Meet the Rungholms (🇩🇰/🇩🇪)

Please introduce yourself; who are you, where are you from, where are you currently, what do you do for a living/currently? Please include kids’ ages on departure day.

We are Alua (1), Ava (4),  Andrea, Danish, (30), and Martin, German (41). 

We have our base in Denmark, where we built a house in an old stable on Andrea’s parent’s farm. The past years we were lucky to spend the summers in Denmark and in Germany by Martin’s family, while traveling parts of winter with stops in Spain, Greece, South Africa, and Thailand. 

While Martin is involved in the family business of running an airline (dat.dk) as marketing director, Andrea dedicates her waking (and sleeping) hours to being with the girls and to creating a homestay community in our part of Denmark.

Why did you decide to get involved in this project?

By raising our girls at home, which is very unlike the norm in Denmark, we soon realized that it literally takes a village to raise our kids the way we want to. 

So why not a traveling one!?!

The concept of the travelling village therefore resonated with us a lot and we are excited to be part of building a community of like-minded.

What kind of interests do you have?

We have a big home gym which is arguably the space where we spend most of our time. We love playing, moving, and being active together

We have a big garden, where we started harvesting our own fruits and veggies. Being outdoors and in nature brings us lots of joy. 

Andrea runs around 10k pretty much every morning and the girls and Martin love to hang out at playgrounds … a lot!

Tell us some interesting random facts about you guys. Don’t hold back, this is your time to shine 🙂

Andrea and Martin met in Dubai where both lived a sweet (and sweaty) expat life of sun, sand, and sports. Martin moved to Denmark to start working in the family business and stayed with his parents-in-law, while Andrea still enjoyed the carefree life for a bit longer. Equally brave and terrifying at once! 

Andrea is a relation and family counselor and nerve system therapist. While she for now dedicates her time to being a stay-at-home mom, this is a big interest of hers and will probably be a future career.

How do you educate your kids?

For the age they are now, simply by living life with them. Involve them in household work, support, and facilitate if they show interest in something particular.

What do you think will be the most difficult about this experiment?

Being away from our cat, horses, and hens … and of course, Andrea’s parents, who we see and spend time with on a daily basis.

What kind of work groups or projects would you be excited about joining on the trip?

Andrea creates a home for the family wherever we go through home-cooked meals, so she will for sure join the communal meal work groups.

The 41-year-old playground enthusiast, Martin, will help source local playgrounds and test all the equipment together with the kids. 

Andrea is very excited to start a playgroup with training 2-3 times a week for everyone in the village. Training and the joy of being active is such a big part of us and we love to share it with others!

Will you be working while we are traveling?

We want to try and keep similar routines as at home, where Andrea is home with the kids and Martin works normal hours from Monday to Wednesday with maternity leave half day Thursday and full day Friday.

What do you hope to learn or take away from joining this experiment?

It will be interesting to see how other families approach their life with kids at home and educate them in a different way than normal schools. We can’t see ourselves in the regular system in Denmark, but also not sure which other way to go. So lots of inspiration from different ways to live life especially with older kids.