HI, WE'RE STEFAN & NICOLETTE
Two Burgers. One World. Plenty of Stories.
We’re Stefan and Nicolette, two Burgers from Germany who have always loved being on the road.
Our travels have changed over the years — from camping trips with our kids and dogs to road trips, faraway places and journeys built around the things we love. We don’t travel to tick countries off a list. We travel because we’re curious about what’s around the next corner — the people, the food, the culture and all those little moments you could never plan.
Cities
Countries
Continents
We Got Here
Hi, we’re the Burgers!
We’re Nicolette and Stefan, and we’ve been exploring the world together for quite a while now. Although, to be fair, the travel bug got to Nicolette long before the two of us met. Other countries, landscapes and the question of how people live in different parts of the world have fascinated her for as long as she can remember — so much so that she even spent a few semesters studying geography. The world simply seemed far too interesting to stay at home.
When we met, that curiosity quickly became something we shared. What we didn’t share quite so easily was the idea of how a journey should actually be organised. Nicolette was perfectly happy to set off with little more than a general direction in mind and trust that everything else would somehow fall into place. Stefan, on the other hand, rather liked knowing where we were going, how we were getting there and, preferably, where we would be sleeping that night.
Plan? What Plan?
Back then, travelling with Nicolette could involve setting off with a tent in the car and no particularly pressing need to know where that tent would be pitched later that evening. She found the uncertainty exciting and was remarkably confident that somewhere along the way a campsite, a free pitch or some other solution would eventually appear.
Stefan was somewhat less enthusiastic about this approach. He had a certain appreciation for reservations, addresses and the reassuring knowledge that there would actually be somewhere to sleep at the end of the day. Looking back, even Nicolette has to admit that his concerns weren’t entirely unreasonable. Her faith in the spontaneous appearance of a suitable campsite before sunset could occasionally be described as optimistic.
These days, we’ve met somewhere in the middle. With Google Maps, Booking.com and a smartphone in our pocket, we can prepare a journey well enough to know where we’ll be spending the night without having to plan every hour of every day. We might know where we’re sleeping, but we can still wake up in the morning, change our minds and head somewhere completely different.
Somewhere between “It’ll work out” and “I’ve made a plan”, we found the way of travelling that works for both of us.
From Tents to the Wider World
In the early years, our travel budget was fairly modest, so packing the tent into the car and simply heading off made perfect sense. We both worked in healthcare and in shifts, which meant that free time was precious, but it also gave us opportunities that a conventional Monday-to-Friday schedule might not have offered. With a night shift in the right place, a few cleverly arranged days off and a bit of planning, a surprisingly useful stretch of free time could suddenly appear.
Our shared hobby at the time, Square Dance, became another reason to travel. We combined dance events with city trips, met people from different places and made friendships that sometimes led us to destinations we might otherwise never have considered. Travel was already becoming less about simply going somewhere and more about the people and experiences we found along the way.
Then the children came along, and two travellers became five. For many years our journeys revolved around family life: first with tents and caravans and later with holiday homes, particularly in Denmark. With three children and two Standard Poodles, Denmark was almost ideal for us. There was space, there were endless walks and there was no need to fill every day with sightseeing. It became one of those places where simply being there was enough.
As the children grew older, our possibilities changed again. Camping holidays gradually gave way to longer road trips and journeys farther from home, and eventually the two of us began travelling on our own more often again. The way we travel has changed many times over the years, and it probably will again.
The desire to see what’s around the next corner never really changed.
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So, What Kind of Travelers Are We?
We’re not entirely sure there is a good answer to that question, because the way we travel depends very much on where we are.
On Bali, for example, we wanted to experience as much as we could. We were interested in the landscape and temples, but just as much in the people, the food, everyday life and the traditions behind what we were seeing. On a road trip, the journey itself becomes part of the experience. A road that looks interesting on the map, an unexpected stop or a place we hadn’t planned to visit can easily become one of the best parts of the trip.
And then there’s Denmark, where things tend to work rather differently. That’s a place where we’re perfectly happy for the world to slow down. For years, holidays there meant long walks with the dogs, time with the family and days when it didn’t matter whether we had seen anything that could be ticked off a sightseeing list.
That difference is something we’ve come to appreciate. We don’t need every journey to be an adventure from morning until night, and we don’t need every holiday to be relaxing either. Sometimes we want to explore and learn as much as possible; sometimes we simply enjoy being on the road, and occasionally we’re perfectly content doing very little at all.
Although sooner or later, the question of what we’re having for dinner usually becomes quite important.
Why Where the Burgers Roam?
We don’t travel because we want to tick as many countries as possible off a list, and we didn’t start this blog because the internet desperately needed another collection of articles about the “10 things you absolutely have to see” somewhere. There are already plenty of excellent travel guides that can do that much better than we can.
Of course, we’ll write about the places we visit. We’ll tell you about cities and landscapes, temples and museums, hotels and restaurants, and if we discover something we genuinely think is worth knowing about, we’ll share that too. But those things aren’t really the reason Where the Burgers Roam exists.
What interests us just as much are the stories that happen in between: the people we meet, the unexpected detours, the little mishaps and the meals that turn out rather differently from what we imagined. We want to write about the things that impress us, but also about those that don’t, because not everything about a journey has to be amazing simply because we travelled a long way to see it.
And then there are those completely absurd moments that nobody could have planned even if they tried.
When we talk about a journey years later, we’ve noticed that our memories surprisingly rarely begin with, “Do you remember that famous sight?” Much more often, one of us simply says, “Do you remember when...?”
Usually, the other one already knows exactly what’s coming.
Those are the stories we want to keep.
Two Burgers Served Worldwide
Travel is something we consciously make room for in our lives. We save for it because experiences and memories together are things we’re happy to spend our money on, and because there will always be another place somewhere that makes us curious.
We don’t know where the next few years will take us, and we don’t particularly want to know all of it yet. Some journeys will be carefully planned, others may start with little more than an idea, and there will almost certainly be occasions when Nicolette thinks everything will work itself out while Stefan quietly checks the reservation one more time.
Some things apparently don’t change completely.
What we hope to bring home from all those journeys isn’t a collection of places we can say we’ve seen. It’s the memories that stay with us long after we’ve forgotten the name of a street, a hotel or even the famous attraction we went there to visit in the first place.
We don’t collect sights. We collect “Remember when...?” stories.
And if you’d like to come along for a few of them, you’re very welcome here.
Welcome to Where the Burgers Roam