What legal paperwork do you need to go abroad?
We made sure our passports were valid with lots of extra time and had extra pages. Each country in the world requires some kind of visa for visitors; for Europe it can be a bit complicated as 26 countries have agreed to the Schengen Boundary Agreement while others have not. Aaron has written more extensively on the Schengen here. Checking in advance for visa information about a country is imperative. The only country we’ve needed to acquire a visa in advance on this trip is Turkey, and it’s the easiest on-line visa system we’ve encountered. They had our information at the border when we crossed with Charlie a month after purchasing on-line. We continue to feel chased by visa limitations and are heading to a 6 month upon arrival visa in the UK. Give yourself months in advance to get an tourist visa to Brazil, India, or China.
What else do you need?
Health insurance and our state-side driver’s licenses. We also travel with our International Immunization booklets that keep our history of jabs available, and our International Driver’s Licenses issued at the AAA in our home state.
Anything special needed to cross borders?
Borders within the Schengen countries are not monitored and you don’t have to even stop. Coming in and out of the Schengen, however, we have had to ask to have our passports stamped to make sure our visas are being tracked properly. We have had no problems whatsoever crossing borders. We are asked for car paperwork and our passports at every formal crossing.
Where do you get your mail?
Our mail is sent to our mailing address in the U.S. and our stateside agent handles it for us. Granted, the primary things that come snail mail anymore is tax information, a summons to jury duty (!), and the occasional bank information. Our main complication to being mobile is we can’t have items sent to us as we don’t plan our next destinations in advance.
Can you vote?
Most definitely. We are planning to vote from whatever U.S. consulate we’re near.
What about filing and paying your taxes?
We do it the same as we did in the states except we don’t have an income from the last year.