Florence, Tuscany
Amelia is a member of Dotsub’s recruitment team. She is a traveler, although, technically, she is a citizen of Argentina. She along with her partner can spend months at a time on the road renting flats and occasionally staying in hostels. As Amelia works at Dotsub full time, the requirements are a quiet place to work and a robust internet connection.
Leaving Argentina in mid-November 2019, the plan was to be away indefinitely. Visas in place: first Spain for 2 ½ months, then France for three weeks. Italy would follow with 3 weeks in Florence, on to Rome and then a visit with relatives in Northern Italy. From there, they would go to Croatia.
As February turned into March, Amelia was settling into an Airbnb in Florence, Italy. Because their travel had been by land, they had not experienced any of the chaos of air travel at the time.
Within a week, things had turned for the worse. Most harrowing was an evening stroll in lovely Florence that abruptly ended with police cars patrolling the streets with loud speakers blasting messages in Italian that our travelers didn’t understand. Although they could get information from the web and from their relatives, not understanding the local messages was very unsettling. Italy shut down on March 9th. Suddenly, all the careful planning was off the table.
Living out of a suitcase for years at a time is a deep commitment. Amelia states, “We’ve made the choice to experience the journey knowing that we are sacrificing the comforts of home.” At this writing, she is still stranded thousands of miles from Argentina. In spite of the recent pandemic, I don’t think that her travel adventures are over.