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We were going to
remodel the house
Instead they rented it out, quit both jobs, and left for a year. Two weeks of that year were
spent on Hvar — which is not, they will tell you, a blockbuster place, and that is the entire point.
HOSTED BY ANNETTE SCHMITZ · JELSA, HVAR · 19 MIN
Annette with Jelena and Alex on the terrace at Jelsa. Two weeks into a year.
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EPISODE FOUR OF FIVE · THE FIELD SCHOOL OF HVAR · 19 MINUTES
The plan was a remodel. They had the money set aside for it and they were going to do
the house, and then Jelena said the thing that turned into everything else: what we could
do with that money instead is travel. “And that,” she says, “was a much better use of
money than a remodel.” That was the first conversation they ever had about it.
It took three or four more years of dreaming, planning and saving before they ripped off
the band-aid. They rented the house out. They quit both jobs — “we're digital nomads,
we're just full on” — and as Alex puts it, they jumped into the ocean. When we sat down
with them they were two weeks into a year that runs through Serbia and Montenegro,
on to Asia, with the spring still undecided.
Alex is dismissive of the part everyone asks about. “Logistics are logistics. When you
really think about it, that's kind of the easy part.” The hard part was deciding. Will I ever
work again. The world seems like a dangerous place right now. And from other people:
what if the dollar loses all its value?
“Then we’ll be really grateful that we did this right now
— before no one’s travelling any more.”
NOT EUROPE'S GREATEST HITS
The thing they most want understood is what a year of travel is not. “What people think,
somehow, is you're taking a year off and it'll be like my Euro vacation — where I was in
Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, Frankfurt and Madrid in six days. And it is the opposite of
that.” It is slow travel, deliberately slow, and the proof of it is where we were sitting
when they said so.
Because in a smaller place you meet people. You feel the town. You get the pulse of what
is going on, and it is more relaxed for everybody. We should say plainly that this is our
own editorial thesis, arriving unprompted from a stranger on a terrace. It is why The
County Edit covers Falls Church and not the postcard.
PARENT CAMP
Their name for the parents' programme is parent camp, and we are stealing it. They had
booked a children's programme and found themselves on a tour of an old stone village,
hiking down to a cave some believe belongs to the Cyclops, then lunch at a konoba —
peka, cooked under a heavy metal dome. “As adults it's a little bit harder to make
friends,” Alex says. “So it's kind of nice how easy that is.”
“We’re not in Zagreb, we’re not in Dubrovnik, we’re not in these
blockbuster places. And that’s fine. That’s actually deliberate.”
ALEX
TWO WEEKS, MEASURED
We ask every guest in this series what changes between the first day and the last. The
change Jelena and Alex came away describing is independence — “especially coming
from an American context.” They are protective parents in a protective country, and
what this place supplies is a safe environment in which a child can be handed some
genuine authority. By the end of the fortnight, it was the children leading their parents
through the alleys of Jelsa and Stari Grad.
“I feel like that Monday night dinner was key. Pivotal. That was
what helped us all kind of get to know each other.”
IF YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT A YEAR
Put everyone's vision on one sheet of paper. Four months out, the whole family drew what a year off looked like — drawing, not writing, so the youngest had an equal vote.
Give a rolling two-week preview, not the year. Tomorrow's ferry and the grandparents after that. The full itinerary is for the parents.
Build in community, not just travel. Short programmes like this one, longer cohorts, and small local schools that take short-term enrolments.
The money question has an answer, and it is a trade. They rented the house out rather than remodelling it, and both of them work remotely now.
Choose the unfamous town. Not Zagreb, not Dubrovnik. Smaller means you meet people.