It all started with a website called Twitter where you could publish status updates of 140 characters, but for a lot of us it has became a lot more than that: a virtual hangout where we'd daily meet travelling friends from all around the world.

  • Story Alex
  • Video Alex
  • Soundtrack of the report
  • Nomadic Chronicle
  • Gogol Bordello

The travel community on Twitter is massive but friendly and united. We started as passive followers of dozens of travel bloggers about two years ago when we started working on the launch of the new version of Hejorama. And then one day we stopped sitting in our corner and started talking to other people, reacting to their tweets and answered their questions.

We quickly grew a small but tight network of virtual friends that kept expanding daily even if we were not that active in the community. But one thing that is always on our mind is when will we have the chance to meet them? Virtual chats are good but there's nothing better that a proper conversation with a couple of pints of beer or a good tea.

When we saw that Jeannie, better know as @nomadicchick was stopping by Paris during the Ultimate Train Challenge trip, we figured it would be the perfect occasion to finally meet her after having quietly read hundreds of her tweets in our Tweetdeck timeline.

Jeannie is currently part of a fantastic adventure by train, along with fellow travel bloggers @hobonora and @mobilelawyer, to go from Lisbon in Portugal to Saigon in Vietnam. But you already know this since you read the Monday Map" article that was dedicated to the Ultimate Train Challenge.

Before starting that adventure Jeannie hadn’t been travelling around for the past year. She went on to quit her job as a corporate lackey to a full blown traveler. You can follow her adventures on her blog where she shares her travel stories and reflects on her new nomadic life. Her posts are always insightful and well written, often very funny. Definitely someone to follow to vicariously live a gypsy life around the world thru.

We met at our office-you can see in the background the Cosmo Sapiens collection of toys-and had a great chat over a cup of tea. Jeannie was nice enough to answer my badly prepared interview and turn it into a pleasant and interesting conversation. Check out the video to hear stories and advice from a real travel expert.

Thanks of lot Jeannie!

Alex

PS: Jeannie's website tagline is "putting the gypsy back into travel and life" so the soundtrack of this article is a proper gypsy punk song by Gogol Bordello appropriately named "Nomadic Life".