Let's put it into words.

Four Cities, One Life

Been dreaming of mud under your fingernails, welly walks and morning yawns on the veranda, sipping coffee? Perhaps you, too, are ready for a move to the country. The idea lived in us for a long time before we finally took the leap. My husband and I, though both from the countryside originally, had only lived in cities together. We met in Auckland while still at university, did a short stint in Copenhagen, hopped over to London and stayed four years, then catapulted into the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong before finally boomeranging back to Copenhagen. It was a slow-developing kind of love, but I’d come to love the green city of Copenhagen with its harbour water fit for swimming just as much as my Danish husband. We had our daughters there, walked their prams in its parks, knew every playground in our neighbourhood and enjoyed a classic Copenhagen commute-by-bike to our respective offices for years. Our apartment wasn’t huge, but it was spacious enough that we could have stayed put. So why move to the country?

Having It All … for a While

For us, it was a question of fresh air, nature and – let’s not beat around the bush – geographical arbitrage. We’d bought our apartment in the downturn that followed in the wake of the ’08 financial crisis and researched the market thoroughly before sticking our hard-earned cash into a bricks and mortar investment. It was a beautiful, early 20th century apartment with high ceilings and wooden floors, but when we bought it, the place was run-down after twenty-five years of indoor smoking and very little upkeep. So we dug our hands in and renovated it, tore out the kitchen, washed and painted walls and ceilings for an eternity, then wallpapered and decorated and stood back in awe as its original beauty wooed us. We both loved this home, not least because we felt we had created it ourselves. But eight years later, we were a bit worn down from trying to do it all: caring for children, working through sick days, and keeping up with general city life while tending to two full-time careers. We started to look around for a slower kind of life that would offer more presence and more family time on less money.

A One-Way Ticket

Our apartment became the ticket to this other existence. Thanks to our renovations and add-ons as well as the overall rise in property prices across Copenhagen, our apartment had almost doubled in value. If we sold it and bought the same square metres somewhere more rural, we could move to the country and cut our monthly expenses in half. But before we took action on this, we sat down with these questions:

• What do we enjoy about living in the city? This was a surprising one. We started out saying things like ‘proximity to the city centre’, ‘cafes around the corner’, but when we examined our current life, we learned we rarely used these treats anymore. These days, we loved being close to the beach and green areas, but that didn’t necessitate that we lived in the city.
  
• How will our lives change if we move to the country? The answer ended up being: not a lot. We already existed in a daily routine of doing the school/kindergarten run, going to work, picking up, going to the playground or organising a playdate, having dinner at home, going to bed. We might as well do this cycle somewhere else, sans the honking car horns.
  
• How do we use our weekends? We’d been packing up picnics and taking our family on outings to lakes and forest hikes that existed outside of the city. If we stayed put, we’d usually bike to the nearest local park. This, we could easily do in the country, and we wouldn’t need to hop on a train or use the car.
  
• What will our weekdays look like if we move to the country? We weren’t interested in chucking out the greatest benefit of living in the city: a short bike-commute to work. But my husband is blessed with an academic position that allows him to work from home a few times a week and I had started glancing at freelancing as a career. It would take the courage to try something new, but with a bit more financial leeway, the rewards might just be worth the risks.

Taking the Leap

In short, we realized that we were paying the cost of living in the city but not using its advantages. Over the next year, we started planning for our move to the country and when property prices peaked, we took a chance. Our apartment sold within a week. Some stressful months later – there’s no other way to describe looking for a new home while having a leaving date tagged to your door – our moving truck pulled up in front of our brand-new townhouse with all our belongings. It took some settling in, but in the slow life that followed our decision to move to the country, the rewards became obvious.

I still miss some things about the city, or rather: our old neighbourhood. I’d put down roots there. But I can appreciate it from afar, sipping coffee in our sunny ground floor living room, typing away at my computer, creating stories for a living. I’m allowed to spend my days writing, and if that ain’t worth a move to the country, I don’t know what is….