All right! You might have been wondering: “Where are they at?” To be honest with you, we were questioning ourselves what we were doing, in what order and how.
It has been a challenging last few weeks with getting the apartment empty and our things into storage. I would pack boxes in the evening after dinner and Saeed would take them, once enough were ready, to the basement where everything is being stored. Of course, before leaving he would wait at home in the mornings for the many deliveries of items we had ordered for our journey. Think of an air shower, jerry cans, a water jerry can, tarpolin, first aid items, travel guides, a roof rack (flat packed!), compressor, car parts, etc.
Our living room was in major chaos with boxes half full for storage, others packed and ready to go, bookshelves and corners of the room with things being put together to take on our travels. Ahhh and that in 18m2.
Dear friends invited us for dinner and drinks and unfortunately we were not able to accept due to the mountain which seemed endless to deal with. Allowing ourselves no rest, but making sure everything we wanted went to storage, the apartment was cleaned and the car was filled till the top, we finally head off for the ferry last Tuesday evening and made it in good time.
Our bodies started to release all the tension and suddenly we felt the incredible tiredness of short nights and very long days of the weeks before. Our journey had started!

And today was the first day we truly let go of… one of our dear Goldfish (Kim).
For the past four years, we have had two goldfish, Kim & Tim, as they were part of our first haft sin table in celebrations of Norouz. We have had many considerations what to do with our fish (take them with us on the roof rack?), who had become real pets to us: feeding, changing the water and enjoying them playing with the toys and making bubbles or moving the pebbles in the tank.
Two options remained: give them to the pet shop or give them their freedom and hope for the best.

As Kim was ill, we thought the pet shop would be ruthless and flush her through the toilet, so we decided to set her free in the brook not far from our home, the same brook in which we had thrown this year’s sabzi on sizdah bedar, after Norouz. It was a sad moment, emptying the bowl of water with fish into the brook. The moment we noticed however, how she had found her way and seemed totally happy in her new surroundings, was precious and made us feel more at ease with the decision to ‘drop’ her there. No big fish around, no birds either, so good chances on survival.
For Tim we had thought to take him to the pet shop, for sale, so other people might enjoy him, however, after having seen Kim so happy out in the open water, we are thinking of taking Tim there the coming week too.
I know, they are just a few fish, but we had grown accustomed to them and they were part of our life. And obviously we want the best for them. We our freedom, they theirs!