: Exactly. Okay. So 

Shelby: you need to find streaky bacon. Streaky bacon. And I'd say we don't overall cook a whole lot different, but it did take us quite a while to find the ingredients.

And even now when we, when we do grocery orders or find find [00:32:00] items, we have to search for things differently 

Maddie: because we sometimes forget. Jalapenos aren't under jalapenos. They're just chilies. Oh, sorry guys. 

Shelby: So yeah, when we do grocery orders, we just need to search for things in a different way. 

Maddie: So like, yeah, jalapenos, you have to search chili peppers like paper towels. Our kitchen roll dish soap is washing up liquid. Like there's just, 

Shelby: and, and you'd think. You'd think that the apps, when you're placing the orders would understand what you're going for.

No, you just, it's just, that's good. It's the thing from the truth. You try to fi, you try to search something and it's just, it's, it's not happening. 

Jordan: So you need to like invest a couple days just going to the grocery store, the market, 

Shelby: and we did that at first day. We, we have a big grocery store, a 10 minute walk from, from where we live and we were actually doing all of our grocery shopping.

In person for the first, I'd say a few months. 

Maddie: Yeah. And then we [00:33:00] discovered grocery delivery. And we have not gone back. There's just something really not glamorous about carrying your bags of groceries down the street for 10 minutes and like it's cutting into your palm and Yeah. It's not a far walk. Yeah.

I mean, it's 

Shelby: just, we can just get it delivered here for no extra charge. 

Jordan: So why don't we just do that? Yeah, 

Sophie: yeah. 

Jordan: So much better. And, and I mean, I think in London you have 

Sophie: so much more convenience, so much 

Jordan: access. 

Sophie: There is, I, 

Jordan: I've definitely, I have the, like, the rolling cart, um, because I'm, I'm walking across town with groceries, so I have like just 

Sophie: five different places.

Jordan: Yeah. And so, and, and the, the, the, because of that, you know, the, there are some get everything here stores, but not, not the same, not in the Centerville where we are. Mm-hmm. And so it's just way harder to find all of the stuff. So I, I legitimately end up popping by. On average between three and five different places to get all the stuff that we need.

Yeah. We all kinda like [00:34:00] in a path to do it, but, and 

Sophie: there's not really a lot of grocery delivery. There's kind of stuff. I mean, 

Jordan: again, it, it definitely exists, 

Sophie: but it's not, not ideal. It's not. Yeah. 

Jordan: Again, I, I think it's harder specifically where we live because we live, there's like the Centerville, which is what it's called.

Mm-hmm. Kind of 

Maddie: that like market culture. Whereas I think the UK is a little more like the US in that aspect. Yeah. 

Sophie: I think that's what I do love about London is it's sort of like the bridge between the us. Mm-hmm.

Okay. I'm switching gears a little bit. Mm-hmm. I wanna talk more about just how you found more community like, has it been easy to find community living in London? 'cause I've heard like mixed reviews from expats who've lived in London. 

Shelby: Yeah. Yeah, I'd say it was, I had a much easier time than Maddie did because the industry that I worked in was quite a, it was quite a spread of age groups and everything of that sort.

So it was quite a structured place. So when I started, I had people immediately that I could connect with because they were [00:35:00] the same age doing the same job. So I got on, well with some of them immediately one of them invited me to play, play football or soccer. Mm-hmm. With, with them. And I met more friends through that and then just going and, and watching football as well.

So one of the reasons we wanted to move was, you know, was I wanted to be closer to the Premier League and so I ended up going to a pub one time for, to meet up with some other people who supported the same team, and we wanted to watch the game. Those are still some of my best mates today. I've traveled many countries with them to Istanbul as far That's so cool.

Um, and so, so I'm still friends with many of them through that, so I had quite an easier time mm-hmm. Because of that. But Maddie's, Maddie's was a bit more strenuous. 

Maddie: Yeah. My work was a little less varied in terms of ages, so I didn't really have any instant connections through my job and I had to get a little bit outside my comfort zone.

It's weird making new friends as an adult when you don't have like mm-hmm. College or something like that to kind of bring you into people that are your same age group. Yeah. And so I ended up [00:36:00] joining a Facebook mark, or like, it was a Facebook group called London New Girl and Oh, that's essentially, that's a cute name.

Yeah. So it's just a group for people to, that have just moved to London to make connections. Or there's even like, people will. Be selling items or sharing flat rooms that are available, things like that. And people would post saying, I am 30 years old and just moved to London and these are my interests. And it was definitely a bit outside of my comfort zone to, you know, do these random meetups with people that I didn't know.

And it took a lot of patience as well, because a couple of times you went to like a group meetup and there were all these people and it was fine, but you weren't really. Looking forward to it when everyone was like, let's do it again. And it took patience and you know, confidence in myself to be like, those just aren't my people and I just need to keep, keep going to these things and I'll find, you know, people that I connect with.

And so I actually, of all the things to do, I ended up going to a pub quiz meetup where I met some of our closest friends that we've met in the uk. And so we did this pub quiz a couple weeks in a row and then we ended [00:37:00] up evolving that into a board game night. And then we stopped doing it as part of the group and we just were like, do you guys wanna come over and do you wanna go over there?

And then we just became really good friends with them and then through them ended up meeting a lot of other people as well. So yeah, it was a bit of a random, we always kind of laugh when we look back on it with them that we met out of all things in a pub quiz, but we've now been to, they've since moved back to Australia and we went to visit them for their wedding.

Um, so it's really, yeah, that's right. The community, it might take a little bit and you have to have patience, but the connections you make are just amazing. 

Jordan: I, I love so many parts of, of that story because I think a lot of conversations that we have, whether it's, you know, through the podcast or just people that we're meeting here, that, you know, building community is, it's fucking hard.

Mm-hmm. Know it's hard in a city that you live in, in your home, wherever back home is, and you know, you go to college, people move [00:38:00] away. Maybe you're still friends with some people, but maybe you're not. Or maybe you move to another safer job like you guys did. But domestically, and it's still really challenging because you have to invest time in these friendships.

And it's kind of like those first few experiences that you're having where you're trying to meet people and you're like, eh, this, this is kind of a. You know, you, you come home and Shelby's like, so how was it any winners? And you're like, nah, it was kind of not 

Speaker 6: really fucking nautical 

Shelby: one. I think I actually, looking back, I actually felt quite bad at the beginning because I, I, I don't think I was quite understanding how challenging it was for Maddie because there was, there was days where I would go to work and I would go to the pub with coworkers right afterwards leaving her at home because she would, she would come home after work.

She wouldn't have those coworkers or that kind of, that same ability. And so it was, it was very, very different for each of us. And I think even though I had it [00:39:00] easier, we still, I'd say we both struggled, but Maddie a lot more so just actually getting comfortable and kind of trying to build that life 

Speaker 6: mm-hmm.

In the new place. 

Shelby: Mm-hmm. It is, it is challenging to get to that level of comfort and it does require that confidence that, you know, being comfortable with being uncomfortable sort of thing. Yeah. 

Sophie: Yeah. I always say this, I was just tell telling Jordan this today, I said, no matter what, because, you know, you just never, I feel like when you live abroad, like everyone's saying, well, you're gonna be there forever.

And you're like, like, who knows? It's hard to like, you know, predict the future. But, but no matter what, like, not only did I love and enjoy my time here, but it gave me so much confidence and the ability to sit in being uncomfortable. Mm-hmm. Because nothing really good comes out of being comfortable or complacent is what, you know, it turns into, it's like when you're uncomfortable and you're stretching yourself and like, that's where like everything happens.

Mm-hmm. [00:40:00] You know, 

Jordan: I, I heard, I don't know if it was like a quote I read or saw, but it was basically like, like comfort is where you go to rest. Discomfort is where you go to grow. 

Maddie: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. 

Jordan: Yeah. And we had, 

Maddie: um, this really cheesy diagram in one of my university classes where it was like your comfort zone.

And then your, it was like your growth zone was just outside of that, and then it was like the panic zone outside of that. And it was like finding that balance between like being stagnant and then doing too much and putting your, like yourself into a stressful situation. I 

Shelby: feel like, I feel like that first week we arrived was very much straight in the panic zone and we started to kind of edge ourselves back in because it was, where are we?

Why are we out here? It was, it was, it was tough at first getting that, getting that first settle. Yeah. 

Maddie: Um, 

Shelby: and getting settled and figuring it all out. But 

Maddie: we had each other though, which was really, 

Shelby: yeah, I don't, I don't know what we, what we would've done if we didn't have each other in those moments because it was, it was incredibly challenging and we, for the first few weeks, months even, I think we were kind of looking at each other from time to time just saying like, is this [00:41:00] the right decision?

Like, do we want to, do we want to go back at some point? Do we want to? 

Speaker 5: Mm-hmm. 

Shelby: And it helped because we had signed on for a two year, two year secondment at the beginning. So it was, we knew that it was kind of a fixed time of up to two years. And here we are. It's been four years now and we still love it.

So yeah, so you know, we just had to really get through those tough moments, dig in and um, yeah, and just, and just kind of say, well, no, like we need to give it more time. You know, just we're not, we're not done with this yet. 

Maddie: I would say it hit a fault a solid year, maybe before we felt truly settled in London.

Not just with obviously like our flat and jobs, but also our having a friend group and having almost like consistent plans where it wasn't like every weekend we were like, I don't know, what do you wanna do? We had things in our calendar that we had to look forward to and, you know, that was, you just have to be patient.

Sophie: Yeah. No, that's really, really good advice. So, speaking of [00:42:00] getting, I don't know if I wanna say uncomfortable, but just sort of stretching your wings, I wanna talk more, I just think this is the coolest thing. So Maddie, you're, I'm not trying to age you, you're still a young spring chicken over here, but you're a, you're, this is your birthday month turning 30.

Yes. And it was your goal, especially, which is so cool moving to London that you wanted to visit 30 different countries before turning 30. So I want you to kind of walk me through or walk us through, I should say, like, you know, what led you to this decision and yeah, just talk to me a little bit more about this.

Maddie: Yeah, I mean, really I think we were talking about upcoming trips and what we wanted to do, and I said something about having never been to Greece and Shelby obviously had studied abroad in Greece. And then I was like, well, you haven't been to Switzerland, where I studied abroad. And that got us thinking about where have we been that the other hasn't.

So we kind of started writing them all out, just out of curiosity. And we realized doing that, how close we both were two [00:43:00] 30 countries and Wow. We were both turning 30 in the same year. And we thought, well, I mean. I think we were maybe three or four countries away. We were like, that's not too far of a stretch.

Living in London, there's so many places within a quick flight that are easy to get to. So we were like, should we, yeah, let's just do it. Let's, and sometimes we have that, you know, you look up a trip and you're like, oh, it'd be really fun, but you just don't book it. You have something holding you back. And so that kind of helped us to not hold back on that and be like, we have these flights, we have accommodation.

Why don't we just do it? So it helped to kind of push us to travel a little bit more because it was easy the first couple years to be, you know, oh, we have a weekend free, let's travel. But once you get settled, you get kind of into your routine. And we weren't really taking advantage of the opportunities as much.

So we, yeah, we really could go for it. 

Shelby: Yeah, I, I think it was, I mean, for, for Maddie, the more recent one, but I did the same back in May as well. I think it was never, it was never the goal necessarily to hit 30 countries or just to like kind of check 'em off the list. But it was very [00:44:00] much because we were just kind of chatting and.

Chatting about places we'd want to go or had been, and we realized that we were quite close there. So it was never necessarily, Hey, let's just check 'em all off. But actually we've traveled to all these places and had experiences there and enjoyed it so much and we were just like, well, hey, let's, let's go to some other new places that we haven't been before.

Yeah. And, and have those new experiences in new places. 

Sophie: Yeah. I think it just is sort of change your mindset and maybe change your priorities a little bit to like, Hey, we should like be traveling more. We're here. It's accessible. Mm-hmm. I mean, yeah. Like London is literally, you can fly anywhere in the world from London.

Yeah. As far as I know, right. Anywhere. 

Shelby: I remember when we first moved, we booked flights for 30 pounds for both of us return. So we, and we were, we had booked trips to, I think it was, it was somewhere in Poland, I can't remember where, but it was 30 pounds total for both of us to get there and back. It was just, it's gone up a little bit, but it, it was just like, how [00:45:00] is this, how is this even possible?

Of course, we didn't actually go on that trip because Omicron virus came up and, you know, so those weird COVID times. But yeah, the fact that we could book flights for 30 pounds for both of us. 

Sophie: I know. Just 

Shelby: mental. 

Sophie: Yeah. 

Jordan: I, I imagine that there's a bajillion stories, but maybe hit us with like top three, like memorable places

Shelby: should I, should I, should I say mine that you love when I say it?

Maddie: No, not about, people would ask Trip. Sorry. Too late. That's coming. Ah, let go. Alright. 

Speaker 7: Go man. People 

Maddie: ask his favorite trip, he doesn't do it anymore 'cause he has one that tops it now. But he would always say Copenhagen, which I didn't go with him, so it was a bit offensive that his favorite trip was one. Me.

Shelby: I never, I never said it was my favorite trip, but it was, it was, 

Jordan: it was a 

Shelby: fun one. 

Jordan: Well, that's why I said most, most memorable because there could be, you know, different kind of things that happen from it. 

Shelby: Uh, I think one of our, one of the favorites that, [00:46:00] that we've been on was Slovenia. Mm-hmm. It was quite, which was.

I think it's becoming a bit more popular, but it was more off the beaten path. So we had, we had flown to Croatia with some friends and basically did a, did a road trip up through Croatia. Wow. And when we got to split, we, we split with them and we rented our own car and we kept driving up to go to Slovenia and just got to see a good chunk of, of Slovenia, we got to go do some really cool things.

We went to, we went to some really cool caves. We never thought we'd be cave people, but amazing. 

Maddie: If you're anywhere near you have to go. And people were like, no, that's not really my thing. And we're like, no, you have to do it. Ah. 

Shelby: We went through to wine country and we stayed at a, you know, stayed at a really cute little place.

We went up to the, to kind of the mountain. Mm-hmm. The mountain passes really cool rivers. We went on a, on a hike and stayed at a mountain hut and we'd always wanted to do that. Wow. So that was a really cool experience. Mm-hmm. And. Out of nowhere. Ended up meeting two of our really [00:47:00] good friends now at a mountain hut in Slovenia.

That's so cool. They were from cool. They were, they were both from Alaska living in Germany and yeah, we met at a mountain hut in Slovenia out of nowhere. Basically just heard each other up there. Hey, they're speaking English. Um, and then because I remember we. We just invited them to kind of sit at our table and at first they said no.

And then we kind of asked again a few minutes later when they were outside. I think they had a beer each and yeah, they just ended up sitting down playing, playing Monopoly deal with them, I think it was. Yeah. And then talked about the hike out the next day. And we both wanted to do kind of the same route, so, so we just did the hike out.

Maddie: Yeah. The next day. Like it was quite common to go up and then take the same route back. And we both wanted to do kind of more of a loop to make it different the next day. Yeah. Um, but the trail reports were kind of iffy on if there was too much snow or not. And we were like, I think it'll be fine. We're gonna go for it.

And they're like, can we, do you mind if we tag along? So then we're in a group? And so we ended up hiking out with them the next day. And like one of my favorite memories from that [00:48:00] trip is we stopped at another mountain hut just to get some beers and break up the hike a little bit. And we were playing another round of Monopoly deal and in between like cards and I have a video of it too, I think Sarah, the girl's just like, oh, is that an IEX over there?

And I just have this video of like the monopoly deal, us pointing out an IEX and just this beautiful mountain pass. It's like, that's amazing there. 

Jordan: This is like exactly what people are thinking of when they're just like, I just wanna like take an epic trip. And you just have these like wild experiences where you're like, just met some random people and random place.

Playing a game and then Oh, there's an iex. Yeah, 

Speaker 6: it was 

Shelby: beautiful. It was very much that, 

Maddie: yeah. Yeah. 

Shelby: Um, plus, so Slovenia was mine, so 

Maddie: yeah, I would say, you know, one of my favorites, we just this past summer we went to, um, Stockholm, Sweden, and we ended up going to just a little bit outside the city with, we were with a group of eight of us and we rented kayaks and kayaked around the archipelago for three days and we had tents and we, you [00:49:00] know, would get to an island and set up the tents and cook dinner on the stove.

Over a fire, or just with the, what is it called? Like the, the stove kit? Yeah. Um, we would just cook dinner and then all hang out, and it was just so much fun. 

Shelby: And that was, and that was cool as well. Just 'cause how many, how many islands are out there? So literally the second night that we were all camping out there, we had this little island all to ourselves.

Yeah. There was nobody else on this, on this island that we, that sounds, yeah. 

Maddie: Magical. But then the first night was completely different. The first night we were on an island that had all these little like cuts and amenities. It had a sauna that you could use. It was nice. 

Sophie: It was world as you do in 

Maddie: Sweden.

Yes. Yeah. 

Sophie: Which was, 

Shelby: which was fantastic because on the, on the kayak into that island, it started raining and we were all just in, we were all freezing. We were just not in happy places that we got. You're 

Maddie: so cold. You're like involuntarily having full body shivers. Yeah. Yeah. 

Shelby: Shout up to this island. Not really sure what it, like, what there was on the island.

We didn't realize how kind [00:50:00] of built up it was. There was a, there was a. Like a warming hut there and we all just show up very clearly, like shivering, like not really sure what's going on. And this, this, this lovely woman just kind of ran out and she's like, go in, go in the hut. It s warm. 

Maddie: She's like, I turned the heaters on for 

Shelby: you.

So 

Maddie: we're all like standing in front of the heaters. 

Sophie: I love it. 

Maddie: So that was really fun. I did somehow pull a muscle in my wrist after all the kayaking and so for a couple weeks after, whoops, the whoop kayak trip, Shelby did all the dishes, which was very nice dishes. Oh, that cooking so nice. He did everything.

Everything 

Shelby: sort of, everything's sort of brushing your teeth. 

Maddie: Yes. 

Sophie: Oh my gosh. Oh, poor Maddie. 

Shelby: Trying to think. 

Sophie: Poor 

Maddie: Shelby. 

Shelby: I'm trying to think what other ones we've done. We went on a really cool Christmas market trip, so 

Sophie: yes, 

Shelby: I think it was our second, second Christmas of being here. Mm-hmm. We went and just did everything by train.

So we took a train over to Brussels and kind of set Brussels as a home base for a little bit. [00:51:00] And then trained around to to Bruge to get to Antwerp. We went to Germany for a bit and I think we, we probably hit, I dunno, over a half a dozen Christmas markets. Mm-hmm. Probably more than that was. It was, it was really cool and it was just all by train.

Maddie: Um, that was the coolest thing. Just everything was so accessible by train and whereas we were saying in the UK it's quite expensive. In Belgium it was. No matter when you book it, it was just a flat rate. It was so simple. You just, it was really, their train system is amazing. Yeah. 

Sophie: That's so good to know. I didn't know that because I, I had a trip that got canceled to go to Bruge and Yeah, like I Beautiful.

I know, I 

Shelby: know. I don't rub it in. Wanna 

Sophie: go. There's so many times we know she'll go. 

Shelby: So, so that was a really, that was a really fun one as well. And I'd say we're not massive souvenir people, but. We still, at each of the Christmas markets, a lot of them do a different, a different mug for GLO Vine. Like they have their own, their own mug [00:52:00] for that market that year sort of thing.

And so we still have, we still have a lot of those from that trip. Mm-hmm. And from other trips we've been on and last year or two years ago, we hosted and we hosted like a GLO Vine party at our, at our flat in London and had a bunch of friends over. We took out all the mugs and we're able to just kind of, you know, enjoy it and use them again.

Sophie: That's cool. That fun one. Really cool. No, that's like, that's like my dream. Honestly. I need to, when we get off this podcast, I'm gonna have you give me the whole itinerary because eventually I love to do the same thing. That'll be super fun. I know. Yeah. It's just, we'll figure it out. TC I'll say by the 

Maddie: end of it, we were ready to just be in our flat, not surrounded by people at all times.

'cause they are very chaotic. But it was fun. You just have to lean into it. 

Sophie: Well, we also have it. Oh, sorry. Were there any trips that like really challenged you and kind of made you learn a little bit more about yourself? 

Maddie: I'd say there's a couple. The first one that comes to mind [00:53:00] is when we went to Portugal, um, I wanted to get the automatic car because neither of us know how to drive a manual vehicle, but it was three times the price, which sounds scary, but three times the price with the price being, I don't know, 50 euros for the whole trip.

So 

Shelby: it was, it was worse than that. It was like, it was like 50 euro for the manual or like 300 euro for the automatic. And I was like, wow, that's crazy. Well, that's a lot like, yeah, I'll figure it out. It's fine. 

Maddie: So Shelby rented the manual car that he didn't know how to drive. 

Shelby: I did you know buddy? I did. I think I did.

I did two lessons in the UK before we went there. Mind you, that's also in the uk so I'm also learning it on the other side that I'm going to be driving. 

Speaker 6: Oh no. 

Shelby: So then we land in, we land in Portugal and we have a manual car and, and it's not like 

Maddie: it's tiny, tiny little streets. 

Shelby: Yeah. And we were driving out to, we flew into Porto and we were driving out to the Dora Valley.

So we were driving out until like wine [00:54:00] country as well. So like, yes. Windy, hilly, small. Oh, mm-hmm. Not the kind of places that you're going to. And let's just say there was, that's fucking aggressive buddy. It was, I actually think the first part of the trip was totally fine, though. There wasn't really any big issues in the Dro.

Um mm-hmm. 

Maddie: There was that, 'cause our first car that we rented in the northern part of Portugal didn't have a built-in navigation system. So I was the navigator. I would not say it went fine because I got yelled at so much. Oh no. 

Speaker 6: Okay. 

Shelby: I was gonna say, I think it got worse when it went. It did because we went, 'cause then we went down to Lisbon and we rented a, rented a car there.

And it 

Maddie: was also a brand new car and this 

Shelby: one was brand new. I remember they, they told me, they were like, oh, this is great. We have a brand new car for you. And I was just like, that's a really bad idea to gimme that because it's gonna have no clutch when I'm done with this thing. But, but, um, it, it was, it was fine.

We got through it, but we drove down to the Elgar. And [00:55:00] some of those towns in the Algar in Portugal are very small. Like we're talking streets barely wider than the car. Yeah. Some hills as well. And yeah, there was definitely some tense moments in there as well where I was like, Maddy, why'd you take me here?

Maddie: Google took this here. I've never been here. I don't know. 

Shelby: And that one was, that was, that was a bit, that was a bit of a challenge. Yeah. Yeah. 

Maddie: But I will say you are always gonna have challenges when you travel. So even though when we travel, things still come up, I do think we've gotten better at the way we handle unexpected.

Mm-hmm. Um, challenges during travel. 

Speaker 5: Yeah. 

Maddie: It's like what comes to mind is when we went to October Fest, we actually went after our wedding. Since all of our friends were in town. We were like, it's a bit silly to just leave and go. You know, and a honeymoon, just us. Thanks for coming all the way out. Bye. 

Shelby: So, so, so our, our, our unofficial honeymoon was October Fest.

No, it 

Maddie: wasn't. We just went 

Shelby: unofficial. 

Maddie: But we ended up going to October Fest with some friends, and the [00:56:00] day we were meant to fly out, to go back home after having had the Bachelor Bachelorette, then the wedding, and then October Fest. So we were just ready to be home. Even though we'd had a, obviously a great time, our flight was canceled and we're sitting in the Octoberfest Hall.

It was like during the day that we found out. It wasn't in the evening, but we had, you know, beers and food and everything like that. And we find out, and like two years ago or two years before that, if we would've. Gotten that news, we probably would've panicked and just left and been freaking out. But we were like, well, the airline canceled our flight.

They're gonna have to figure it out. Let's finish our food. Finish our drinks, and then 

Shelby: we've got, we've got a half chicken, we've got a beer. Let, let's just, let's just sit, enjoy there. And we were 

Maddie: like, pretty calm considering. And then we booked a hotel, got it sorted with the airline, and then we went and changed back into like our later hose in and just went back to the, the ferry.

I love it. 

Shelby: I love it. So got a, got an extra night at October Fest that we did, that stopped 

Maddie: night too. So it was not cheap for the airline. 

Shelby: No, it wasn't. Which is why they fought tooth and nail for months off. Yeah. [00:57:00] Um, but, but they, they, they paid us in the end. 

Speaker 6: Yeah. So, yeah. 

Jordan: Yeah, I mean that's, that's pretty cool.

And that, that probably had to feel like a bit of like a, a transformation from just, just your own, like can we just like, 

Speaker 6: do, 

Jordan: just get really close in on it? Yeah, right. From your, your previous, I don't know, life experience before moving and, and just putting yourself in these situations where you're exposed to that kind of decision making or that kind of circumstance where, you know, thi this is not just normal like inconvenience, but like way outta your comfort zone.

Inconvenience. Yeah. Yeah. And it genuinely 

Shelby: was, 'cause we wanted to go, we wanted to go home and then we were basically stranded. They had initially tried to book us a hotel [00:58:00] near Frankfurt when we were in Munich. 

Speaker 6: Hmm. 

Maddie: Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. And then like the next day we'll get you, you know, from Munich to London and we were like, that, that wouldn't really work.

No, not, 

Jordan: you're like, when I look on the map, they're this far apart, but in reality it's a lot farther than that. Yeah. 

Shelby: So. But yeah, no, I think, I think that was definitely, definitely true. I mean, we just had, yeah, that mindset shift over the last couple years and kind of learning each other's like quirks and what we need to support each other in those kind of circumstances and how we can respond better as well.

Maddie: And I think as well, not to put it like this sounds really bad, but I work in hospitality, so it's, you're always put in stressful situations and you never have the same situation twice, especially working in operations, but you kind of learn just how to stay levelheaded in those kind of situations and scenarios.

So I was quite used to that, whereas your jobs have never really been getting stuff thrown at you on the spot like that. So I [00:59:00] think that was the big thing, is just being like, Shelby, breathe. We're gonna be okay. We're gonna figure it out. And then initially if I said that to him, he would get defensive and then we'd start arguing.

And so it was kind of learning how we both reacted in those situations and how. Our reactions could help the other person as well. So now I know that if I'm kind of condescending like that to him, he's just gonna get mad at me. 

Jordan: Yeah, she's so great. It's good to recognize that. And, and I, I think it's very special because you moved abroad and then you got married and planned all of that, having moved from Pacific Northwest to London, planning your wedding in Spain.

In Spain, yeah. Um, and just doing all this coordination, so obviously there's, there's like amazing things to talk about with your wedding and the marriage and everything, but just adding travel as a major part of just like your universe,

what you guys, do together, [01:00:00] how you're growing together and. Traveling as a couple, I think for a lot of people can be hard enough. You guys don't just travel together. You moved abroad together, you got married abroad it's, it's pretty wild. Like, I guess, what, what are some of the, the things that have stood out to you about your relationship and how travel has really played a role in that?

Maddie: I think one of the biggest things is when we first moved and everything was so new, we just wanted to do everything and try everything. And we've really learned what. We like in travel and what we enjoy about it. And we don't not, I don't wanna say like waste our time, but we, we know what we like and we make sure that our trips that we plan, like incorporate some element of something that we know we'll enjoy.

So our big wines are nature, whether that's like hiking or the kayaking trip, or even just a place that has beautiful national parks or beaches. Mm-hmm. And then good food and trying local like beverages, whether it's if they [01:01:00] have a wine tradition or there's craft brew beer scene, or even a good cocktail scene.

So we know that that's what we look for in a trip and that kind of makes it, we each have things that we plan. So I usually will plan a lot of the things we do or restaurants, whatnot. And I'll tell Shelby, you know, if you wanna look up if they have like a speakeasy or if there's beer things that you want to do or whatever that might be.

So just kind of getting in. 

Shelby: She we're back to the drinks. She leaves me in charge of the drinks. So, so really, really, she's, she's not sick of. 

Speaker 7: Yeah. And you are you guys, but you do book flight too.

Jordan: So in traveling together, you guys both plan certain parts of it.

So I mean, how open are you both to the thing that the other person likes? Sophie and I joke like, not travel related, but like design related. She's designed a majority of our house and we've, we've recently [01:02:00] realized that everything that we have in our bedroom is absolutely Sophie saying, yeah, this is what I want and that's gonna go there and this is how it is.

And at this point, I'm just thankful that she's allowing me to sleep in her room where she lives. Um, after 12 years of marriage, it's really nice that I get to share her space with her. But I'm just curious about when you guys are, are planning travel, you're like, Hey, I, I really want to hit these things, and then the other person's like, I really want to hit these things, but.

You blend those together in all of your travels,

Shelby: There's no secret in that. Maddie plans 90, 90% of what we do. I will fund flights. 

Maddie: Yeah. I hate booking flights, so I won't book or search for flights. Um, so I 

Shelby: will, I will find flights, I will book flights, I will book trains.

I will book all that. Once we know we're going somewhere, we kind of plan accommodation together usually. Although Miss Marriott will try to try to make that work when she can. Yeah. [01:03:00] And then, yeah. And then once we're going there, she, she goes crazy on the planning. She'll start looking things up, making a Google Doc for every trip.

Um, I love it. Adding things to Google Maps, so there's never a trip we go on that. We have a shortage of things to do. The only limitation we have when we go on travel is we cannot eat and drink. Yeah. Literal, truly 24 7 while we're there. 

Sophie: I know if only, if only, 

Shelby: I 

Jordan: mean, you can guys, you can dream. If you dream it, you can do it.

Shelby: So, so I think the, the positive though is we're both pretty much into the same thing as when we we're very aligned. We are very aligned and I don't know if we've forever been aligned or if we've just kind of grown to be more aligned as we've been together for so long now.

But it's, it does make travel a lot easier together when we both go new places and we say, Hey, let's, let's try local cuisine. Let's try local drinks. First thing we, we get to a new place. Oh, let's go find a brewery. Um, 

Maddie: yeah, I think that's changed a little bit over the [01:04:00] years because, I mean, even one of our recent trip trips that we were on, there was little boutiques and whatnot, and Shelby was the one saying, oh, do you wanna like pop into here?

And you would've never done that four years ago. You, you would've been like, I'll wait outside, 

Shelby: I'll be at the podcast. That's a beautiful thing. 

Sophie: You're grown, you're grown up, you're grown up. Um, so now that you have, you know, you're turning 30, you have like completed this big goal, like what do you think is next for you?

The travel? I'm gonna say, yeah. Oh, for travel 

Maddie: specifically. 

Shelby: We're going to Poland in two days. 

Speaker 6: Oh, oh hell. 

Maddie: Nice. 

Speaker 6: Hey, 

Shelby: um, when we talk about last minute travel ideas, we basically, last weekend we looked in this weekend coming up we had a free day or two, so I just found a cheap flight to, to Poland. So yeah, we are actually just going for a day trip.

Sophie: I mean, why not? You can do it. 

Jordan: That means awesome. Like literally like fly out in the morning, 

Shelby: return that day. Correct. Yeah. So 7:00 AM flight out to going to [01:05:00] Gdansk and then a 10:00 PM flight back. 

Sophie: Wow. That's the beauty of like, where you live is you can do that. That's like, it's just not something, I mean, it's like crazy now to think, 'cause we all have been in Europe long enough that, you know, it's such, it was such a thing.

It was like 11 hours, nine hours, whatever for a flight. Such an ordeal. Now it's like, oh, I'm just gonna like pop into Poland for the day, doing a day trip to Poland. No big deal. I just wanted 

Maddie: a Christmas market.

Shelby: Um, no, but ju but jokes aside, other than that trip, I mean, we don't really have anything big planned in the, in the future. We kind of need to start looking at our trips for 2026 and see what we want to do. I think we each have some, some places we want to go. It just depends if the, if the timing works out and all of that.

But I think now we're just kind of looking forward to after, after we come back from Poland, just kind of. Relaxing over the holidays and being in, being in the uk. Maddie's parents are actually coming over here. I know. I'm so 

Sophie: [01:06:00] sad. I can't be there to like be with you guys, but next time. 

Shelby: Yeah. So it'll be, it'll be fun having them over.

I mean, Maddie's, Maddie's brother just moved over to the UK as well, so I think the parents are quite excited to, to come over here. Um, two kids living in the UK now. It'll be kind of a fun, fun experience to have them over. And I think we'll just enjoy spending time with them and catching up and mm-hmm.

You know, enjoying those moments together and just relaxing over the, 

Maddie: but not so much in the travel aspect of it, but in the same vein as well, we did recently. The same idea of just, we were a bit stagnant. You know, we'd have a weekend where we spent most of it in our flat or just not doing as much to explore this amazing city that we live in.

So we have this Popsicle stick date, night jar. Um, so essentially twice a month. That's cute. We'll pull a Popsicle stick and it'll be anything very, very nice. Very nice. Uh, so this one says photography around London. So just 'cause we have, we love photography and we always, you know, make sure to bring our camera when we travel, [01:07:00] but we never carry it around London.

So that was one we thought would be fun. Other ones, I think one of 'em that we've already done was a live music night. So we, there's this company here called, so Far Sounds where you get, you buy a ticket and you don't know what it's gonna be and it's just Oh, cool. A surprise kind of. I love that. So we ended up going to a bookstore in short, and it was right up our alley.

It was kinda like alt music and all the artists were amazing and it was BY, obese. We brought some wine and. It was amazing. So just getting out of, you know, your regular routine a little bit more. I love 

Sophie: that. No, that's, sorry. No, you keep doing I'm, I'm, I'm about to ask a question. Wow, buddy. This is not our normal format, guys.

We appreciate your, your patience with us. Um, but it's awesome. I wanted to end with, what advice would you give to anyone dreaming of moving abroad or kind of setting an ambitious travel goal, like what you [01:08:00] have done in the last four years? 

Shelby: I think we've kind of touched on it a little bit throughout the other questions, but we've sort of, you just need to be open and kind of comfortable with being uncomfortable. Like it's, there's gonna be some, some challenging moments and I think just being.

Being open with that and understanding of that. And as well as, I mean for us, like having the open communication with each other is important as well, and kind of, you know mm-hmm. Being honest with each other, if something's bugging you or if it's not. And kind of really having that. And then sort of the other aspect for me is just kind of not seeing it.

I mean, when we started this, it was, yeah, yeah, it'll be really cool to live over there. We'll travel to a bunch of different countries, but not seeing it so much as just trying to check countries off a list. Right. When we said we were doing 30 before 30, it wasn't, oh, we're gonna go to this country for a day or drive through a country.

Just do that just to check it off. Um, but it wasn't just to check it off. We've been to Poland, we've experienced it, so we are going to it for a day this time, but it's not just to check off Poland. Um, [01:09:00] so it, it's just, but it's really about kind of embracing and enhancing those experiences that you're having and, you know, and kind of, you know, taking it one step further in, in each aspect, I guess.

Jordan: Yeah. Maddie, I know you're gonna, I, I know you're gonna go, but I, I, the, the whole like. Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Um, easier said than done. Yeah. Is that something that you think people can plan for or do you feel like it's almost a rite of passage that you have to be willing to go through it because your motivation to do what you're doing is so strong?

Like how do you think about that? 

Maddie: Well, I would say, and this kind of ties into what I was about to say as well, is that you have to have a good support group back home as well. So one of the most unexpected, uh, joys I would say about our move here is how much closer I've become with people back home.

Because you think, you know, you're moving away, you'd be worried about those relationships. But it's really [01:10:00] strengthened some of my friendships and just my relationships with family as well, because you, it's not as easy. So if, if you want it, you have to work for it more. And you can really see that reflected in some of your friendships, the amount of work and effort that you're putting in to maintaining that friendship.

And then on the other side as well, people that you maybe just have busy lives and you don't get a chance to talk to all the time, but when you do, nothing has changed. And so I think just making sure that if you're going to be putting yourself in a situation where you're uncomfortable, that even if you don't know anyone where you're going, you have a support group that you can lean on back home.

Shelby: And just, I think to your, to your point, Jordan, just, just knowing that it's okay to be uncomfortable or to be hesitant, like it will happen. There's no way to prepare for it. Mm-hmm. And have it not happen, but just know that it's okay to, to have moments and to have struggles and. To not just give up on everything, oh, this is really difficult.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna move home. Just know, know that it takes time and just kind of preparing for [01:11:00] that as best as you can, but just knowing that it happens and it will happen. 

Jordan: I love, I love the advice that, that both of you gave, because obviously like having a sense of, of community and like your, your roots and the people that you know, have been a part of your life and help shaped who you are and that you can lean on them when you're feeling stressed or you just need that little like, homesick, preventative kind of thing.

Mm-hmm. Where if you're, you're having a tough one or you talk to some, some family or some good friends that just kind of give you that motivation, I think is, is so important that you, you do work hard to like maintain those relationships and stay close with people and it, it really can strengthen them.

I think that's a really awesome perspective. And it's one of the things I love about the conversations that we're getting to have, are hearing from people that are like [01:12:00] just being very real about struggle and that like, you know, there's a million different shades of struggle, but doing something bold, moving abroad, being way outta your comfort zone, trying something new, being exposed to so much unfamiliarity and just recognizing like, sometimes it's just gonna suck.

Speaker 6: Mm-hmm. Exactly. And 

Jordan: I'm not gonna be a little bitch about it and just be like, Hmm, I don't wanna do this anymore. Like, you really are like pushing yourself to, to grow. And so I love hearing that perspective, so I appreciate that. Yeah. 

Sophie: On that note, Maddie and Shelby, we love you guys so much. We are so thrilled, Shelby, that you could, you could be part of this podcast, our first, our first couples podcast 

Shelby: together.

Our first, our first podcast ever. Our first podcast. 

Sophie: I just, I love your story and I felt like it was such a good one to tell and it's been really amazing watching you guys like blossom over the [01:13:00] last four years and like really, I think become more of like who you are anyway and like do these adventurous things and very, very cool.

So thank you so much for being a part of this. Like we love, thank you for having us. 

Shelby: Oh wow. We've been together too long now.

Sophie: And on and on that note, we will see everyone next week. Bye guys. Love you guys. Bye. Bye. 

[01:14:00]