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Hello, and warm welcome!
We are the Forever Travelers Family
About Us
It is so nice to meet you ! We are the Grunstrup Taarnhøj family.
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We have quit our 9-5 life to take a family sabbatical and started this blog in hope of inspiring other families to consider a sabbatical.
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We are all Danish although it's been 11 years since we last lived there.
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Martin’s job in healthcare brought us to Stockholm, Sweden for almost 6 years and afterwards to Barcelona for 4 years. Those have been great years, packed with new adventures and challenges, but after chasing a career for 12 years we have decided to quit the 9-5 life for a while to follow an old dream of a family gap year of full time travel.
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Our adventure started at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) 15 years ago at Karaoke night in the Friday Bar. We both sang (Helene a lot better than Martin). It was love at first sight, and the rest evolved from there.
We had Toby while still both studying at CBS living in our small apartment when Martin got his first job. This job took us to Stockholm when Toby was just 2, and Philip was born there one year later. We loved our time in Stockholm, the nature, the people and we are forever grateful for the wonderful friendships we still hold strong.
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After nearly 6 years in Stockholm, Martin’s Job took us abroad once more, this time to Barcelona in Spain. Our time here has been amazing with wonderful people, culture, climate, food. It was a tough start as Toby and Philip didn't speak any English or Spanish upon our arrival and they had to transition to a life with two new languages every day, which they both master now. We feel their sense of achievement and it makes us very proud.
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It was tough leaving both Copenhagen and Stockholm and it’s tough to leave Barcelona...But it’s not "goodbye", it's "see you later" as Barcelona and our close friends here holds a special place in our hearts.​
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The many moves and changes have made us adventurous by heart for better and for worse, and we are now taking our biggest challenge yet: to become fulltime travel family for the next year. ​
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We have talked a lot about what we want out of this family travel, and it’s really about 3 things:
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1: The adventure of seeing the world and finding ways to contribute​
2: New enriching learning opportunities for us as a family and for the kids​
3: Growth in life and for our future business
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We don’t know how it will go, but our quest to find out starts now...​
... We are the ForeverTravelersFamily
We have started a travelblog and through our succes and failure, we hope to inspire all of us to seek extraordinary experiences of travel, learning and growth in life and in business!
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Come join the family!
Meet The Family
Philip
Life philosophy:
"Lots and lots of sports"
Helene
Life philosophy:
"Laugh more,
Love more"
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Toby
Life philosophy:
"The world could end at any time, so eat your desert first"
Martin
Life philosophy:
"If you want to make an omelet, your gonna break some eggs"
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Hola, I'm Helene
I have had the privilege of spending the last four years as a fulltime mom and being involved at the boy’s school in Barcelona on a daily basis.
I have always loved learning new languages and having lived outside of Denmark on 5 different occasions (Canada, France, Taiwan, Sweden and Spain), I have had plenty of opportunities to follow this interest. Through lots of travelling since childhood it has been natural for me to engage with people from all over the world and learning about cultures that I didn’t know existed or knew very little about. Being an expat away from home has only developed my interest in other cultures further, and I see it as a gift now having friends from all over the world.
Sports have taken up a lot of my time since I was little, and it still does today. Everything from yoga, Zumba, dance to soccer/football, boxing, running, SUP’ing etc. I love trying new sports.
My professional background is in Int. HR and working with and facilitating cross cultural services, which essentially is my biggest interest.
Salutations, I'm Toby
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I have lived in Denmark, Copenhagen for 2 years, in Sweden, Stockholm for 5 years, and in Spain, Barcelona for 4 years. In the next year I will be travelling the world, starting with Tokyo, Japan. When we are done with travelling the world we will likely settle in Denmark.
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I enjoy things like playing video games, reading, designing etc...
My Dream destination: The place I would like to go to the most is New York and generally the United States because I have never been there and everyone says its awesome.
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My goal for this trip: My hope is that I can collect football jerseys from all the countries we visit as a lasting memory, which I can actually use
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A special talent I have is speed eating. I once ate 2 hamburgers in less than a minute. Hamburgers is also my favorite food.
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Hejsa, I'm Martin
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Before we became the Forever.Travelers.Family I spent 12 years in healthcare. I learned a lot and met great people. My work also took our family 6 years to Stockholm and 4 years to Barcelona. I became a well rounded professional during those years and I feel proud of what we achieved, but I also invested majority of my time and energy. I was not sure how, but I felt I had to reach a better balance and wanted to spend more time with my family at least for a while, while the kids are still young.
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Eventually, I took the leap and stepped off the race for a while to chase our lifelong dream of a family sabbatical where we are traveling full time as a family.
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The positive thing about a busy work life is that It taught me the value of a healthy lifestyle. I learned to eat healthier, do Yoga and meditate which I highly recommend to anyone :-)
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I was born with an adventures soul and I was on exchange 3 times during my studies, first in Idaho at age 16, then Texas and lastly in Taiwan with Helene during our time together in Copenhagen Business School.
My dream destinations for the year are to visit, French Polynesia because that looks super pretty and its so far away we will normally never get the chance to go there and the Inca trail because my brother in Law, Lasse, has always told me the coolest stories about that place
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My goal for the trip is to spend as much time together as a family and learn as much as possible from the changing world we live in
I have a special talent: I can fold my ear into my ear so it stays there and I can even decide when it pops back out…😊
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Btw, Hejsa is danish for Hello.
Hello, I'm Philip
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I have lived in Denmark, Copenhagen for 2 years, in Sweden, Stockholm for 5 years, and in Spain, Barcelona for 4 years. In the next year I will be travelling the world, starting with Tokyo, Japan. When we are done with travelling the world we will likely settle in Denmark.
​
I enjoy things like playing video games, reading, designing etc...
My Dream destination: The place I would like to go to the most is New York and generally the United States because I have never been there and everyone says its awesome.
​
My goal for this trip: My hope is that I can collect football jerseys from all the countries we visit as a lasting memory, which I can actually use
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A special talent I have is speed eating. I once ate 2 hamburgers in less than a minute. Hamburgers is also my favorite food.
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