Introduction
On October 22nd, 2024, Laura and Jarrett Pickel made the rash decision before 9am to book a cruise for May 29th, 2026 with the intention to move from the United States of America to somewhere in Europe. Destination unknown, they stepped over the metaphorical line in the sand and went from talking about moving somewhere other than in the United States to actually doing something about it.
Before we get into all the details to be decided, let’s roll back a moment and discuss who the members of this family are, what spurred this decision, how they plan on accomplishing this large feat, and why they are writing this blog in the first place.
Who are you?
We are Laura and Jarrett Pickel, along with our currently-a-baby daughter and our two dogs, a regal retired racing greyhound named Kira and a mixed-breed brown dog named Bidou (pronounced bee-doo, kinda like Scooby-Doo, without the “Scoo”).
Laura is a Learning/Content Design Manager by day, a ceramicist/marathoner/cyclist/dog agility handler by night, on top of being a full-time mom. In Jarrett’s eyes, she’s basically a superhero (minus the cape, even though she wants the cape).
Jarrett is a Software Engineer by day, an avid bowler/aspiring entrepreneur/craft coffee drinker/dog sleep enabler by night, who thinks its very cool to do the dad thing basically all the time. In Laura’s eyes, he’s the bee’s knees.
Together, they parent the incredibly adorable baby Pickel, who’s blossoming into a very fun little girl who’s curious about the world, albeit a bit shy at times.
The final piece of the puzzle are the dynamic duo of dogs, Kira and Bidou.
Kira is a regal old lady greyhound who’s racing days are long in the past after Jarrett adopted her. Instead of running to the finish line, these days, she’s running after treats in Golden Gate Park and catching all the ZZZ’s on whichever bed is in the room that Jarrett’s in.
Bidou is a pandemic pup that Laura wanted to adopt after Jarrett and Laura moved in together. The most obedient of boys, Bidou loves getting into trouble, whether that’s attempting to sneak some Thanksgiving turkey, digging in gopher holes in Golden Gate Park, or getting big-sister bullied by Kira.
What started this journey abroad?
When Laura and Jarrett first started dating, Jarrett asked Laura if she wanted to live in the San Francisco Bay Area long term since neither of them were California natives. Laura said she was unsure and that she wanted to live somewhere abroad and flipped the question backed on Jarrett. Jarrett had already lived in 4 different states within the United States, so he was open to moving yet again, maybe even abroad.
Over the years, as they traveled around the United States and to other countries like South Korea, Japan, Italy, and Greece, both Jarrett and Laura always made an effort to check out real estate listings when they were walking around in various towns and cities. While none of the places they looked at spoke to them deeply, the thought of moving somewhere different did strike a chord.
During a walking food tour in their adventure to Greece, Laura and Jarrett met a couple from Portland who had moved to the Netherlands. Jarrett has this really bad habit of hyperfocusing on things and the moment he heard the couple moved internationally, he couldn’t let the conversation go and spent most of the entire 6 hour walking tour peppering the couple with questions. They mentioned going to the Netherlands as part of “the DAFT” (whatever that was), which Jarrett filed away in the back of his mind for later follow-up.
Fast forward to a few months after baby Pickel was born. With Laura less than two weeks away from ending maternity leave and going back to work, Jarrett had one of his not-actually-trademarked late-night internet deep dives, and dug into the DAFT and how to move dogs abroad. The DAFT turned out to be the Dutch American Friendship Treaty, which is designed to help facilitate American entrepreneurs moving to the Netherlands to start businesses.
The next day, Jarrett brought up the idea of moving abroad again to Laura, maybe perhaps to the Netherlands. They had a long discussion about how it’s only going to get harder to make a move like this as their roots were starting to deepen in the Bay Area because they were making friends who were also new parents, they’d need to get baby Pickel into daycare, figure out the school systems, etc. While they had no idea how they’d do it, their hearts were being pulled towards a big adventure, but still no action.
The day before Laura was supposed to go back to work, Laura and Jarrett had a conversation early in the morning about how they’d get the dogs abroad. Jarrett was concerned that Kira wouldn’t handle a plane very well, so he suggested they take a cruise based on his research. He was unsure if it was even possible given the size of the dogs, so he told Laura that he’d make a call “just to ask a few questions” since he heard that cruises involving pets book out 18-24 months in advance.
40 minutes later after a lot of what-ifs between Jarrett and Laura, cruise tickets for the humans and kennels for the dogs were booked. Laura and Jarrett spent the remainder of the day partially in shock and what they had rashly done, but were also very excited about the prospect of moving out of the United States.
How are you going to do this?
Short answer, we don’t know.
We have some ideas, and we’re evaluating our options how to get abroad. There’s talks of getting jobs for overseas employers, going back to school, starting businesses, and a few other things, but the actual how is yet to be decided. Setting aside the visa-related questions, we also have to plan the logistics of the move to another country, especially with the dogs.
You’ve got no idea what you are doing, so why the blog?
Because if we have no idea what we are doing, a lot of people who want to move abroad probably don’t either. We figured we could help demystify the process of relocating between countries by writing down our research, uncovering our plan in public, sharing the ups-and-downs as options get struck, and any other interesting tidbits along the way.