New Year – New Travel Plans
The new year has just started and everybody is getting ready to follow through on their New Year’s resolutions.
Typical plans: eat healthier, work out more, and whatnot. The list is endlessly long and I have to admit that I’m usually the first one to walk into the gym on 1st January, only to sit on my sofa eating junk food by 2nd January. But this time, I want to go past that and put something completely different on top of my 2016 list: travel.
I’m a massive fan of traveling... as we all are, I suppose, otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. And yet, there are so many places I haven’t explored, not because I wouldn’t want to, but simply because I am too lazy to plan it or don’t have enough time for it. Who doesn’t know the common problems that keep one from discovering astonishing landscapes and fascinating cities? Not enough money because it’s spent on unnecessary stuff like clothes that I won’t ever wear and deem unnecessary myself, but buy nonetheless. Not enough time because of a limited amount of annual leave and too much work waiting to be done. Finding somebody to travel with who has the same perception of what the perfect holiday is. The distance to the dream destination. Do you recognize those problems?
If you do - or even if you don’t because you are much more organized and disciplined than I could ever be (which isn’t too hard) - these suggestions might interest you. Open a bank account just for travel money. Go on short weekend or day trips – doesn’t matter, as long as it’s not as stressful as trying to plan a longer holiday without having the time for it. Turn off your phone and enjoy new impressions instead of worrying about office tasks or worse: live-updating on social media. You can still post the pictures once you’re back (and you definitely should because we always enjoy seeing what our fellow travelers have been up to). Travel alone rather than taking somebody with you who isn’t interested in the same places or activities as you are. You don’t want to end up fighting over simple things like the time to get breakfast or spend your time imagining what a great time you could be having if the other person wasn’t finding fault with every grain of sand you see. You can also just explore separately for a day if you can’t find common ground. You can always chat with locals, and you might even pick up some words of a foreign language in doing so.
Get to know your home pastures properly, rather than trying to squeeze a long-distance journey into a tight schedule. Have you been to your country’s capital yet? Or to the charming town not far from your own? Did you do that bicycle tour at the coast or the rail journey through gorgeous mountain villages? There is a lot of unexplored ground within your reach, I can promise you that. On my personal wish list this year is definitely a trip through Germany (since my knowledge of my own home country sometimes borders on embarrassing) and a holiday in Italy, having heard and read too much about the beautiful country during my time at Railbookers to resist its charm any longer. We all know the difficulty of sticking to our resolutions (or maybe that’s just me not being able to conquer my weaker self again, yay), but this year I truly intend to pull it through. You’ll hopefully hear about my exciting adventures very soon, I’m definitely looking forward to reading about yours online!
Happy New Year and have fun traveling everybody!