Ø  Who are you?

We are Ivana and Gianni, a Slovak-Italian couple, travel junkies, nature and food lovers who travel the world to better know themselves, each other and the planet they live on.

Ø  Where are you from/Where’s home?

Ivana comes from Presov, a small town between the hills in East Slovakia and Gianni is from Martina Franca, a town in the south of Italy.

Ø  What type of traveller are you? Backpacker, full time traveller, luxury traveller?

We are full-time slow travellers who travel only with carry-on luggage.

Ø  Where was the first trip you took?

We started our long-term journey in Bangkok, Thailand.

Ø   Have you had any bad experiences whilst travelling?

Apart from minor rip-offs in Southeast Asia, a missed airplane to Manila from Thailand and a few food poisonings, we can’t really complain.

Ø  Do you have any funny or crazy travel stories?

We had to laugh a lot when we saw we were going to stay overnight in a former prison on our slow boat trip from Thailand to Laos. But we were all ‘released’ the following day without any harm.

Ø   What is the worst place you’ve travelled to and why?

We wouldn’t call it the worst, because at the end you either laugh about it or you just don’t stay there for long. The places we didn’t like were more anonymous than others, for example, Sandakan in Borneo, but you know you have to pass through them, because you need to sleep somewhere on your way to an eco-adventure so you can avoid the overpriced accommodation in national parks or other touristy places.

Ø  Where is your favourite place in the world?

We just can’t choose only one, so we choose Thailand, Philippines, Iceland, Romania and our homelands.

Ø  How do you fund your travels?

For now we are using our savings, but we are working on monetizing our blog and earning money with other photography projects, too.

Ø  What is your most fond memory from your travels?

Again, it’s difficult to choose just one! Swimming in a freezing waterfalls and kayaking in Laos, climbing Mount Batur in Bali for sunrise, meeting locals in Pandan in the Philippines and visiting Phare Circus in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Ø  What would you be doing if you weren’t travelling?

We would have been dreaming about the places we always wanted to visit while working in the video game industry (Gianni) and in a kindergarten (Ivana) in Germany. And watching hundreds of travel videos and reading about all adventures of other travellers.

Ø  Have you ever experiences any cultural faux pas?

One time in Thailand it took us some time to realise that all the people had stopped on the street because of the national anthem. And in Bali we made small mistakes while performing a ritual during Galungan festival. Luckily, in both cases we were forgiven because we were foreigners.

Ø  What is your Favourite airline?

Qatar airlines.

Ø  Where are you off to next?

We are travelling around Europe for the next three months: to the Czech Republic, Finland, Slovenia, Italy and Greece. And then, who knows?

Blogging:

Ø   What is the name of your travel blog and why did you choose this name?

Our travel blog is called Nomad is Beautiful and it’s Gianni who came up with the idea while he was meditating one day back in Frankfurt. We were getting ready for our trip and we knew we wanted to start a travel blog along our travel adventure. All the preparation and thought we put into leaving our routine life, the jobs and the place where we were based was a terrific experience for us. There was this amazing feeling of a new beginning, a new life.

Gianni remembered the movie “Life is Beautiful” by Roberto Benigni that both of us are big fans of, and from there it was only a short jump to connect the beautiful life of nomads our journey offers us.

Ø   When did you start blogging?

1 November 2013.

Ø   Where did you start blogging?

In Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Ø  Why did you start a Travel blog?

It’s a platform where we can live our dreams: sharing our experience from the road through our photography, travel stories and tips with people who have the same passion for adventure or with those who are looking for an inspiration.

Ø  What are you tips for new Travel Bloggers?

We are newbies ourselves, but we can suggest starting by asking whether you’re
going to blog for friends, family and to have fun or whether you intend to take it
seriously and build a professional travel blog out of it. This does not mean you won’t have fun, though. In any case, set your goals, make a plan and stick to it. Create a fan page and profiles on social media platforms. Find out which one works the best for you to interact with your fans and be active there. Join groups of professional and semi-professional travel bloggers on Facebook, ask, interact, learn from experienced ones. Write for others, invest your time into networking, look for other travel bloggers at the destinations where you are.

Ø  Do you wish you did differently when you started out?

We did not really pay much attention if our first articles were SEO-friendly, which has now changed.

Ø  What has been your most successful blog post and what was it about?

One is about why quitting alcohol is good for your travels and the other was about our wonderful experience in the Philippines.

Ø  What do you do to help make your articles successful?

We’ve read some e-books and articles about how to write high quality content and how to optimise our articles so they are SEO-friendly. We learn from our favourite travel bloggers, ask fellow travellers who run a blog how to improve our work. Also, we make sure that we include high quality photos in all our articles.

Ø  What social media platform is the most helpful for you and why?

For now, Facebook is the leader when it comes to interaction with our fans and our daily updates. We also use Instagram and Twitter daily. And then, we started to like Triberr, which looks like a great platform for sharing the stuff we like and for getting our posts shared by other bloggers at the same time.

Ø  Have you worked with any “big name” sponsors, if not who would be your dream to work with?

It would be fantastic to share our travel photography and stories with the readers of National Geographic one day.

Ø  Do you have any tips for new bloggers who want to work with sponsors?

Contact only those partners you are genuinely interested in, not only for the sake of getting something for free. Create your media kit, be professional in communication and fulfil your promises afterwards. We’ve met a few sponsors who were so disappointed from the cooperation with travel bloggers that they were very resistant towards sponsoring another travel blogger in the near future.

Ø  Which travel bloggers do you admire?

Our big inspirations are Audrey and Daniel from Uncornered Market, we like the stories of Audrey from That Backpacker, the videos of Nomadic Samuel and Mark Wiens from Migrationology. And recently we’ve started to follow the blog of Franca and Dale: Anglo-Italian, Follow Us!

Ø  Do you have any advice or tips for aspiring travellers?

You don’t need a fortune to travel. If you love travelling but don’t know where to start from, set your priorities, reduce buying unnecessary stuff, sell things you don’t need and minimize your expenses wherever you can. Read travel blogs, guides, watch travel videos, make a plan, set a date, pack light and hit the road

Ø  What is your Travel Motto:

Slowly and steady. Whether it’s our personal life, growth, developing skills, blogging or hiking up mountains, we prefer to be conscious of what we are doing and the purpose behind it. But sure, there is plenty of spontaneity that brings us a lot of laughs and adventure on our journeys.

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