Suzy: Hello! Welcome to the Wander World School and Slow Family Travel podcast. I’m Suzy, a travel-loving money nerd, mom of two, and our family lives between Spain and Colorado. On this show, we discuss the stories, logistics, and finances of long-term traveling families and the many ways to learn and educate along the way. Today, we get to know Christina Cann and Brett Rivera. Welcome to the show! Please tell me more about you and your family.
Brett and Christina: Thank you so much. We’ve been traveling for about a year now. We have two daughters, Catherine and Julia, who are 12 and 8. We’ve been traveling to a lot of different places. We went from traveling probably faster than we should to getting more into slower travel, but we’ve gone through several continents at this point. We also travel with our sourdough starter—this is Gandalf. He’s our "other kid" that we travel with because we bake everywhere we go; we’re sourdough bakers.
Suzy: That is so cool! I cannot wait to learn more about how you incorporate baking and bread into your travels. But let’s step back to before the traveling started. Tell me more about what travel was like for each of you growing up.
Brett and Christina: I can answer that very quickly: not very existent at all. I grew up in Western Pennsylvania in a small town about an hour north of Pittsburgh, but I never really traveled internationally until I met Brett in college. One of the first things we did—we got together in 2003, which folks of a certain age will remember as the period of "freedom fries" and a big anti-French sentiment—was take a trip to France. It was bizarre, but it was actually really cheap to travel to France at that point. We took a weekend trip to Paris a few months after we started going out; it was only a few hundred dollars for the flight and hotel. It was ridiculous, so we said, "Let’s go!" I’m pretty sure that’s why Christina stayed with me for so long—that initial introduction was a good start, I think.
Suzy: Travel really does help a couple get to know each other, right? You’re in unique circumstances, and it offers a chance to bond quickly. I can see that being an early part of many couples' stories—a travel experience that either brought them closer together or the opposite. But you continued on; you’ve done some other traveling as well.
Brett and Christina: Yeah, it could be a trial by fire too, I guess. To your point, my growing-up experience was very different. I would even call my upbringing "proto-worldschooling" in some ways. My mother is a professor, and when I was six, she got a posting on Semester at Sea.
It’s basically a cruise that goes around the world for a semester as a study abroad for students. She was a professor on that for a semester when I was six and my brother was nine. That was a four-month trip while I was in first grade. Then she did a couple of other stints of research in Eastern Europe in the mid-to-late nineties, post-communism. When I was in sixth grade—which is crazy to think about because it's the same age as our oldest daughter now—we lived in Slovenia with her for another semester. We also did lots of summertime trips for her research; I was able to tag along on many longer educational trips.
Suzy: That is so cool. With the Semester at Sea experience, was there any education tailored to you and your brother’s level, or were you just along for the ride with university students?
Brett and Christina: It was my mom, my dad, my brother, and me. My dad was charged with homeschooling us while my mother was working. The school gave him curriculums and worksheets to do. That wasn't hard, but my brother Eric and I mostly explored the whole ship. I was a very social kid and made friends with the whole crew. One of the funniest things we did was go into classrooms after the lectures and collect all the pens the students had left behind. We set up a little booth and sold the pens back to the students for five cents. That was Brett’s first foray into entrepreneurship!
Suzy: Starting young! You’ve got to start at some point. And how old was your brother at this time? My boys are six and eight-and-a-half, so I’m picturing them at those exact ages perusing a cruise ship. What an awesome experience. Fill me in on the sequence of events since then that led you to the traveling lifestyle you’re on now.
Brett and Christina: For me, it was always a goal to travel. When Christina and I got together, we had this mantra: "Live cheap and travel." That sounds great in college, but after you graduate, you realize the "living cheap" part is up to you, and the "travel" part is hard when you only have five days of vacation. But it remained a goal. We ended up owning a bakery in Tampa, Florida, for about ten years. A few years ago, we decided it was time to make a change. Thankfully, the bakery reached a point where we could sell a big portion of it to fund what we’ve always wanted to do. The kids were the right ages to pull them out of school. We took a few "test trips" to Canada and then Western Europe to see how they handled transatlantic flights. Once the bakery was sold, we jumped on the opportunity. It was always the goal; that was just the first time we could actually do it.
Suzy: And where did the passion for baking come from? Building a business like that is a big endeavor—lots of early mornings, I’m guessing.
Brett and Christina: I had been into bread making on and off since I was a teenager. In 2010, I got a sourdough baking book. It was a big push back then, though nothing like what COVID did for home baking. I got really into it as a stress relief thing; working with dough was satisfying. We lived in Pittsburgh at the time and started a cottage home bakery out of our house just to keep the habit going, otherwise, you're just making way too much bread to eat. After our first daughter was born, we were both burned out and ready for a change. Christina’s family had moved to Florida, so we relocated to Tampa in 2015 and decided to try out a professional bakery. At least we’d be working together, which was something we always wanted to do.
Suzy: And did the sourdough starter come down with you?
Brett and Christina: Oh yeah. He’s very well-traveled. He’s a teenager now! He can almost drive. He's getting his permit.
Suzy: You should get a picture of him at 16 behind the wheel of a self-driving car! You mentioned sourdough was big in the early pandemic. How did that affect your business?
Brett and Christina: That was crazy. We had been around for five years, doing farmers' markets and wholesale. We had just opened our front-facing retail sandwich shop in late 2019. When March 2020 rolled around, we thought, "This is going to kill us." But COVID was actually great for the sandwich shop. So many people were working from home and wanted to support local businesses. Once the wholesale restaurant business recovered, we were able to purchase and renovate a 3,500-square-foot building. That growth allowed us to build the business to a point where we could make an exit.
Suzy: Then you sold the business and launched into travel. How did that process go?
Brett and Christina: It took years. Selling a business is difficult. We first put it up for sale around 2021 or 2022. By then, it had grown beyond what we ever wanted it to be. It was a nice problem to have, but it didn't align with our goal to explore the world with our kids. We started reading about worldschooling and listening to podcasts like yours. You have to leave a lot behind—we could have expanded the shop, but we had to choose what was important. Our kids were on board thanks to the test trips. In some ways, it’s easy to tell a kid they don't have to go to school anymore, but then we became the teachers and had to figure out a routine.
Suzy: What has the approach to schooling been like over the past year?
Brett and Christina: We’ve experimented. We started with Khan Academy online, which was great for about four months, but then the kids realized they missed physical books. While we were in Australia, we went to a bookshop, and they picked out workbooks. Now we do a mix of online and physical curriculum based on their interests. Whenever we visit World Heritage Sites or museums, they do journal entries in what we call an "Adventure Journal." It’s a great keepsake. I still have my journals from my Semester at Sea trip—reading a first grader’s perspective like, "We saw the pyramids today, but they had really, really good rice," is hilarious.
Suzy: What are their thoughts on worldschooling now?
Brett and Christina: Our oldest daughter loves it. She wants to be an archaeologist now because she loves exploring ruins. Our younger daughter is more social and misses her friends, so we’ve joined worldschooling hubs to meet other kids. We felt this was the right window of time—they are old enough to remember it, but not yet at the age where their social group is the only thing that matters.
Suzy: Is language part of their schooling?
Brett and Christina: We try to work on it. In Granada, Spain, we had Spanish lessons every day. I speak French, and Brett speaks German. Our older daughter is now into Latin because of the ruins in Italy. Our younger daughter wants to learn Italian because Italy has her favorite foods: pizza, pasta, and gelato. We always learn the basics—"please," "thank you," and "excuse me."
Suzy: Did the kids pick up a passion for baking too?
Brett and Christina: I’d say they have a passion for eating bread! At the bakery, they would play with dough, but they aren't into making it yet. We don't want to push it; I don't want them saying, "My dad made me make sourdough." But they are learning the skills by osmosis.
Suzy: How do you carry a baking passion with you without a 3,500-square-foot kitchen?
Brett and Christina: We get that question a lot at worldschooling hubs! Baking can be minimalist. You only need a few things and an understanding of the process. In places like Japan and Vietnam, where you often don't have an oven, we learned to make bread on a stovetop, camping-style. We carry a small Dutch oven and a loaf pan. The first thing we do in a new country is get the Wi-Fi set up and then go to the grocery store to "decode" the flour.
To travel with the starter, we dry it out slightly and put it in a three-ounce silicone travel jar. It looks like lotion, so security never bothers us. We’ve brought it to Hawaii, Indonesia, and Australia without issues.
Suzy: Have you incorporated local flavors into your baking?
Brett and Christina: Definitely! We document it on our Instagram, Sourdough Lifestyle. In Japan, we used miso and dashi stock. In Spain, we made a saffron and olive bread inspired by tapas. In Scotland, Brett made a Marmite bread—we don’t like Marmite on its own, but in the dough, it adds a great umami flavor.
Suzy: I love that. Can you share a snapshot of your monthly spending?
Brett and Christina: It varies by location. Right now in Italy, we’re sharing a "villa" (an apartment building) with two other families we met at hubs. Our share is only about $700 for the month. Food costs are low because we cook at home and buy local proteins and produce. Our total monthly cost is usually between $4,000 and $6,000. For some people in the US, that sounds insane, and for others, it sounds very cheap.
Suzy: Do you still have your home in Florida?
Brett and Christina: We still own it, but Brett’s brother is renting it at cost. It’s not an income source, but it eliminates the expense. What have been some of the challenges of this lifestyle?
Brett and Christina: Every time you move, you have to start over. You have to find the grocery store, the park, and figure out if the Airbnb actually looks like the pictures. We once stayed in a converted barn in rural Ireland in November. There was no internet, it was freezing, and the only heat was a wood stove. We had cows mooing at our door every morning. It would have been romantic for a weekend, but for three weeks, it was a struggle! You learn what your "must-haves" are very quickly.
Suzy: You really do live and learn. Let's wrap up with a lightning round. What is the most delicious food you’ve ever tried?
Brett and Christina: For me, it was karaage chicken in Japan. We found a place that served it with "Powder of Happiness"—a mistranslation, but it was a sweet, salty, kettle-corn-like powder that was mind-blowing. For Christina, it was a fresh poke bowl in Hawaii and, of course, the five-euro pizza in Naples.
Suzy: What is one item you cannot travel without?
Brett and Christina: For me, earplugs. For Brett, it’s a specific lightweight bamboo blanket. It’s hard to sleep when you’re sharing one giant, heavy duvet in a hotel, so having his own "sheet-blanket" is the secret to a happy marriage!
Suzy: If you could teleport anywhere right now, where would it be?
Brett and Christina: Japan. It’s so serene, orderly, and the food is incredible. Or right here in the Abruzzo region of Italy—it’s stunningly beautiful and feels completely untouched.
Suzy: Where can people find you to learn more about your sourdough classes?
Brett and Christina: You can find us on Instagram at @sourdoughlifestyle or our website, sourdoughlifestyle.com. We offer live Zoom classes, including a free intro class on how to keep a starter alive. We also have a Substack where we write about our travels and lessons from the bakery.
Suzy: I’ll link all of that in the show notes. Thank you both so much for sharing your story!
Brett and Christina: Thank you for having us!
