The first time a friend of mine took a week off of work just to relax at home his boss and colleagues called him constantly. The following year he lied and said he was traveling abroad and they left him alone. It’s crazy how our need for rest is not respected at all.
That made me think of the episode of Beautiful People where they can't go on a cruise, but they tell everyone that they are, and then they just hole up at home and do all the cruise activities by themselves. 😂
I Just can't relax when at home (even though I live in a touristy and beautiful place). As a PhD student I even feel guilty when I go outside in the afternoon to do grocery shopping because I could be seen by colleagues who could think I don't work enough. Thus leaving town (and, for longer holidays the country) to be able to relax it is for me. I don't fly anymore though and mostly take the train to explore Europe and take cheap, hopefully less impactful accommodation options like camping or hostels.
hehe i did the same thing once and it was lovely. People kept telling me that it's weird to "do nothing" with my vacation time. Like ... yeah, that was the point :D
I have started frankly telling people that I can't see them or do anything because I need to stay home and rest doing nothing. Friends, family, coworkers... no matter. "I am in need of some alone time in my space this weekend. Talk to you next time." "This holiday all I want is to unplug and catch up on some reading. You get it, right?"
My friends often comment that my ‘holiday’ doesn’t sound restful - we’re always so active and trying to get the absolute most out of wherever we are! 😊
I call the first one a vacation or holiday, and the second 'travelling'. The best trips usually combine the two. I like going somewhere for a vacation mostly because I find relaxing easier when I'm not at home (chores breathing down your neck). It's also great to go visit a friend, preferably someone who doesn't feel obligated to entertain me so that we can just have some relaxed fun times together 😊
One common lie I would say is that you have to go long distances to travel. Local exploring or day trips are still highly underrated. I can't even count how many times I've heard people say "there's nothing to do around here" almost every placed I've lived and then when I actually look for all the things that could be done or tried in my area I find that it's way more than enough for the amount of free time that I and most people have.
I agree. Many of us probalby live in or near a place that people from all over the world come to visit. I currently live in a place where people come to vacation so why shouldn't I enjoy it on my time off as well the staycation. I guess because it become familiar and that is the crux of it all, we are all craving novelty.
That’s so true! I live an hour and a half away from Atlantic City in New Jersey and I’m just starting to realize people come all around the world for it and I’m finally doing my first getaway there in like a week. I love doing more local trips another place I love going an hour and a half away is the Pocono mountains right over in Pennsylvania!
@@nancyneyedly4587 that’s true! I live in New Jersey and I am just now starting to learn that people come all around the world to visit Atlantic city. I met people from Germany and England who Told me they visited for vacation! 😊
I live in the US and recently took a trip to NYC and left feeling super inspired, but it left me reflecting on /why/ I felt inspired and the access I have to art and culture where I live - I live in another major US city with great museums and access to theater, but it doesn't occur to me to break my daily routines to take advantage of that most of the time. So OF COURSE I felt inspired when going to seven museums in a week and seeing multiple shows, but I didn't have to necessarily fly across a country to access that level of cultural engagement. I'm still so glad I took my trip, but it's reminded me that the feeling I get from 'travel' is actually often less to do with the travel itself than it is to do with the things I take the time for when I'm on vacation.
I mention the amazing world class museums all within 40 miles from my home (a few a bit farther). Even local People are surprised. I can see a Rembrandt, a Dali, and Picasso or a car that belonged to the Beatles or real pirate treasure. We need to take advantage or all the world has to offer, which can be in your backyard if you look
I started doing tourist stuff in my home city NYC. Well. I always did museums. But ivr been on some tours...and learned a lot of interesting things about my city that I never knew before.
Yes! I was just having this same revelation after a recent trip away. There are so many amazing things to do right around my home that I haven’t taken advantage of but I dream of going on far off vacations (which take a lot of money and time) instead of living an inspired daily lifestyle. 🤪 it’s so dumb
My Gran always asked for a pine cone whenever my family went on holiday, and even now as an adult when I go away I'll spend time out in the local environment hunting for a pine cone of some sort to bring back for her. I now know that she uses them for her fire during winter, but she's always so touched by the gesture and it gives me a reason to just walk around and explore! I also get that feeling of 'collecting' something from my trip without needing to spend money on knickknacks
@@Littlebeth5657 Thanks for the reminder! Luckily airport security are usually pretty diligent in making sure we only bring in things that are allowed and safe!
A big travel misconception to me is that travelling solo is boring and not worth it. I travelled solo for the first time at the start of this year, I went to London for 5 days, and it was one of the best travel experiences I've ever had. I'm disabled, and often when I travel with other people I am constantly worrying about slowing people down, or stopping people from doing stuff they want to do just because I can't do it or don't have the energy to do it. I decided to go to London because I had a few West End shows I desperately wanted to see, and I wanted to explore the museums and art galleries. Plus, I get very overwhelmed travelling to countries where I don't know the language, so going from Ireland to England made sense to me. I had a wonderful time, even though people kept warning me that I might be lonely or it wouldn't be as good without having people with me. But being by myself allowed me to take my time and really enjoy every experience, and I was way less tired than I usually am when I travel with others by the end.
So glad you enjoyed your solo trip, I love going to London by myself! From Ireland as well - might not be the option for everyone, but the Sail and Rail fare is such good value and a very relaxing way to get there if you have a little extra time; much less stressful than airports.
I have suspicious I may be autistic and this sounds interesting to me. Being able to just go around and explore at my own leisure, not at the whims of others. :)
@@ZebrasAreAwesome011 funny you say that actually, I haven't been officially diagnosed as autistic but my therapist does suspect I am!! Socialising, even with my close friends and family, really takes it out of me, so exploring places on my own is way less tiring and stressful for me
People think that solo travel is boring or not worth it? I love encountering perspectives and cultural expectations that are so different from mine. I’m in my mid-thirties and only now learning the upsides of traveling with others (probably because I know my travel style/general life needs so well that I can pick good companions.)
Talking about souvenirs, I love to buy yarn from local yarn shops to latter knit a sweater. I feel surrounded by the trip's memory when I wear those garments ❤
This year I visited Japan for the first time, and it was the biggest dream of my life, I've wanted to do it since I was like 13 (I'm turning 30 this year), and yeah, although it was an expensive and long journey it was 100% worth it, as I've been fascinated by this country, culture and language for years. I think holidays like this are amazing when you're genuinely interested in that other country, and not when you're going abroad only because "it's my holidays, and I'm supposed to go, because that's what people do I guess". I've always felt really weird about people who go on holidays abroad but spent the entire time there in a hotel or at a pool. :)
Two thoughts: (1) A sweet UA-camr who makes artsy-thrifting videos suggested visiting second hand shops for souvenirs in other countries. You get something authentic to the culture that also wasn’t cheaply made for tourism. (2) I appreciate how Leena validates REST, and also the idea that 23:37 we need to “imagine a better future, and try to live in it now.”🌻
My summer trip was cancelled unexpectedly this year and I stayed home for 5 days, biked around my city, drank coffee and read, and went to museums. It was amazing!
this is amazing! thank you Leena. could never put it into words so much why it irked me so much to meet people who travel/holiday like they're collecting shiny things, whilst constantly complaining that nothing is shiny enough
I honestly envy the older generations that had a consistent holiday spot they would always go to. I feel like that’s the ultimate middle point where you get a change of scenery and feel removed from your everyday stresses but it’s also tried and true and comfortable so you can truly relax.
My extended-family-that’s-not biologically-family gets this by having our go-to camp grounds. We’ve got a couple that we’ve been going to every summer for like 30 years now
Yes, I agree so much! My grandparents have a house by the see and I often go there during my holidays because it's still a change of scenery but also a cool place to rest, and there's nothing else to do than swim and spend time with them. I love it. But I know that buying an maintaining two houses, especially one by the sea with the rising risks of living there, (or just living by the sea) will most likely not be an option when I'm older.
this also depends on your openess for experience. people which high openness for experience rather travel to different places all the time, people with low openess to experience tend to stick to the same travel spot. both is totally fine
When I was in my early 20s I would go to a place with a checklist, and spend the time there mainly going from attraction to attraction. 10 years on now and I’m much happier to go to a place and just watch the world go by, sometimes abroad, sometimes just in a different town.
Ah yes. The "travel by checklist" approach is tiresome. Realized as much this year when travelling with family in Italy and we wasted time visiting overcrowded places that were supposed to be "unmissable". The time wasted would have been better spent simply visiting neighbourhoods or gardens.
As someone who’s lived outside her home country for 12 and who’s had traveling as a special interest since I was 12 (the obsession started with Eurostar trips to London in my teenage years), this video is absolute gold. As always, you put my thoughts in a much more eloquent way than I ever could! I’ve spent a lot of time around “digital nomads”/in that world and one of the assumptions there is that collecting passport stamps because you can work from anywhere is inherently good. But it has huge implications for your mental and physical health (can you sustainably travel every 3 weeks or even 3 months?) and in terms of carbon footprint. It’s part of the hustle culture and 5 am wake up bros club that I despise and that to me is another materialization of the consumerist, patriarchal, and modern colonial world we live in.
My family and I have been going on several week travel holidays to Fiji, Europe and America since I was a baby, and we always did the must do things in each location. I'd end up exhausted and grumpy, and felt like I wasn't getting anything out of it but significant stress, which was frustrating since I knew I was extremely privileged to travel so often, and it felt like a waste to not gain from it. So, when we went to Paris a few years ago, rather than go up the Eiffel Tower I walked across the bridge and visited the Museum of Anthropology, and it was the best decision I ever made. At the end of the day, if you want to get something out of travel, you have to do the things that have meaning to you, and if you are fortunate enough to be able to travel, there isn't much point if you don't try to consciously make it a meaningful experience.
When I was watching this I was reminded of someone who recently said to me that they'd "done" Bali. They'd been there for 1 week a decade ago. I don't understand that tick the box "done" type of travel. I'm about to head back for my 7th time and can't ever imagine that I will have experienced everything there is to experience. I've been learning Indonesian for 4 years which is enriching my experiences too.
Great video! Some more lies I encountered: 1. Travel is "heroic"/ brave/ shows toughness and strength of character. Bonus points if you did something risky like taking the unmarked trail, sleeping without a tent in the wilderness, or climbing a mountain that you wouldn't be able to climb without exploiting the locals. So bold and courageous. 2. The assumed link between hiking a lot in nature and being a "friend of nature". Many people live an environmentally destructive lifestyles while doing so (and sometimes even harm nature while travelling, like by going off-trail, touching endangered plant species and leaving waste behind), and some people who barely leave their hobbit hole in the city live very sustainably.
When I saw the title, I dreaded clicking on this video. I genuinely like travelling but I also feel quite guilty about it sometimes and I was scared that this video would confirm all the guilt. It turns out this fear was unfounded. This is such a nuanced take on travelling and I love it!
I am in my 60’s and travel now is so different. We had no smart phone (even no cell phone) no GPS, no internet only a guide book. There were no budget airlines and we travelled by trains and buses with the locals (of course beside taking a flight if we were point to a far away place.) We had regular cameras and we had to be careful about the pictures we were taking: could not erase the bad ones and had to pay to have them printed. We stayed in hostels but also with the locals that were renting rooms to tourists even before airbnb (ah!ah!ah). Now the social platforms are distorting everything, taking mindless, self centered selfies everywhere, people looking at everything through the camera of their smart phone, budget airlines cheaper than trains and buses to boost having been there, done that, going places just to party. I could go on and on as I have a lot of pet peeves about travelling nowadays. thank you for this thoughtful video, we need to reflect on this subject and you make very valid points….
I haven't been on a foreign holiday for ages, and I used to get really jealous of people who could afford it. Now I've got little kids, hearing people's nightmare stories of toddlers on flights or having to take them to A&E in faraway places makes me feel very content to stay closer to home. We're off to the British seaside for the second year in a row and I can't wait.
The idea of taking the kids on a vacation when they were little just seemed like more of the same, just in a place that wasn't as comfortable as home. I did take them on two trips to visit my parents when they were little, and it was the pits. Now that they're older, it's way more fun, both for them, because they'll remember stuff, and for us as a family, because we can do stuff that genuinely interests them. We're going to the Netherlands for one week, and I think the youngest would love the Anne Frank Museum, so we'll pop that on the list. Oldest wants to see the Deltawerks, so that's also being done.
One great thing about the UK is that it has very diverse and beautiful nature, and you can travel to so many places within your own country and will still feel like you are 'away'. I've had a similar feeling about people who feel this need to travel to faraway countries but don't take the time to explore the beauty and history of places closer to home. I've only been outside of Europe once, to visit a friend living in Canada, but I've never felt like I'm missing out! Europe is beautiful, and there's so much to do and see and learn. Not saying other places won't be just as beautiful and interesting, but for me, I don't need to travel across the world to find those experiences, and I don't feel like I'm missing out because I can't afford to fly to Thailand or Alaska or whatever every year (or multiple times a year). There's plenty to do even within a day's travel distance from where I live.
Re the point about tracel making you a more expansive person: So I was a refugee. Prior to coming to the U.S. where I'm now settled, I've lived in a lot of different countries. And whenever I meet someone new about that, they have this bug-eyed look as if I'm telling them a fairytale. It's such a strange feeling because people say, oh no wonder you're worldly, and this constant traumatic movement is romanticized as if I had done it by choice. That I was this random 20-something year old looking for herself. The truth is, I did learn a lot about the countries I've lived in, and I learned even more FROM them. And I do think that it has made me a better person (I resonate so much with what you said about watering down ideas of nation-state identity for example). But travel, genuine immersion and travel is an incredibly difficult experience. It requires so much more than leaving your location. It requires cracking open your mind and heart, standing in reverence of someone else's experience, listening more than you talk, allowing your brain to be challenged and torn apart, being willing to challenge all your beliefs, genuinely, and understanding, truly and deeply understanding, that the life you have been living, that you have been fed as the ideal, correct way of living, is actually not that. And is merely just another way of living. What remains with me now from all this moving around, the thing that I carry with me when I travel every once in a while now, by choice, something that I will never stop marvelling at, is a humility and reverence. Understand that you won't see or understand everything, that your being there is not a passive form of simple voyurism, but an exchange. Give something, don't just take. Give your time, give your energy, give your humility, give your kindness, give your reverence. And most of all, allow yourself to sit in the discomfort of being a stranger in a strange land. It isn't always fun. It isn't always easy. But most things in life worth doing are not easy.
Something that always brought me guilt was friends going on super active holidays and making you feel like you have to do the same. Going abroad with friends. Seeing a lot of nature, drink alcohol and sleep little was the picture they gave. Having chronic pain, makes those things inaccessible for me (in that capacity) and i dont think we focus enough on how inaccessible things are for disabled folks when we talk about traveling.
That’s why I travel solo. I wake up when I wake up and wander around and rest when I need to rest. Usually one event a day is enough for me. I don’t have a to-do or to-see list like so many people have.
Because of this video, I’ve decided to stop feeling bad that I haven’t really “been anywhere”. It’s a huge expense, especially when you have pets and no friends/ family living near you to take care of them when you’re gone. Traveling is also a huge mental drain and gives my boyfriend anxiety, so we always need extra rest time when we get back. I do still want to visit other countries, but right now all I really want is to visit family and friends who live far away.
I can absolutely recommend spending your travelling energy on visiting people you know who live in different places! You get the advantage of having someone to show you their favourite spots, which I think trumps the 'must visit!' sights in most places, and just being there with them is the goal, so it's easier to get rest as well (take time to have dinners together and stuff like that), and it can take you to places you'd otherwise never get to! Especially if you get stressed out by long trips or complicated trips or very unknown things, you can ask your friend/family member what the station/road/airport looks like on their side, making it more predictable and chill (my best trips are those where my friend comes to pick me up from the train station after a twelve hour train ride or from the airport after all the hassle that is airplane travel).
I work in the tourism industry where i live (a Scandinavian country) and honestly i appreciate my city more for it. U see it through the tourists' eyes in a new light and as a tour guide u also get to know a lot more about the historixal context of monuments, buildings etc. Only to a certain extent of course, rarely are the messier/unappealing stories told (of colonialism, riots, strikes etc).
Exactly! I lived abroad for years and all the sightseeing I did was with guests from back home who wanted to see my adoptive city 😅 and now that I'm back, it's the friends I made over there who come to visit and want to see some sights 😊 Through the eyes of the tourist everything looks different
The part about holiday vs travel resonated with me - I started taking several staycations every year and it's really the most glorious, restful time that I always look forward to. I've also been enjoying travelling/camping in my own country, there's so much to discover!
This reminds me of conversations I've been having with some of my cousins. We live in the suburbs of London, and as you can imagine, there isn't a lot of that more stereotypical image of cultural vibrancy that you'd associate with London here. But also my area culturally has a lot of the downsides associated with London, especially the lack of friendliness. Some of my cousins want to leave the country and find somewhere that's culturally more to their liking, which is great for them, but I don't know. A lot of their arguments for leaving sound like they are rooted in surface level impressions of other places. Also, we're all at/have been at university outside of London and I feel like the issue is that its led to a lack of integration with our local area. Especially because there aren't a lot of cultural programs or clubs that you can join here. So after spending three or so years away from our hometown its really easy just to retreat into our individual family units and stay home all the time. Its really easy to say you dont vibe with your hometown when you haven't spent that much time really getting to know what it's like as adults, and I feel like the perception that me and some of my family members have is heavily skewed by that. I know there's also the fact that theyre looking at how this country is set up and wanting to escape that but it does feel like a lot of our issues in this country are also issues in other countries, just manifesting differently, you know? Anyway, I think that the way I've personally interacted with being black and a second generation immigrant is to very stubbornly assert ownership over my right to be British in general and a Londoner specifcally. I don't think I'll leave this country to live somewhere else and I think I'm starting to not want to leave my area for the same reasons 😅. I want to find parts of my borough that vibe with me, it feels like a bit of a waste to dismiss it without doing a thorough investigation. And not really the stereotypical 'vibrant London' stuff, I kind of feel like that's just gentrification fodder. I want to be in community with real people. And maybe make it a little nicer to live here? Idk
I didn't spend my youth in a big city suburb nor am I black, but I also went away for university and I struggle to find ties to my hometown. We collectively agree that it is a cool place for families and children until 15, because there's a lot to do for kids, but as young adult, it's a bit boring. When I go back, I spend a lot of time at home or seeing friends (well one friend, who also live in the big city where I live, but you know, big cities) and don't really have any new experiences. The thing that has helped me keep a sense of belonging was actually being a scout leader, because I got involved with children in my hometown, there are things going on, I feel like I belong to something. And where I do live now, I know the shop owners around, I see regular faces and that makes me feel like it's a familiar place. So I agree that being part of a club (sport, arts, social thing, anything) and regularly meeting with people really help you feel like you belong to something, like you're physically attached to it. And when you live in a place where those activities are far and few between, it's hard to feel connected to it.
13:52 We should normalize not actually going on holiday when we have time off from work. I do this every year and every year when people ask me about my 'holiday plans' and I tell them I'm just going to stay home and occasionally go to a nearby town or whatever, people react like I'm some kind of sad individual
I have an experience of an employer not understanding or respecting the need for humans to rest: Every time I went to book annual leave during the lockdowns, my past manager said "why do you need holiday, it's not like you can go anywhere" and I was aggressively 'offered' to roll over all my annual leave repeatedly over a 2 year period, painting it as a great 'pro' for all the staff, and was declined every time I tried to book it in. I only got a day off when I had bereavements. THAT was a very shocking experience, and the past employer was a mental health charity. When I resigned they initially didn't accept it, and tried to get me to come back for months, then at the end of that employment I eventually got a whopping pay check because they paid me for all the annual leave that had rolled over, but by that time I was already burnt out. I now enjoy working for myself and setting my own boundaries :) I LOVE staycations or just going to my nearest beach / park / sofa :)
I love your brain and I needed this more than you know. I’ve become consumed by FOMO and everyone else travelling while I can’t afford it. This helps settle those fears and put things into perspective so thank you 😊
One thing I would have added to your list is: further isn’t automatically better. Often you can find many of the things that you seek in travel: new people to meet, new things to see, a place that’s not your own flat to nap in by going to the next town over or the other side of town. For most Europeans, an up to two hour long train ride can get your scenery plenty changed, if that’s what you need.
There's also something to be said about coming back to the same place for holiday over and over again. It doesn't have to be every year, but a relaxing holiday is sometimes easier to do in a place you're familiar with because many people can't relax at home, since everything reminds them of their projects and they just won't be able to leave them be. But you also won't feel pressured to go sightseeing and be overwhelmed by new experiences because you've been there before. You know which restaurants are nice, when the best time for going to the beach is and how to get to the places you want to go to without needing a map. It's a home away from home. I highly recommend it! You can even accumulate several places like this and switch them up every now and then if you're worried you might get bored. Or do one week in a new place to do sightseeing and then another in a familiar one where you're just relaxing and not doing anything.
I've always found you very hilarious and great but I feel like your edits and script (or just your chat) are getting even funnier and more on point. Much love.
I was incredibly lucky as a child to have been taken all around by my parents, and then being divorced usually meant 2x the holidays. But as an adult, I've been nowhere. And I'm happy about it. I could never really truly experience those countries as I didn't know then about my disabilities and they always meant that holidays were less than fun for me, filled with discomfort, illness and generally struggling. But one thing I've noticed from the places I've been, I've been able to enjoy the times I've gone to stay in the same place more than once, more. My ex was from Switzerland so I used to go back and forth to see him, and having the same familiar place to stay helped with being able to actually absorb the culture. So I think if I went anywhere abroad again, I'd want time. Because it takes me like 10 days to settle into a new routine before I start enjoying things. But I have to say, I feel lucky to be disabled and know that I am disabled now. Because I've learnt a whole lot more about life through that experience than I ever did going abroad. And it's meant I've had to create a life here that actually want to stay in. I see family members hating their jobs and counting down to their next holidays and it makes me sad that they feel they have nothing to enjoy at home. My partner and I were fortunate to get an allotment in 2020, and we were even luckier to get another plot (they are half plots given out, so now we have a full plot). Now I've got some more space to make that side more accessible and I genuinely don't want to go anywhere. The only places I feel any wanderlust for are Germany, where I was born and grew up on and off, and I want to see some places up north in the UK because they look truly breathtaking. I don't stay at home because I think I'm superior to people who travel or anything like that. I've just accepted that travel isn't really accessible for me anymore and instead of being bitter I've spent the time I've had making my home a place I want to be. You're so right about this idea that people think travel equals expansiveness but it doesn't always and I've definitely learnt more about other cultures by talking to people in my own community, making online friends from across the globe and just reading books about varied places and experiences!
I love your attitude about making your home a place where you want to spend time in instead of fleeing from it as soon as possible. Greetings from Germany🤗!
I've been outside the country a total of 4 times, all of them were to the same country. I've never left my continent, I've never been on a plane. My single-income household just couldn't afford it. And I understood that, and tried not to let myself be too upset about it. But I always had this feeling like not travelling made me less of a person. This was a good video to examine some of those ideas I had.
That's so true. My family went on vacation every year, but "only" to places nearby while my friends traveled to Turkey, Spain, France or Tunisia which made me jealous. I eventually noticed that a) many of my peers didn't even go on holiday because their parents were farmers and couldn't leave their farms and b) those who did travel abroad stayed in all-inclusive resorts and did not really see/experience the country anyways. That made me feel a lot better and now as an adult, I much prefer staying home or just go on holiday close by as well :)
I just finished listening to Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong yesterday, and this video really relates to that in some ways. There was this entire chapter in the book that she titled Bad English, that talks about how there are all these memes of really poorly translated English signs in different parts of the world and our tendency to photograph things like that and make fun of them on the internet only because people in those countries used English incorrectly in an attempt to try and be accomodating to these foreigners. I am probably not articulating this correctly and it was much better explained in the book lol, but this really made me realise how the concept of traveling can be harmful and quite toxic in some ways. But anyway, this was a lovely video and has given me much to think on. Great work as always!
Such an interesting video, as always! In my late teens and early twenties I definitely got sucked into using travel as a way of building my identity, making me into an interesting person, and as a way of rejecting the "mainstream" life of education, career, mortgage etc that felt so uninspiring to me. I was in awe of people (like Josh in the Seattle hostel 😂) who seemed to embody the kind of freedom that I so wanted. I became consumed with wanderlust and at times pushed way past my boundaries in pursuit of making myself into the kind of person who travelled all the time, was untethered and free. Looking back, I can see that the way that "being well-travelled" has become a marker of identity and worth is pretty troubling, as it glamourises a way of life in which the places you travel through are just scenery for your own self-growth. I could honestly write an essay about why I feel weird about digital nomads and travel influencers! One thing I have been unlearning over the past few years is the idea that staying within your comfort zone is a bad thing. We act as if travel that makes you uncomfortable and feels scary is inherently good and enriching, which of course to some extent it is, but it is not also true that by being at all settled and safe you are keeping yourself small. Trying to always break out of my comfort zone kept me in pursuit of a lifestyle that was unsustainable for my neurodivergent, anxious brain, and it has been immensely helpful to unlearn the idea that your limits should always be pushed against.
I think, at least through a US lens, more should be like you than not, just maybe spread out more and not just all at once in their 20s. Meaning, they should go out of their comfort zone and leave the country at least a few times. I've met too many people who have only traveled to tropical locations to drink like sailors or never travel at all and can only see the world through a US lens. I've also met a lot of people who say they want to travel, even naming certain locations and sights, but never do. So, either they're lying or they trapped themselves in comfort, which is also a negative, just like believing your comfort zone is bad. Having a healthy mix of both, but most importantly knowing you can do both, is extremely important imo. Especially if you have anxiety.
Very interesting!!! I love what you said about travel vs holidays. When people say they love to travel, I doubt they mean they love waiting in airports or having to refuel during a road trip. I think what people mean they say they love to travel is that they like not having to work and having the freedom to explore their environment. I also think it is interesting that many First Nations people from around the globe often did not have a fixed home location and would regularly travel long distances. Perhaps our idea of buying a house and living in it for 50+ years is a relatively new invention.
A lie that my mum uncovered: travel by plain is glamourous. She fights for her stance that it is quite the oposite, it's uncomfortable, tiring, humiliating, boring, unhealthy and - this one is added by me - terrifying 🤡
And so stressful! You have to go through so many checkpoints, and you have so many opportunities to get lost in the airport. My favorite way to travel is by bus or by train - you can watch the landscape by the window and it's quite comfortable.
@@Charlie_Fuchs I am ridiculously afraid of flying on an airplane so for now, I've accepted that I have to take trains, busses and even cruiseships to get to places that I want to visit. And while it takes a long ass time, I kind of enjoy it? I can't recall the saying but someone once said something along the lines of "the soul must catch up" when you travel far. I found that to be beautifully true. One time I travelled for six days straight to get to my destination and when I finally arrived at the port, it was pure bliss.
The souvenirs thing is so true. We collect Xmas tree decorations. Every year, myself and my other half get to spend some time decorating the tree and reminiscing about the trips we’ve been lucky enough to go on. As someone who hasn’t travelled anywhere since 2019, this was a great video - some excellent points.
Thanks for this great video! I am Austrian, but I feel a deep connection to Amsterdam as I spent a whole year as an Erasmus student there in the nineties and have been back several times since then. I can understand Dutch and have a really good Dutch friend in Austria, too. So, when my 50th birthday was approaching this spring and I had a few days around it off due to a national holiday of course I booked a trip there. As the date got closer, I had severe back pain on and off and realised all I really needed was some rest and no action at all. In the end, I booked three nights the "Lesehotel" in Austria - a hotel that is dedicated to reading and books, it celebrates reading and has extra-cosy rooms an reading nook. The hotel is on a mountain, I did not explore the ssurroundings (no public transport, I had arrived by train and taxi), it was quiet, there was no action, I had the best time ever. On my return, people kept asking me what I had done and seen and visited. My answer: Nothing and it was perfect. I went on walks and met nice people. I read a lot and looked at the mountains. A new way of thinking about travelling for me. Wil go to Amsterdam in August, though. ;)
Having been to the Anne Frank museum in 2019... It was a strange experience. I felt like I was on a little conveyer belt moving round with all the other visitors. They had to take out all the furniture to fit more visitors in the building, and I think that makes it harder to see the Frank family and their fellow inmates in the space. It felt pretty claustrophobic! Seeing Anne's room was still emotional, and you completely understand how difficult it must have been for her to share such a small space with a middle-aged dentist. However, the whole experience felt rushed, and there were far too many people in the space at the same time. I hope things have changed since 2019, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same - I work in museums, and my God money is tight rn. If they need to get loads of people in to make money and keep the building maintained, then that's what they have to do. I would tell people to read the unabridged diary for an honest insight into Anne's experiences in the annex, and use that to support refugees today ❤️
This comment is so validating, I was looking forward to learning so much when I saw it but felt very disappointed at how the museum was set up. Which made me feel so guilty! I just wish it had been more informative or offered more ways to reflect for visitors.
So sorry to hear that. I went in 2013 and booked a morning time slot ahead of time. It really wasn’t crowded and I had time to reflect and absorb the experience. And, yes, I think a person definitely needs to read her diary before going. It makes the experience so meaningful. I can’t imagine getting much at all out of the visit without that b
Yes to all! I am traveling to Europe from the US for the first time since I was a kid, and my partner and I are spending a whole week in Florence Italy. I’ve wanted to go ever since reading Still Life by Sarah Winman, and it was his favorite city when he went on a huge European vacation as a teen. We’re excited to spend a lot of time in one place, and we’ve been learning Italian on Duolingo for the past 10 months. We won’t be fluent, or probably even conversational, but we’re doing this to learn and to be mindful that we’re visitors and we can be accommodating of the local culture when we visit. We’ve definitely gotten comments that we wont be “getting enough” by staying in one spot, or that one week isn’t long enough for Italy, but the point is not to see all of Italy, it’s to get to know Florence a little bit. Travel is weird, but this video made me feel seen.
On the topic of souvenirs, I love collecting post cards because they're small and cheap and I can get "professional" photos of landmarks I've visited. I date all my post cards so I know when I got them, but recently I started the habit of when traveling with friends to let my friends write notes on the back of my post cards so that I have something sweet to look back on. It forms additional memories that will be fond to look back on years from now. I do this for everywhere I visit, even national parks that are 1-2 hours away from where I live, not just cross country or international travel. One day I would like to put my post cards in a photo album
So much I loved about this video! I was discussing some of these ideas with friends last night so feels very relevant. A) would love to see videos about flight ethics and Airbnb specifically B) I attended a very international school in India where there was a lot of ideas about being a "global citizen", and most of my classmates were boarding students who went back to Thailand/the US/Nepal/Korea/Abu Dhabi/Russia etc. in the holidays, while I actually lived in the town. In retrospect, I'm in some ways wary of the ways that ideas about "global citizenship" almost absove you from having to engage with the problems andpossibilities of th place you're really in - it seems abstract, I guess, even though I think being globally minded and remembering that how you live is NOT like the most other people is a really humbling and important thing. I'd love to read that book you mention. C) I do think that travel can improve you as a person in some ways because it forces you to be in positions where you're not an expert and you're out of your comfort zone. Novelty is good for the soul! but there are also ways to be in that position without having to leave where you live, and I think there are ways to be exposed to novel ways of living and being in all places.
The Anne Frank House was the highlight of my Amsterdam trip. I booked with a travel group, and all the group wanted to do was sex shows, drugs, and alcohol. I decided to go off on my own and had a memorable evening seeing the city + the museum.
Me as someone living in Amsterdam I would definitely use a much more negative word than 'amaze' lol. But yeah I do wish we'd get rid of the 'let's go do all the things god forbade' type tourism... I'd much rather just have visitors who come to watch the boat traffic from that nice spot at the end of this video and see the Anne Frank house.
I always get postcards as a souvenir. It's really important to me to always send one to my grandma, it's one of my ways to show her that I'm thinking of her even if I can't see her very often (I live abroad). It makes her really happy and she collects all of them and proudly shows me when I'm visiting. One of my favorite travel traditions!
Look mom I'm famous @24:18 ! 😂It was lovely to meet you! I think the most important thing with traveling is showing respect to the places you go. Sure you can go the Anne Frank house (it's a really cool educational place), but use it to learn stuff, definitely don't go to "tick" a place off your list.
Ah this is SUCH a breath of fresh air. I’m surrounded by people who treat going to other countries as something that makes you better than other people- the more countries the better. It’s exhausting
I took a sleeper train to Scotland a few weeks ago and I highly recommend it as an alternative method of getting around! Its more expensive but it evens out if you consider the 2 nights you would have otherwise spent in a hotel, and the transit costs. You also pay a little but extra for the convenience of course, but this is a gorgeous route that dropped me at the doorstep of where I wanted to be. The rest of my trip I just walked/boated around! I personally agree with ramping up the travel before you have kids. Once you have children it just becomes a lot less easy (but not impossible) to trip about. For example, I really want to visit Japan, and if I don't do it before I'm 31, I will likely have to wait much longer until my child is old enough to take such a long-haul flight. Different seasons of life will dictate how much you travel for sure. A retired person who only had 2-4 weeks off a year for 40 years will have earned the right to get out and see the world before they're too old to do it. It's sad but true.
I’ve recently been thinking about my “bucket list” as I’m getting older and losing loved ones. I realized that if I got to the end of my life and had never visited China or whatever, I don’t think I’d regret that. I know I would regret not spending as much time with my loved ones as possible, and I think I’d regret forcing myself to do things that stole my time, joy, or peace just because I felt some nebulous obligation to do it.
Wow, this is such a meaningful view. I've been trying to get to that point willingly. I have a lot of stuff going on which stops me to "live my life to the fullest (whatever that even means) and I'm not checking the boxes at all. But how much sense does it make to fabricate some depressing vision of myself on the death bed being upset about x and y that I never did? That sounds like the ego talking. I really aspire to be content with where I'm at, even if my dreams stay unfulfilled.
Profoundly loved this video - Makes me sad that so many of us desperately go on cheap flights and terrible sleeping situations to just get drunk somewhere else. One obvious antidote: Stay longer. All privileges aside (having the TIME, resources, etc) it creates an environment where you can nap/drink a few times but you'll get it out of your system and will (hopefully) find something else to do. But also to Leena's point on needing rest - ditch the Easyjet and a sketchy bed in a damp room; you will very likely be better off using the money going to the fanciest spa in your area and getting a back rub and a facial (no specific gender required!)
Some thoughts this video sparked: One of my favorite and restful holidays was when my partner and I went to my mum's and just spent 5 days either staying at home or going to local attractions. So I would 100% recommend a holiday a home 😊 Our souvenir thing growing up was to buy Xmas tree ornaments! Honestly it's so amazing every year when the tree comes out 🎄
My souvenir thing is a Christmas ornament! My mom started doing it when she was my age and I'm continuing the tradition. It makes the holiday season even more magical to be unwrapping ornaments and reminiscing on wonderful trips together with the family. And when I was younger it gave me the opportunity to learn more about my mom's life before me. I hope one day it gives my children the same joy in unwrapping ornaments and the same opportunities to learn about my experiences and get excited about the big wide world out there!
I really enjoy visiting friends abroad as a motivation for travelling. There's a mix between spending quality time with a loved one and also getting to know the place that they're from or have moved to through their eyes.
I just used a large chunk of my vacation time to just be at home and it was a really good experience. I felt like my coworkers were a little confused about what I was doing, especially when multiple other people were taking vacations abroad at the same time. But it was wonderful. I finally had time to do all the local activities I wanted to do, I spent time with the people I love and I didn't have to stress about travel or feel a ton of jet lag. I would be really curious to see research about "post"-pandemic travel. My work used to do a lot more work trips that have now been replaced by zoom calls and everyone seems better off this way. I wonder if that's a wider trend or if most places are back to lots of flights.
It's so interesting too how we have this pressure to ~ optimise ~ our rest time and make it at least appear like we're making the best possible use of our time rather than actually resting, and don't even get me started on the way tourists acted during the pandemic when travelling to other countries!!!!!!
A candle or hand cream or something with a scent can be a lovely way of making the trip last a bit longer, every time you use it you are taken back to a happy place. (For those who can't deal with scents, something tactile like a cushion cover or facecloth is a nice alternative) With souvenirs, I prefer stuff I can use/use up, because I hate clutter but also because to declutter ethically you have to know someone else would want it. And let's face it, who would buy someone else's tiny used sombrero that we have no emotional connection to? So it's about not generating too much future waste that me or anyone else will have to 'deal' with
The ghost flights are shocking! I didn’t know this happens. I love the idea of being intentional and thoughtful about travel and I appreciate the thoughts you raised. At the end of the day, part of the benefit of travel is inspiration and development as a person and it looks like your trip really inspired you! That’s fantastic! Thank you for sharing!
I am a couple weeks into summer break from a rough year teaching 8th grade near Seattle. Been napping! Reading books! Doing the nothing that I need. We have the best summers and it’s been delicious. I also recently booked a flight to Costa Rica for a short trip at the end of the summer and I’ve been overthinking about it. I think this will help me figure out what I think so I can feel excited about the trip, rather than guilty. 🇨🇷
Recently I have gone or more UK based trips via public transport (trains/ buses/ boats) and it is definitely felt more like an adventure and has been a lot more enjoyable. I have also had the opportunity to travel to Europe a few times over the course of the last year not via plane and it is actually (in my opinion) a lot more fun and less stressful. You have much more space, trains tend to drop you off in the middle of the city that you want to go to and you don't have to stress about baggage weight limits. I really would love for the price to go down for trains/ ferries to be more affordable. You feel like your on more of an adventure and are just so much more comfortable.
Probably my favourite way to travel is doing language courses overseas with their accompanying culture trips. It's great fun and community and when you meet people from said countries outside of there you can have more meaningful conversations, so it's something I spend months saving for at work. If it's a possibility, I'd always recommend it.
this summer I have to work, so I'm trying to recollect what I liked about summer holidays when I was a child. Turns out it's all things I can do in my town (make iceacream myself, jump in a lake, turn my phone off, read the whole day ...) and after watching this video, I'll definitely add looong naps to that list!
Interesting video Leena, I think there's an aspect you missed out on. As a young, broke person in the UK (Scotland) it is difficult to 'travel' in the UK without money. Accommodation is more expensive, there's a lack of hostels (outside of the cities), and the hostels that do exist are more expensive and poorer quality than Western Europe. Train travel and coach travel is more expensive. The other day I was trying to go from Fort William to Glasgow (3 hrs) and the bus was £89 ONE WaY !! For me to go to Newcastle by train would cost me over £40 at least (probably closer to £80). On top of this, there is another problem which is that in Scotland/UK public transport infrastructure is very poor meaning that we can't go and visit our own beauty spots (highlands) without a car. Finally, UK tourist attractions are SO expensive compared with other Western European countries. Again, I was in the highlands and it would be £17+ to see a castle ruin, complete rip off for what it is. Again, means that people without money don't experience our own history - have never been able to go in Edinburgh castle because of the price. What this means is that the only affordable things to do are outside but surprise surprise the weather in the UK is often bad so then you're stuck there with nothing to do for free/low cost. Given this, is it any wonder why people leave the UK for holidays/travel? I was able to go to Andalucía for a week last year and beyond all the cultural experiences I got to have, it was a good economic holiday (from UK perspective). Hostels were no more than €20, they have a ride-share culture in Spain so transport was no more than €10 between places with BlaBlaCar, good weather so could be in the FREE outdoors, tourist attractions were reasonably priced.
Can’t believe it’s cheaper for me to get a flight from East Midlands airport than it is for me to get a train from Nottingham to Scotland. This is part of why I have a fondness for camping. It’s about as cheap as a uk holiday is going to get.
it's funny - i am living in spain right now, (am from california) and when i went to the UK to london and oxford i was shocked how expensive trains and coaches were. for the budget i need to stick to, i am pretty much writing off the UK until i get another full time job so i can better afford it.
@@curbsidetreasur it's such a shame! I've also been living abroad and I really see the direct comparison between UK and other countries. I also see my intl friends who want to visit the UK but not aware of how expensive and inaccessible it is :(
@@ifonlyicouldnote that for a lot of international travelers from China and Taiwan for example it’s required to get a visa just for the UK, so a lot of folks just get the visa for the Schengen area instead and skip the UK entirely
@@curbsidetreasur yeah one of my friends in Estonia is from Turkmenistan and had to put in a lot of work to get a UK visa so I know how difficult and expensive it is
My first big vacation after I started my first job after Uni was to Nepal to do some trekking in the Himalayas. What left a nasty taste in my mouth was the entitlement of “world travelers”. Always talking about all the shallow but life changing places they’ve been, expecting to do anything they want and expecting local folks to allow them to do it. Made me see that same entitlement in some of my own actions and it felt a bit gross. Since then, I’ve definitely had a change of mind set when “travelling”
It is so important to think about your own needs, desires, and intentions when traveling. In regard to napping in other countries, I've discovered that I get quickly burnt out and need to plan a longer, slower trip that allows for things like taking a nap or just sitting in a pool. Same thing with the souvenirs, being intentional is what is most important. Personally, I still like to buy some souvenirs, especially those I will use everyday, but my favorite way to remember a trip is to write down every single thing we did - where did I go for lunch and specifically what did I have? What animals did I see? What did we talk about? I put it all into my journal, even just in bullet points, and I never forget the things I want to remember
Re : souvenirs: fridge magnets, yes ,the most pretty ones, but also, the most points go to getting something that I was going to buy anyway. The biggest star in this category was a wooden comb from Corfu, amazing for the hair and so beautiful, I use it every day 💞💞
This video is so true. I came back to watch it again. It has changed my perspective on travels and will now travel more conscientiously and with a specific intention. Thank you
So many good points in this video. Traveling is not a personality trait! And yes, it can make you a better person, but that mostly comes from the ways in which you might internally just feel more grateful or compassionate in your day to day life
Really love this video, have been thinking a lot about these things❤ A while ago i decided to make books my souvenirs :)) I look for a fun bookshop and find a book that I know will probably become a new favorite - i then use small things like a trainticket or receipt from the trip as a bookmark :) its a really nice way of remembering the trip through something I love so dearly.
Hands down my favorite way to experience another country/culture has been through studying the language. You generally are in classes for half a day or so, giving you both purpose and structure, but still have time and flexibility to do other things and you get to know people--both locals and other students.
I actually need to leave my home to properly rest because I don't know how to chill out and rest. A couple of months ago, I was super burnt out as a sahm with chronic health issues. I cannot relax at home, I will just try and make to do lists of things that need to get done or cleaned up or or or or, so my husband booked me a room at a hotel spa and it was so lovely. It was a couple of hours away by train, which is something I love about being in Europe, and I truly rested. I didn't worry about anything and while I was gone, my husband deep cleaned the apartment so that I came home to a clean home. It was absolutely wonderful. I grew up in Alaska and traveling was and is just really expensive, and that's just to get out of the state! I didn't really see travel as an option for a long time. I went to California a handful of times to see family, but nothing else till I was an adult. Once I moved out of Alaska, I have been trying to do better with traveling to areas that are reasonable for where I currently live. I am still shocked that in three hours I can drive through several states in the US or several countries by train in Europe, like that concept just blows my mind. I love it.
I do really like buying books on my travels as well as postcards that I then put on my wall with my pictures, I love architecture and in general colors so it's great 😊 Also, for me, the thing is sometimes I just really enjoy being in a country that is cheaper than mine, like I live in Munich and just living here is stressful af so a lot of places just feel so nice for that, and cheaper than staying in my own country for the holidays (which is crazy but anyway). Also for food, it's so hard to find good ingredients that actually have a taste whereas in the south it's completely different with the sun so also a huge point for me when traveling. Lastly, I just really want to go see all the art museums so that's potentially a lot of travel ahead in my life and kinda never-ending but definitely feels worth it to me. The last city I visited was Prague and it was gorgeous 😍 I will say though that I felt stupid there not even knowing the words for "thank you" and "please" so as much as possible that's something I would focus on before going a trip, at least getting a basic knowledge of the language
Something that I've thought about buying when traveling is art to decorate my home from local artists. I mean there's a cap on how much of that I can do before I run out of wall space. When going to a wolf sanctuary recently there were a lot of like wolf plushies and things. But there was also a part of the animals in the sanctuary done by one of the people who worked there and that made a much better souvenir then mass-produced thing.
I love this idea! I really love elephants so every time we travel we try to find some sort of elephant that was made locally. I have quite a few tiny ones made of different stones. People also bring them back for me from their trips. We have them scattered all over our house now like an Easter egg hunt. Lol PS: As a hobbies sewist, I also really love Leena's idea about buying fabric!
Such an interesting video with many good takes! I have lived in 3 different countries throughout my 20s and now 30s (China, Russia and now Spain) and I honestly think the best way to know a culture is to live there. I know it's not accessible to a lot of people but I don't think you can really experience a place fully after spending a few days there on a whizz stop tour. That's not to say those trips can't be fun too but I would prefer to know less places but more deeply. Quality over quantity I guess. And you've nailed why those maps always felt icky to me too.
The best times were when I didn't have money to go anywhere but still had the wanderlust, so I became a host on couchsurfing and received various interesting people from all over the world at my place. The guests would usually integrate into my student dormitory household of eight really quickly and be a member of the 'family' for a few days. I learned so much, they'd teach us their favourite recipes and games, and we'd show them our favourite parks and cafés. All without having to go anywhere or spend any money.
Your thoughts on the Anne Frank museum reminded me of my trip to Berlin. It was school trip, and we were a very big group of first year architecture students. As architecture students we were encouraged to travel a lot. To see the different buildings and architecture styles in place. Our trip to Berlin naturally included a lot of WWII sites and to this day I still feel the discomfort I felt back then at being at those sites as a tourist, especially with such a big group of people. It just didn’t seem right.
Re: souvenirs, my husband and I always get three things: a magnet, a mug and a christmas tree ornament. They're all things we interact with/look at and reminisce over, and our christmas tree feels like a collection of joint memories. The thing I believed about travel that I have given up on was, you have to make the MOST of your time during travel. I would always schedule all the things, leave no time for recovery and get home burnt out needing more time off.
If i travel to a new place i spend my time sightseeing and trying to speak to people and try new food,etc. If i need a rest i go upstate to my friends' cottage in the woods. Then i feel no pressure to do anything other than relax, swim, kayak, drink beer and lie in the hammock.
I went on a study trip in may to Krakow, Poland. We visited pedagogical institutes and learned about the cultural differences (dutch versus polish). Since we went with a big group of 35 students and were only there for less then a week, we needed to prepare. So when we were there, we had insightful conversations with Polish people working directly with children. For me personally, I got out of it that I had a power in me that could manouvre a big city on my own. I did love to connect with other polish people and students too, would love to do it again in the future. On the topic of staying at home, my mum does this more often, but she does tend to just do more work around the house. And sometimes that's good, but when she reflects back, she realises that she didn't really rest. So from now on, she likes to plan small trips like going rowing in a city nearby or meeting up with me or her friends, which does help! And thanks by the way for this video. It was just the right tone and nuance I needed on the topic of travelling and sustainability. For a long time it has been - and still is - hard to grasp the right balance between choosing for me and choosing for the planet (it doesn't always aligh, but sometimes it does, fortunately!).
We can rely on Leena to offer us credible information on various matters that we may be lacking complete understanding of. We know for certain her insights are straightforward and contain substance.
Travel is a priceless(or actually, very pricey) privilege but as you mentioned reading is an incredible way to become an “expansive person”. You can grow in ways that certain types of travelers who get around may never grow
This is such a great video! I'm rewatching now as it's around the time people are planning summer holidays again - in the 10 months since this came out I've thought about these points a lot, so just wanted to let you know and say thanks!
I have to admit, it was a bit of a challenge to click on this video. As always, you've handled the subject matter with great nuance (though the intro was funny) and I appreciate hearing your thoughts on the topic to spur me to think deeper about my own travels.
Re: Souvenirs I like to buy a postcard everywhere I go. It's small, easy to pack, and usually costs $1-2. I tape them into a travel journal, and write down some memories/ reflections that I want to remember. I buy a new leather journal every couple of years from a smaller artist.
LOVE this video. Can see myself revisiting it whenever feelings creep in, that I'm missing out or living a lesser life if I'm not travelling... thanks Leena, thought provoking content as always!
I had a pretty powerful trip last autumn. I found out my depression has more to do with what my life is like than I had thought and realised a few key things that I need to change. My depression pretty much was GONE when I was away! And that's not how depression's supposed to work. It doesn't just switch off. I realised I can't mentally handle being 24/7 responsible of other people's (and a dog's) wellbeing. I've been a single mum for like 4 years. Since January this year I've gotten every other weekend "child free". It's not much and I still have to care for the dog, but it's really helped. I still mostly just sleep my free days, I'm hoping I'll make it to a point where I have energy to do some stuff just for me.
Thank you for such a great video!! This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently as someone who is in a temporary long-distance relationship while we are both school and ends up travelling between Canada and the US 2-3 times a year. I have felt a lot of guilt about flying often and I really appreciate the nuance you approach this with!
Very insightful. Tea towels for souvenirs. Yes, we need to learn to rest where we are without guilt. I’ve met people with “the list” who are rushing around checking it off. Can’t relate. I have found a few places I love and go there for long stays and just live there, not rushing around as a tourist. Now that I’m old, I’ve learned to just please myself and not worry about what other people think or trying to “keep up” with them.
i needed that reminder that taking a plane flight once a year across an ocean i have no other way cross easily to visit people i love and havent seen in ages and ages does not make me a terrible person
The irony of Wanderlust is that in German, it's simply a desire to go hiking. We use that if we really want to climb the nearest mountains again, nothing more... It has nothing to do with actual travel.
One thing I’ve been doing (and encouraging my friends and family to do) is sending postcards while abroad! I don’t like the idea that other people need to buy me souvenirs while they’re traveling and I think this is a nice way to replace that. It also feels great to receive them. Love your thoughts on travel, thank you for this video!
Great video Leena!! I always love to hear your thoughts and commentary about this spinning planet that we live on. I’m from 🇨🇦… a global hotspot in the month of May. We’re on fire over here!! This really makes one (hopefully) think in detail about leisure flying and its associated negative impact on this planet. Ⓜ️ary
The first time a friend of mine took a week off of work just to relax at home his boss and colleagues called him constantly. The following year he lied and said he was traveling abroad and they left him alone. It’s crazy how our need for rest is not respected at all.
That made me think of the episode of Beautiful People where they can't go on a cruise, but they tell everyone that they are, and then they just hole up at home and do all the cruise activities by themselves. 😂
I'd have just not answered after the first day.
I Just can't relax when at home (even though I live in a touristy and beautiful place). As a PhD student I even feel guilty when I go outside in the afternoon to do grocery shopping because I could be seen by colleagues who could think I don't work enough. Thus leaving town (and, for longer holidays the country) to be able to relax it is for me. I don't fly anymore though and mostly take the train to explore Europe and take cheap, hopefully less impactful accommodation options like camping or hostels.
hehe i did the same thing once and it was lovely. People kept telling me that it's weird to "do nothing" with my vacation time. Like ... yeah, that was the point :D
I have started frankly telling people that I can't see them or do anything because I need to stay home and rest doing nothing. Friends, family, coworkers... no matter. "I am in need of some alone time in my space this weekend. Talk to you next time." "This holiday all I want is to unplug and catch up on some reading. You get it, right?"
Yes omg please separate the "I just need rest and time off" from "traveling to genuinely experience something new" trips. They're not the same!!
My friends often comment that my ‘holiday’ doesn’t sound restful - we’re always so active and trying to get the absolute most out of wherever we are! 😊
I call the first one a vacation or holiday, and the second 'travelling'. The best trips usually combine the two. I like going somewhere for a vacation mostly because I find relaxing easier when I'm not at home (chores breathing down your neck). It's also great to go visit a friend, preferably someone who doesn't feel obligated to entertain me so that we can just have some relaxed fun times together 😊
One common lie I would say is that you have to go long distances to travel. Local exploring or day trips are still highly underrated. I can't even count how many times I've heard people say "there's nothing to do around here" almost every placed I've lived and then when I actually look for all the things that could be done or tried in my area I find that it's way more than enough for the amount of free time that I and most people have.
I agree. Many of us probalby live in or near a place that people from all over the world come to visit. I currently live in a place where people come to vacation so why shouldn't I enjoy it on my time off as well the staycation. I guess because it become familiar and that is the crux of it all, we are all craving novelty.
That’s so true! I live an hour and a half away from Atlantic City in New Jersey and I’m just starting to realize people come all around the world for it and I’m finally doing my first getaway there in like a week. I love doing more local trips another place I love going an hour and a half away is the Pocono mountains right over in Pennsylvania!
@@nancyneyedly4587 that’s true! I live in New Jersey and I am just now starting to learn that people come all around the world to visit Atlantic city. I met people from Germany and England who Told me they visited for vacation! 😊
True! I realized the sahe during Covid! Discovering all the green spaces in my city and nearby cities was eye opening
This is something I've been doing more of lately too. Unfortunately trains are really expensive!
I live in the US and recently took a trip to NYC and left feeling super inspired, but it left me reflecting on /why/ I felt inspired and the access I have to art and culture where I live - I live in another major US city with great museums and access to theater, but it doesn't occur to me to break my daily routines to take advantage of that most of the time. So OF COURSE I felt inspired when going to seven museums in a week and seeing multiple shows, but I didn't have to necessarily fly across a country to access that level of cultural engagement. I'm still so glad I took my trip, but it's reminded me that the feeling I get from 'travel' is actually often less to do with the travel itself than it is to do with the things I take the time for when I'm on vacation.
this is so true!! being a "tourist" in our own towns/cities should be more of a thing!
I mention the amazing world class museums all within 40 miles from my home (a few a bit farther). Even local People are surprised. I can see a Rembrandt, a Dali, and Picasso or a car that belonged to the Beatles or real pirate treasure. We need to take advantage or all the world has to offer, which can be in your backyard if you look
I started doing tourist stuff in my home city NYC. Well. I always did museums. But ivr been on some tours...and learned a lot of interesting things about my city that I never knew before.
Yes! I was just having this same revelation after a recent trip away. There are so many amazing things to do right around my home that I haven’t taken advantage of but I dream of going on far off vacations (which take a lot of money and time) instead of living an inspired daily lifestyle. 🤪 it’s so dumb
"We travel not to visit foreign places but to see our own neighborhood as a foreign place".
My Gran always asked for a pine cone whenever my family went on holiday, and even now as an adult when I go away I'll spend time out in the local environment hunting for a pine cone of some sort to bring back for her. I now know that she uses them for her fire during winter, but she's always so touched by the gesture and it gives me a reason to just walk around and explore! I also get that feeling of 'collecting' something from my trip without needing to spend money on knickknacks
As much as this is lovely please be aware of the biological hazards of invasive species and diseases that you may inadvertently transmit
@@Littlebeth5657 Thanks for the reminder! Luckily airport security are usually pretty diligent in making sure we only bring in things that are allowed and safe!
@@Littlebeth5657 Freezing and baking the pine cone should kill any bugs at least, I'm not sure about diseases though.
That is incredibly sweet!!!
If you have not been, Lake Tahoe in Reno, Nevada has big, beautiful pine cones.
A big travel misconception to me is that travelling solo is boring and not worth it. I travelled solo for the first time at the start of this year, I went to London for 5 days, and it was one of the best travel experiences I've ever had. I'm disabled, and often when I travel with other people I am constantly worrying about slowing people down, or stopping people from doing stuff they want to do just because I can't do it or don't have the energy to do it. I decided to go to London because I had a few West End shows I desperately wanted to see, and I wanted to explore the museums and art galleries. Plus, I get very overwhelmed travelling to countries where I don't know the language, so going from Ireland to England made sense to me. I had a wonderful time, even though people kept warning me that I might be lonely or it wouldn't be as good without having people with me. But being by myself allowed me to take my time and really enjoy every experience, and I was way less tired than I usually am when I travel with others by the end.
So glad you enjoyed your solo trip, I love going to London by myself! From Ireland as well - might not be the option for everyone, but the Sail and Rail fare is such good value and a very relaxing way to get there if you have a little extra time; much less stressful than airports.
I have suspicious I may be autistic and this sounds interesting to me. Being able to just go around and explore at my own leisure, not at the whims of others. :)
@@ZebrasAreAwesome011 funny you say that actually, I haven't been officially diagnosed as autistic but my therapist does suspect I am!! Socialising, even with my close friends and family, really takes it out of me, so exploring places on my own is way less tiring and stressful for me
People think that solo travel is boring or not worth it? I love encountering perspectives and cultural expectations that are so different from mine. I’m in my mid-thirties and only now learning the upsides of traveling with others (probably because I know my travel style/general life needs so well that I can pick good companions.)
Solo travel is the only real way to travel. If you're going with someone else you'll focus on them and the place becomes but a backdrop for that.
Talking about souvenirs, I love to buy yarn from local yarn shops to latter knit a sweater. I feel surrounded by the trip's memory when I wear those garments ❤
I do that too!! :D
I get fabric for sewing, or failing that, some ribbon or trims. In Stockholm I got ribbon with little Swedish horses on it. ❤
@@Rumade love this idea!
This year I visited Japan for the first time, and it was the biggest dream of my life, I've wanted to do it since I was like 13 (I'm turning 30 this year), and yeah, although it was an expensive and long journey it was 100% worth it, as I've been fascinated by this country, culture and language for years. I think holidays like this are amazing when you're genuinely interested in that other country, and not when you're going abroad only because "it's my holidays, and I'm supposed to go, because that's what people do I guess". I've always felt really weird about people who go on holidays abroad but spent the entire time there in a hotel or at a pool. :)
If people only go to the trip of their life once in a decade or two, the planet can sustain it
Japan is also my big dream trip! Hopefully I’ll manage it one day. I hope you had a great time!!
Two thoughts: (1) A sweet UA-camr who makes artsy-thrifting videos suggested visiting second hand shops for souvenirs in other countries. You get something authentic to the culture that also wasn’t cheaply made for tourism.
(2) I appreciate how Leena validates REST, and also the idea that 23:37 we need to “imagine a better future, and try to live in it now.”🌻
oo would you mind telling me the name of the youtuber?
@@katnisseverdeen5466 “Kathleen Illustrated” She’s highly creative, artistic, and funny, annd a sweetheart!
@@lisa_wistfulone7957 when I read your comment I knew you were talking about her! she is amazing!!! 😍
My summer trip was cancelled unexpectedly this year and I stayed home for 5 days, biked around my city, drank coffee and read, and went to museums. It was amazing!
this is amazing! thank you Leena. could never put it into words so much why it irked me so much to meet people who travel/holiday like they're collecting shiny things, whilst constantly complaining that nothing is shiny enough
I honestly envy the older generations that had a consistent holiday spot they would always go to. I feel like that’s the ultimate middle point where you get a change of scenery and feel removed from your everyday stresses but it’s also tried and true and comfortable so you can truly relax.
My extended-family-that’s-not biologically-family gets this by having our go-to camp grounds.
We’ve got a couple that we’ve been going to every summer for like 30 years now
You can still do it. 🙂
Yes, I agree so much! My grandparents have a house by the see and I often go there during my holidays because it's still a change of scenery but also a cool place to rest, and there's nothing else to do than swim and spend time with them. I love it. But I know that buying an maintaining two houses, especially one by the sea with the rising risks of living there, (or just living by the sea) will most likely not be an option when I'm older.
So true! My grandparents always took the family to Palm Springs each year.
this also depends on your openess for experience. people which high openness for experience rather travel to different places all the time, people with low openess to experience tend to stick to the same travel spot. both is totally fine
When I was in my early 20s I would go to a place with a checklist, and spend the time there mainly going from attraction to attraction. 10 years on now and I’m much happier to go to a place and just watch the world go by, sometimes abroad, sometimes just in a different town.
@OdinsSage omg I also look for cat cafes in cities I visit haha that and arcade bars are my go-tos. So fun and my city doesn't have any
Ah yes. The "travel by checklist" approach is tiresome. Realized as much this year when travelling with family in Italy and we wasted time visiting overcrowded places that were supposed to be "unmissable". The time wasted would have been better spent simply visiting neighbourhoods or gardens.
As someone who’s lived outside her home country for 12 and who’s had traveling as a special interest since I was 12 (the obsession started with Eurostar trips to London in my teenage years), this video is absolute gold. As always, you put my thoughts in a much more eloquent way than I ever could!
I’ve spent a lot of time around “digital nomads”/in that world and one of the assumptions there is that collecting passport stamps because you can work from anywhere is inherently good. But it has huge implications for your mental and physical health (can you sustainably travel every 3 weeks or even 3 months?) and in terms of carbon footprint. It’s part of the hustle culture and 5 am wake up bros club that I despise and that to me is another materialization of the consumerist, patriarchal, and modern colonial world we live in.
My family and I have been going on several week travel holidays to Fiji, Europe and America since I was a baby, and we always did the must do things in each location. I'd end up exhausted and grumpy, and felt like I wasn't getting anything out of it but significant stress, which was frustrating since I knew I was extremely privileged to travel so often, and it felt like a waste to not gain from it. So, when we went to Paris a few years ago, rather than go up the Eiffel Tower I walked across the bridge and visited the Museum of Anthropology, and it was the best decision I ever made. At the end of the day, if you want to get something out of travel, you have to do the things that have meaning to you, and if you are fortunate enough to be able to travel, there isn't much point if you don't try to consciously make it a meaningful experience.
When I was watching this I was reminded of someone who recently said to me that they'd "done" Bali. They'd been there for 1 week a decade ago. I don't understand that tick the box "done" type of travel. I'm about to head back for my 7th time and can't ever imagine that I will have experienced everything there is to experience. I've been learning Indonesian for 4 years which is enriching my experiences too.
Seriously. I keep going back to the same four places because I never feel like I’ve seen or experienced everything I want to.
Great video!
Some more lies I encountered:
1. Travel is "heroic"/ brave/ shows toughness and strength of character. Bonus points if you did something risky like taking the unmarked trail, sleeping without a tent in the wilderness, or climbing a mountain that you wouldn't be able to climb without exploiting the locals. So bold and courageous.
2. The assumed link between hiking a lot in nature and being a "friend of nature". Many people live an environmentally destructive lifestyles while doing so (and sometimes even harm nature while travelling, like by going off-trail, touching endangered plant species and leaving waste behind), and some people who barely leave their hobbit hole in the city live very sustainably.
When I saw the title, I dreaded clicking on this video. I genuinely like travelling but I also feel quite guilty about it sometimes and I was scared that this video would confirm all the guilt. It turns out this fear was unfounded. This is such a nuanced take on travelling and I love it!
I am in my 60’s and travel now is so different. We had no smart phone (even no cell phone) no GPS, no internet only a guide book. There were no budget airlines and we travelled by trains and buses with the locals (of course beside taking a flight if we were point to a far away place.) We had regular cameras and we had to be careful about the pictures we were taking: could not erase the bad ones and had to pay to have them printed. We stayed in hostels but also with the locals that were renting rooms to tourists even before airbnb (ah!ah!ah). Now the social platforms are distorting everything, taking mindless, self centered selfies everywhere, people looking at everything through the camera of their smart phone, budget airlines cheaper than trains and buses to boost having been there, done that, going places just to party. I could go on and on as I have a lot of pet peeves about travelling nowadays. thank you for this thoughtful video, we need to reflect on this subject and you make very valid points….
I haven't been on a foreign holiday for ages, and I used to get really jealous of people who could afford it. Now I've got little kids, hearing people's nightmare stories of toddlers on flights or having to take them to A&E in faraway places makes me feel very content to stay closer to home. We're off to the British seaside for the second year in a row and I can't wait.
Your holiday plans sound lovely!
Can completely relate to this!
The idea of taking the kids on a vacation when they were little just seemed like more of the same, just in a place that wasn't as comfortable as home. I did take them on two trips to visit my parents when they were little, and it was the pits. Now that they're older, it's way more fun, both for them, because they'll remember stuff, and for us as a family, because we can do stuff that genuinely interests them.
We're going to the Netherlands for one week, and I think the youngest would love the Anne Frank Museum, so we'll pop that on the list. Oldest wants to see the Deltawerks, so that's also being done.
I relate to this comment so hard I feel like I could have written it
One great thing about the UK is that it has very diverse and beautiful nature, and you can travel to so many places within your own country and will still feel like you are 'away'. I've had a similar feeling about people who feel this need to travel to faraway countries but don't take the time to explore the beauty and history of places closer to home. I've only been outside of Europe once, to visit a friend living in Canada, but I've never felt like I'm missing out! Europe is beautiful, and there's so much to do and see and learn. Not saying other places won't be just as beautiful and interesting, but for me, I don't need to travel across the world to find those experiences, and I don't feel like I'm missing out because I can't afford to fly to Thailand or Alaska or whatever every year (or multiple times a year). There's plenty to do even within a day's travel distance from where I live.
Re the point about tracel making you a more expansive person: So I was a refugee. Prior to coming to the U.S. where I'm now settled, I've lived in a lot of different countries. And whenever I meet someone new about that, they have this bug-eyed look as if I'm telling them a fairytale. It's such a strange feeling because people say, oh no wonder you're worldly, and this constant traumatic movement is romanticized as if I had done it by choice. That I was this random 20-something year old looking for herself. The truth is, I did learn a lot about the countries I've lived in, and I learned even more FROM them. And I do think that it has made me a better person (I resonate so much with what you said about watering down ideas of nation-state identity for example). But travel, genuine immersion and travel is an incredibly difficult experience. It requires so much more than leaving your location. It requires cracking open your mind and heart, standing in reverence of someone else's experience, listening more than you talk, allowing your brain to be challenged and torn apart, being willing to challenge all your beliefs, genuinely, and understanding, truly and deeply understanding, that the life you have been living, that you have been fed as the ideal, correct way of living, is actually not that. And is merely just another way of living. What remains with me now from all this moving around, the thing that I carry with me when I travel every once in a while now, by choice, something that I will never stop marvelling at, is a humility and reverence. Understand that you won't see or understand everything, that your being there is not a passive form of simple voyurism, but an exchange. Give something, don't just take. Give your time, give your energy, give your humility, give your kindness, give your reverence. And most of all, allow yourself to sit in the discomfort of being a stranger in a strange land. It isn't always fun. It isn't always easy. But most things in life worth doing are not easy.
this was such a beautiful comment
Something that always brought me guilt was friends going on super active holidays and making you feel like you have to do the same. Going abroad with friends. Seeing a lot of nature, drink alcohol and sleep little was the picture they gave. Having chronic pain, makes those things inaccessible for me (in that capacity) and i dont think we focus enough on how inaccessible things are for disabled folks when we talk about traveling.
That’s why I travel solo. I wake up when I wake up and wander around and rest when I need to rest. Usually one event a day is enough for me. I don’t have a to-do or to-see list like so many people have.
Because of this video, I’ve decided to stop feeling bad that I haven’t really “been anywhere”. It’s a huge expense, especially when you have pets and no friends/ family living near you to take care of them when you’re gone. Traveling is also a huge mental drain and gives my boyfriend anxiety, so we always need extra rest time when we get back. I do still want to visit other countries, but right now all I really want is to visit family and friends who live far away.
I can absolutely recommend spending your travelling energy on visiting people you know who live in different places! You get the advantage of having someone to show you their favourite spots, which I think trumps the 'must visit!' sights in most places, and just being there with them is the goal, so it's easier to get rest as well (take time to have dinners together and stuff like that), and it can take you to places you'd otherwise never get to! Especially if you get stressed out by long trips or complicated trips or very unknown things, you can ask your friend/family member what the station/road/airport looks like on their side, making it more predictable and chill (my best trips are those where my friend comes to pick me up from the train station after a twelve hour train ride or from the airport after all the hassle that is airplane travel).
I work in the tourism industry where i live (a Scandinavian country) and honestly i appreciate my city more for it. U see it through the tourists' eyes in a new light and as a tour guide u also get to know a lot more about the historixal context of monuments, buildings etc. Only to a certain extent of course, rarely are the messier/unappealing stories told (of colonialism, riots, strikes etc).
Exactly! I lived abroad for years and all the sightseeing I did was with guests from back home who wanted to see my adoptive city 😅 and now that I'm back, it's the friends I made over there who come to visit and want to see some sights 😊 Through the eyes of the tourist everything looks different
Souvenir-wise, I always go for postcards: they're beautiful, lightweight, specific, easy to find almost anywhere, and not plastic.
The part about holiday vs travel resonated with me - I started taking several staycations every year and it's really the most glorious, restful time that I always look forward to. I've also been enjoying travelling/camping in my own country, there's so much to discover!
This reminds me of conversations I've been having with some of my cousins. We live in the suburbs of London, and as you can imagine, there isn't a lot of that more stereotypical image of cultural vibrancy that you'd associate with London here. But also my area culturally has a lot of the downsides associated with London, especially the lack of friendliness. Some of my cousins want to leave the country and find somewhere that's culturally more to their liking, which is great for them, but I don't know. A lot of their arguments for leaving sound like they are rooted in surface level impressions of other places. Also, we're all at/have been at university outside of London and I feel like the issue is that its led to a lack of integration with our local area. Especially because there aren't a lot of cultural programs or clubs that you can join here. So after spending three or so years away from our hometown its really easy just to retreat into our individual family units and stay home all the time. Its really easy to say you dont vibe with your hometown when you haven't spent that much time really getting to know what it's like as adults, and I feel like the perception that me and some of my family members have is heavily skewed by that. I know there's also the fact that theyre looking at how this country is set up and wanting to escape that but it does feel like a lot of our issues in this country are also issues in other countries, just manifesting differently, you know?
Anyway, I think that the way I've personally interacted with being black and a second generation immigrant is to very stubbornly assert ownership over my right to be British in general and a Londoner specifcally. I don't think I'll leave this country to live somewhere else and I think I'm starting to not want to leave my area for the same reasons 😅. I want to find parts of my borough that vibe with me, it feels like a bit of a waste to dismiss it without doing a thorough investigation. And not really the stereotypical 'vibrant London' stuff, I kind of feel like that's just gentrification fodder. I want to be in community with real people. And maybe make it a little nicer to live here? Idk
This is so wholesome. Love that thought process! Very inspiring.
I didn't spend my youth in a big city suburb nor am I black, but I also went away for university and I struggle to find ties to my hometown. We collectively agree that it is a cool place for families and children until 15, because there's a lot to do for kids, but as young adult, it's a bit boring. When I go back, I spend a lot of time at home or seeing friends (well one friend, who also live in the big city where I live, but you know, big cities) and don't really have any new experiences. The thing that has helped me keep a sense of belonging was actually being a scout leader, because I got involved with children in my hometown, there are things going on, I feel like I belong to something.
And where I do live now, I know the shop owners around, I see regular faces and that makes me feel like it's a familiar place.
So I agree that being part of a club (sport, arts, social thing, anything) and regularly meeting with people really help you feel like you belong to something, like you're physically attached to it. And when you live in a place where those activities are far and few between, it's hard to feel connected to it.
13:52 We should normalize not actually going on holiday when we have time off from work. I do this every year and every year when people ask me about my 'holiday plans' and I tell them I'm just going to stay home and occasionally go to a nearby town or whatever, people react like I'm some kind of sad individual
I have an experience of an employer not understanding or respecting the need for humans to rest:
Every time I went to book annual leave during the lockdowns, my past manager said "why do you need holiday, it's not like you can go anywhere" and I was aggressively 'offered' to roll over all my annual leave repeatedly over a 2 year period, painting it as a great 'pro' for all the staff, and was declined every time I tried to book it in. I only got a day off when I had bereavements. THAT was a very shocking experience, and the past employer was a mental health charity. When I resigned they initially didn't accept it, and tried to get me to come back for months, then at the end of that employment I eventually got a whopping pay check because they paid me for all the annual leave that had rolled over, but by that time I was already burnt out. I now enjoy working for myself and setting my own boundaries :) I LOVE staycations or just going to my nearest beach / park / sofa :)
I love your brain and I needed this more than you know. I’ve become consumed by FOMO and everyone else travelling while I can’t afford it. This helps settle those fears and put things into perspective so thank you 😊
It's the way you explained my book better than I ever could.
Thank you for including it boo!
oh wow!!!
One thing I would have added to your list is: further isn’t automatically better. Often you can find many of the things that you seek in travel: new people to meet, new things to see, a place that’s not your own flat to nap in by going to the next town over or the other side of town. For most Europeans, an up to two hour long train ride can get your scenery plenty changed, if that’s what you need.
There's also something to be said about coming back to the same place for holiday over and over again. It doesn't have to be every year, but a relaxing holiday is sometimes easier to do in a place you're familiar with because many people can't relax at home, since everything reminds them of their projects and they just won't be able to leave them be. But you also won't feel pressured to go sightseeing and be overwhelmed by new experiences because you've been there before. You know which restaurants are nice, when the best time for going to the beach is and how to get to the places you want to go to without needing a map. It's a home away from home. I highly recommend it! You can even accumulate several places like this and switch them up every now and then if you're worried you might get bored. Or do one week in a new place to do sightseeing and then another in a familiar one where you're just relaxing and not doing anything.
I've always found you very hilarious and great but I feel like your edits and script (or just your chat) are getting even funnier and more on point. Much love.
I was incredibly lucky as a child to have been taken all around by my parents, and then being divorced usually meant 2x the holidays. But as an adult, I've been nowhere. And I'm happy about it. I could never really truly experience those countries as I didn't know then about my disabilities and they always meant that holidays were less than fun for me, filled with discomfort, illness and generally struggling. But one thing I've noticed from the places I've been, I've been able to enjoy the times I've gone to stay in the same place more than once, more. My ex was from Switzerland so I used to go back and forth to see him, and having the same familiar place to stay helped with being able to actually absorb the culture. So I think if I went anywhere abroad again, I'd want time. Because it takes me like 10 days to settle into a new routine before I start enjoying things. But I have to say, I feel lucky to be disabled and know that I am disabled now. Because I've learnt a whole lot more about life through that experience than I ever did going abroad. And it's meant I've had to create a life here that actually want to stay in. I see family members hating their jobs and counting down to their next holidays and it makes me sad that they feel they have nothing to enjoy at home. My partner and I were fortunate to get an allotment in 2020, and we were even luckier to get another plot (they are half plots given out, so now we have a full plot). Now I've got some more space to make that side more accessible and I genuinely don't want to go anywhere. The only places I feel any wanderlust for are Germany, where I was born and grew up on and off, and I want to see some places up north in the UK because they look truly breathtaking. I don't stay at home because I think I'm superior to people who travel or anything like that. I've just accepted that travel isn't really accessible for me anymore and instead of being bitter I've spent the time I've had making my home a place I want to be. You're so right about this idea that people think travel equals expansiveness but it doesn't always and I've definitely learnt more about other cultures by talking to people in my own community, making online friends from across the globe and just reading books about varied places and experiences!
I love your attitude about making your home a place where you want to spend time in instead of fleeing from it as soon as possible. Greetings from Germany🤗!
Thanks for sharing, greetings from switzerland (:
This is all so true !!! Greetings from Germany :D
I've been outside the country a total of 4 times, all of them were to the same country. I've never left my continent, I've never been on a plane. My single-income household just couldn't afford it. And I understood that, and tried not to let myself be too upset about it. But I always had this feeling like not travelling made me less of a person. This was a good video to examine some of those ideas I had.
That's so true. My family went on vacation every year, but "only" to places nearby while my friends traveled to Turkey, Spain, France or Tunisia which made me jealous. I eventually noticed that a) many of my peers didn't even go on holiday because their parents were farmers and couldn't leave their farms and b) those who did travel abroad stayed in all-inclusive resorts and did not really see/experience the country anyways. That made me feel a lot better and now as an adult, I much prefer staying home or just go on holiday close by as well :)
I just finished listening to Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong yesterday, and this video really relates to that in some ways. There was this entire chapter in the book that she titled Bad English, that talks about how there are all these memes of really poorly translated English signs in different parts of the world and our tendency to photograph things like that and make fun of them on the internet only because people in those countries used English incorrectly in an attempt to try and be accomodating to these foreigners. I am probably not articulating this correctly and it was much better explained in the book lol, but this really made me realise how the concept of traveling can be harmful and quite toxic in some ways. But anyway, this was a lovely video and has given me much to think on. Great work as always!
❤❤❤❤❤😊❤
Such an interesting video, as always! In my late teens and early twenties I definitely got sucked into using travel as a way of building my identity, making me into an interesting person, and as a way of rejecting the "mainstream" life of education, career, mortgage etc that felt so uninspiring to me. I was in awe of people (like Josh in the Seattle hostel 😂) who seemed to embody the kind of freedom that I so wanted. I became consumed with wanderlust and at times pushed way past my boundaries in pursuit of making myself into the kind of person who travelled all the time, was untethered and free. Looking back, I can see that the way that "being well-travelled" has become a marker of identity and worth is pretty troubling, as it glamourises a way of life in which the places you travel through are just scenery for your own self-growth. I could honestly write an essay about why I feel weird about digital nomads and travel influencers! One thing I have been unlearning over the past few years is the idea that staying within your comfort zone is a bad thing. We act as if travel that makes you uncomfortable and feels scary is inherently good and enriching, which of course to some extent it is, but it is not also true that by being at all settled and safe you are keeping yourself small. Trying to always break out of my comfort zone kept me in pursuit of a lifestyle that was unsustainable for my neurodivergent, anxious brain, and it has been immensely helpful to unlearn the idea that your limits should always be pushed against.
I think, at least through a US lens, more should be like you than not, just maybe spread out more and not just all at once in their 20s. Meaning, they should go out of their comfort zone and leave the country at least a few times. I've met too many people who have only traveled to tropical locations to drink like sailors or never travel at all and can only see the world through a US lens. I've also met a lot of people who say they want to travel, even naming certain locations and sights, but never do. So, either they're lying or they trapped themselves in comfort, which is also a negative, just like believing your comfort zone is bad. Having a healthy mix of both, but most importantly knowing you can do both, is extremely important imo. Especially if you have anxiety.
Very interesting!!! I love what you said about travel vs holidays. When people say they love to travel, I doubt they mean they love waiting in airports or having to refuel during a road trip. I think what people mean they say they love to travel is that they like not having to work and having the freedom to explore their environment.
I also think it is interesting that many First Nations people from around the globe often did not have a fixed home location and would regularly travel long distances. Perhaps our idea of buying a house and living in it for 50+ years is a relatively new invention.
A lie that my mum uncovered: travel by plain is glamourous. She fights for her stance that it is quite the oposite, it's uncomfortable, tiring, humiliating, boring, unhealthy and - this one is added by me - terrifying 🤡
And so stressful! You have to go through so many checkpoints, and you have so many opportunities to get lost in the airport. My favorite way to travel is by bus or by train - you can watch the landscape by the window and it's quite comfortable.
@@Charlie_Fuchs I am ridiculously afraid of flying on an airplane so for now, I've accepted that I have to take trains, busses and even cruiseships to get to places that I want to visit. And while it takes a long ass time, I kind of enjoy it? I can't recall the saying but someone once said something along the lines of "the soul must catch up" when you travel far. I found that to be beautifully true. One time I travelled for six days straight to get to my destination and when I finally arrived at the port, it was pure bliss.
The souvenirs thing is so true. We collect Xmas tree decorations. Every year, myself and my other half get to spend some time decorating the tree and reminiscing about the trips we’ve been lucky enough to go on. As someone who hasn’t travelled anywhere since 2019, this was a great video - some excellent points.
Same here! So fun to relive my trips yearly.
Thanks for this great video! I am Austrian, but I feel a deep connection to Amsterdam as I spent a whole year as an Erasmus student there in the nineties and have been back several times since then. I can understand Dutch and have a really good Dutch friend in Austria, too. So, when my 50th birthday was approaching this spring and I had a few days around it off due to a national holiday of course I booked a trip there. As the date got closer, I had severe back pain on and off and realised all I really needed was some rest and no action at all. In the end, I booked three nights the "Lesehotel" in Austria - a hotel that is dedicated to reading and books, it celebrates reading and has extra-cosy rooms an reading nook. The hotel is on a mountain, I did not explore the ssurroundings (no public transport, I had arrived by train and taxi), it was quiet, there was no action, I had the best time ever. On my return, people kept asking me what I had done and seen and visited. My answer: Nothing and it was perfect. I went on walks and met nice people. I read a lot and looked at the mountains. A new way of thinking about travelling for me. Wil go to Amsterdam in August, though. ;)
I had no idea places like this existed. A hotel where you can read sounds like a wonderful concept.
Having been to the Anne Frank museum in 2019... It was a strange experience. I felt like I was on a little conveyer belt moving round with all the other visitors. They had to take out all the furniture to fit more visitors in the building, and I think that makes it harder to see the Frank family and their fellow inmates in the space. It felt pretty claustrophobic! Seeing Anne's room was still emotional, and you completely understand how difficult it must have been for her to share such a small space with a middle-aged dentist. However, the whole experience felt rushed, and there were far too many people in the space at the same time.
I hope things have changed since 2019, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same - I work in museums, and my God money is tight rn. If they need to get loads of people in to make money and keep the building maintained, then that's what they have to do. I would tell people to read the unabridged diary for an honest insight into Anne's experiences in the annex, and use that to support refugees today ❤️
This comment is so validating, I was looking forward to learning so much when I saw it but felt very disappointed at how the museum was set up. Which made me feel so guilty! I just wish it had been more informative or offered more ways to reflect for visitors.
So sorry to hear that. I went in 2013 and booked a morning time slot ahead of time. It really wasn’t crowded and I had time to reflect and absorb the experience. And, yes, I think a person definitely needs to read her diary before going. It makes the experience so meaningful. I can’t imagine getting much at all out of the visit without that b
Yes to all! I am traveling to Europe from the US for the first time since I was a kid, and my partner and I are spending a whole week in Florence Italy. I’ve wanted to go ever since reading Still Life by Sarah Winman, and it was his favorite city when he went on a huge European vacation as a teen. We’re excited to spend a lot of time in one place, and we’ve been learning Italian on Duolingo for the past 10 months. We won’t be fluent, or probably even conversational, but we’re doing this to learn and to be mindful that we’re visitors and we can be accommodating of the local culture when we visit. We’ve definitely gotten comments that we wont be “getting enough” by staying in one spot, or that one week isn’t long enough for Italy, but the point is not to see all of Italy, it’s to get to know Florence a little bit. Travel is weird, but this video made me feel seen.
On the topic of souvenirs, I love collecting post cards because they're small and cheap and I can get "professional" photos of landmarks I've visited. I date all my post cards so I know when I got them, but recently I started the habit of when traveling with friends to let my friends write notes on the back of my post cards so that I have something sweet to look back on. It forms additional memories that will be fond to look back on years from now. I do this for everywhere I visit, even national parks that are 1-2 hours away from where I live, not just cross country or international travel. One day I would like to put my post cards in a photo album
So much I loved about this video! I was discussing some of these ideas with friends last night so feels very relevant. A) would love to see videos about flight ethics and Airbnb specifically B) I attended a very international school in India where there was a lot of ideas about being a "global citizen", and most of my classmates were boarding students who went back to Thailand/the US/Nepal/Korea/Abu Dhabi/Russia etc. in the holidays, while I actually lived in the town. In retrospect, I'm in some ways wary of the ways that ideas about "global citizenship" almost absove you from having to engage with the problems andpossibilities of th place you're really in - it seems abstract, I guess, even though I think being globally minded and remembering that how you live is NOT like the most other people is a really humbling and important thing. I'd love to read that book you mention. C) I do think that travel can improve you as a person in some ways because it forces you to be in positions where you're not an expert and you're out of your comfort zone. Novelty is good for the soul! but there are also ways to be in that position without having to leave where you live, and I think there are ways to be exposed to novel ways of living and being in all places.
The Anne Frank House was the highlight of my Amsterdam trip. I booked with a travel group, and all the group wanted to do was sex shows, drugs, and alcohol. I decided to go off on my own and had a memorable evening seeing the city + the museum.
It amazes me how people visit Amsterdam 20 times & don’t leave coffee shops
Me as someone living in Amsterdam I would definitely use a much more negative word than 'amaze' lol. But yeah I do wish we'd get rid of the 'let's go do all the things god forbade' type tourism... I'd much rather just have visitors who come to watch the boat traffic from that nice spot at the end of this video and see the Anne Frank house.
I always get postcards as a souvenir. It's really important to me to always send one to my grandma, it's one of my ways to show her that I'm thinking of her even if I can't see her very often (I live abroad). It makes her really happy and she collects all of them and proudly shows me when I'm visiting. One of my favorite travel traditions!
It's interesting in Australia as we are far away from everything the idea of getting on a plane to travel somewhere to rest has never crossed my mind
Look mom I'm famous @24:18 ! 😂It was lovely to meet you! I think the most important thing with traveling is showing respect to the places you go. Sure you can go the Anne Frank house (it's a really cool educational place), but use it to learn stuff, definitely don't go to "tick" a place off your list.
Ah this is SUCH a breath of fresh air. I’m surrounded by people who treat going to other countries as something that makes you better than other people- the more countries the better. It’s exhausting
I took a sleeper train to Scotland a few weeks ago and I highly recommend it as an alternative method of getting around! Its more expensive but it evens out if you consider the 2 nights you would have otherwise spent in a hotel, and the transit costs. You also pay a little but extra for the convenience of course, but this is a gorgeous route that dropped me at the doorstep of where I wanted to be. The rest of my trip I just walked/boated around!
I personally agree with ramping up the travel before you have kids. Once you have children it just becomes a lot less easy (but not impossible) to trip about. For example, I really want to visit Japan, and if I don't do it before I'm 31, I will likely have to wait much longer until my child is old enough to take such a long-haul flight.
Different seasons of life will dictate how much you travel for sure. A retired person who only had 2-4 weeks off a year for 40 years will have earned the right to get out and see the world before they're too old to do it. It's sad but true.
I’ve recently been thinking about my “bucket list” as I’m getting older and losing loved ones. I realized that if I got to the end of my life and had never visited China or whatever, I don’t think I’d regret that. I know I would regret not spending as much time with my loved ones as possible, and I think I’d regret forcing myself to do things that stole my time, joy, or peace just because I felt some nebulous obligation to do it.
What a beautiful point
Thank you for this !
Wow, this is such a meaningful view. I've been trying to get to that point willingly. I have a lot of stuff going on which stops me to "live my life to the fullest (whatever that even means) and I'm not checking the boxes at all. But how much sense does it make to fabricate some depressing vision of myself on the death bed being upset about x and y that I never did? That sounds like the ego talking. I really aspire to be content with where I'm at, even if my dreams stay unfulfilled.
Profoundly loved this video - Makes me sad that so many of us desperately go on cheap flights and terrible sleeping situations to just get drunk somewhere else. One obvious antidote: Stay longer. All privileges aside (having the TIME, resources, etc) it creates an environment where you can nap/drink a few times but you'll get it out of your system and will (hopefully) find something else to do. But also to Leena's point on needing rest - ditch the Easyjet and a sketchy bed in a damp room; you will very likely be better off using the money going to the fanciest spa in your area and getting a back rub and a facial (no specific gender required!)
Some thoughts this video sparked:
One of my favorite and restful holidays was when my partner and I went to my mum's and just spent 5 days either staying at home or going to local attractions. So I would 100% recommend a holiday a home 😊
Our souvenir thing growing up was to buy Xmas tree ornaments! Honestly it's so amazing every year when the tree comes out 🎄
My souvenir thing is a Christmas ornament! My mom started doing it when she was my age and I'm continuing the tradition. It makes the holiday season even more magical to be unwrapping ornaments and reminiscing on wonderful trips together with the family. And when I was younger it gave me the opportunity to learn more about my mom's life before me. I hope one day it gives my children the same joy in unwrapping ornaments and the same opportunities to learn about my experiences and get excited about the big wide world out there!
I really enjoy visiting friends abroad as a motivation for travelling. There's a mix between spending quality time with a loved one and also getting to know the place that they're from or have moved to through their eyes.
I just used a large chunk of my vacation time to just be at home and it was a really good experience. I felt like my coworkers were a little confused about what I was doing, especially when multiple other people were taking vacations abroad at the same time. But it was wonderful. I finally had time to do all the local activities I wanted to do, I spent time with the people I love and I didn't have to stress about travel or feel a ton of jet lag.
I would be really curious to see research about "post"-pandemic travel. My work used to do a lot more work trips that have now been replaced by zoom calls and everyone seems better off this way. I wonder if that's a wider trend or if most places are back to lots of flights.
It's so interesting too how we have this pressure to ~ optimise ~ our rest time and make it at least appear like we're making the best possible use of our time rather than actually resting, and don't even get me started on the way tourists acted during the pandemic when travelling to other countries!!!!!!
A candle or hand cream or something with a scent can be a lovely way of making the trip last a bit longer, every time you use it you are taken back to a happy place.
(For those who can't deal with scents, something tactile like a cushion cover or facecloth is a nice alternative)
With souvenirs, I prefer stuff I can use/use up, because I hate clutter but also because to declutter ethically you have to know someone else would want it. And let's face it, who would buy someone else's tiny used sombrero that we have no emotional connection to?
So it's about not generating too much future waste that me or anyone else will have to 'deal' with
The ghost flights are shocking! I didn’t know this happens. I love the idea of being intentional and thoughtful about travel and I appreciate the thoughts you raised. At the end of the day, part of the benefit of travel is inspiration and development as a person and it looks like your trip really inspired you! That’s fantastic! Thank you for sharing!
I am a couple weeks into summer break from a rough year teaching 8th grade near Seattle. Been napping! Reading books! Doing the nothing that I need. We have the best summers and it’s been delicious.
I also recently booked a flight to Costa Rica for a short trip at the end of the summer and I’ve been overthinking about it. I think this will help me figure out what I think so I can feel excited about the trip, rather than guilty. 🇨🇷
Recently I have gone or more UK based trips via public transport (trains/ buses/ boats) and it is definitely felt more like an adventure and has been a lot more enjoyable. I have also had the opportunity to travel to Europe a few times over the course of the last year not via plane and it is actually (in my opinion) a lot more fun and less stressful. You have much more space, trains tend to drop you off in the middle of the city that you want to go to and you don't have to stress about baggage weight limits. I really would love for the price to go down for trains/ ferries to be more affordable. You feel like your on more of an adventure and are just so much more comfortable.
Probably my favourite way to travel is doing language courses overseas with their accompanying culture trips. It's great fun and community and when you meet people from said countries outside of there you can have more meaningful conversations, so it's something I spend months saving for at work. If it's a possibility, I'd always recommend it.
this summer I have to work, so I'm trying to recollect what I liked about summer holidays when I was a child. Turns out it's all things I can do in my town (make iceacream myself, jump in a lake, turn my phone off, read the whole day ...) and after watching this video, I'll definitely add looong naps to that list!
Interesting video Leena, I think there's an aspect you missed out on. As a young, broke person in the UK (Scotland) it is difficult to 'travel' in the UK without money.
Accommodation is more expensive, there's a lack of hostels (outside of the cities), and the hostels that do exist are more expensive and poorer quality than Western Europe. Train travel and coach travel is more expensive. The other day I was trying to go from Fort William to Glasgow (3 hrs) and the bus was £89 ONE WaY !! For me to go to Newcastle by train would cost me over £40 at least (probably closer to £80). On top of this, there is another problem which is that in Scotland/UK public transport infrastructure is very poor meaning that we can't go and visit our own beauty spots (highlands) without a car. Finally, UK tourist attractions are SO expensive compared with other Western European countries. Again, I was in the highlands and it would be £17+ to see a castle ruin, complete rip off for what it is. Again, means that people without money don't experience our own history - have never been able to go in Edinburgh castle because of the price. What this means is that the only affordable things to do are outside but surprise surprise the weather in the UK is often bad so then you're stuck there with nothing to do for free/low cost.
Given this, is it any wonder why people leave the UK for holidays/travel? I was able to go to Andalucía for a week last year and beyond all the cultural experiences I got to have, it was a good economic holiday (from UK perspective). Hostels were no more than €20, they have a ride-share culture in Spain so transport was no more than €10 between places with BlaBlaCar, good weather so could be in the FREE outdoors, tourist attractions were reasonably priced.
Can’t believe it’s cheaper for me to get a flight from East Midlands airport than it is for me to get a train from Nottingham to Scotland. This is part of why I have a fondness for camping. It’s about as cheap as a uk holiday is going to get.
it's funny - i am living in spain right now, (am from california) and when i went to the UK to london and oxford i was shocked how expensive trains and coaches were. for the budget i need to stick to, i am pretty much writing off the UK until i get another full time job so i can better afford it.
@@curbsidetreasur it's such a shame! I've also been living abroad and I really see the direct comparison between UK and other countries. I also see my intl friends who want to visit the UK but not aware of how expensive and inaccessible it is :(
@@ifonlyicouldnote that for a lot of international travelers from China and Taiwan for example it’s required to get a visa just for the UK, so a lot of folks just get the visa for the Schengen area instead and skip the UK entirely
@@curbsidetreasur yeah one of my friends in Estonia is from Turkmenistan and had to put in a lot of work to get a UK visa so I know how difficult and expensive it is
My first big vacation after I started my first job after Uni was to Nepal to do some trekking in the Himalayas. What left a nasty taste in my mouth was the entitlement of “world travelers”. Always talking about all the shallow but life changing places they’ve been, expecting to do anything they want and expecting local folks to allow them to do it. Made me see that same entitlement in some of my own actions and it felt a bit gross. Since then, I’ve definitely had a change of mind set when “travelling”
It is so important to think about your own needs, desires, and intentions when traveling. In regard to napping in other countries, I've discovered that I get quickly burnt out and need to plan a longer, slower trip that allows for things like taking a nap or just sitting in a pool. Same thing with the souvenirs, being intentional is what is most important. Personally, I still like to buy some souvenirs, especially those I will use everyday, but my favorite way to remember a trip is to write down every single thing we did - where did I go for lunch and specifically what did I have? What animals did I see? What did we talk about? I put it all into my journal, even just in bullet points, and I never forget the things I want to remember
Re : souvenirs: fridge magnets, yes ,the most pretty ones, but also, the most points go to getting something that I was going to buy anyway. The biggest star in this category was a wooden comb from Corfu, amazing for the hair and so beautiful, I use it every day 💞💞
This video is so true. I came back to watch it again. It has changed my perspective on travels and will now travel more conscientiously and with a specific intention. Thank you
So many good points in this video. Traveling is not a personality trait! And yes, it can make you a better person, but that mostly comes from the ways in which you might internally just feel more grateful or compassionate in your day to day life
Really love this video, have been thinking a lot about these things❤
A while ago i decided to make books my souvenirs :)) I look for a fun bookshop and find a book that I know will probably become a new favorite - i then use small things like a trainticket or receipt from the trip as a bookmark :) its a really nice way of remembering the trip through something I love so dearly.
Hands down my favorite way to experience another country/culture has been through studying the language. You generally are in classes for half a day or so, giving you both purpose and structure, but still have time and flexibility to do other things and you get to know people--both locals and other students.
I actually need to leave my home to properly rest because I don't know how to chill out and rest. A couple of months ago, I was super burnt out as a sahm with chronic health issues. I cannot relax at home, I will just try and make to do lists of things that need to get done or cleaned up or or or or, so my husband booked me a room at a hotel spa and it was so lovely. It was a couple of hours away by train, which is something I love about being in Europe, and I truly rested. I didn't worry about anything and while I was gone, my husband deep cleaned the apartment so that I came home to a clean home. It was absolutely wonderful.
I grew up in Alaska and traveling was and is just really expensive, and that's just to get out of the state! I didn't really see travel as an option for a long time. I went to California a handful of times to see family, but nothing else till I was an adult. Once I moved out of Alaska, I have been trying to do better with traveling to areas that are reasonable for where I currently live. I am still shocked that in three hours I can drive through several states in the US or several countries by train in Europe, like that concept just blows my mind. I love it.
I do really like buying books on my travels as well as postcards that I then put on my wall with my pictures, I love architecture and in general colors so it's great 😊 Also, for me, the thing is sometimes I just really enjoy being in a country that is cheaper than mine, like I live in Munich and just living here is stressful af so a lot of places just feel so nice for that, and cheaper than staying in my own country for the holidays (which is crazy but anyway). Also for food, it's so hard to find good ingredients that actually have a taste whereas in the south it's completely different with the sun so also a huge point for me when traveling. Lastly, I just really want to go see all the art museums so that's potentially a lot of travel ahead in my life and kinda never-ending but definitely feels worth it to me. The last city I visited was Prague and it was gorgeous 😍 I will say though that I felt stupid there not even knowing the words for "thank you" and "please" so as much as possible that's something I would focus on before going a trip, at least getting a basic knowledge of the language
Not me getting a cruise holiday add pre-roll on this video 😂😂😂
Lol ffs algorithm 😅
Something that I've thought about buying when traveling is art to decorate my home from local artists. I mean there's a cap on how much of that I can do before I run out of wall space. When going to a wolf sanctuary recently there were a lot of like wolf plushies and things. But there was also a part of the animals in the sanctuary done by one of the people who worked there and that made a much better souvenir then mass-produced thing.
I love this idea! I really love elephants so every time we travel we try to find some sort of elephant that was made locally. I have quite a few tiny ones made of different stones. People also bring them back for me from their trips. We have them scattered all over our house now like an Easter egg hunt. Lol
PS: As a hobbies sewist, I also really love Leena's idea about buying fabric!
Such an interesting video with many good takes! I have lived in 3 different countries throughout my 20s and now 30s (China, Russia and now Spain) and I honestly think the best way to know a culture is to live there. I know it's not accessible to a lot of people but I don't think you can really experience a place fully after spending a few days there on a whizz stop tour. That's not to say those trips can't be fun too but I would prefer to know less places but more deeply. Quality over quantity I guess. And you've nailed why those maps always felt icky to me too.
The best times were when I didn't have money to go anywhere but still had the wanderlust, so I became a host on couchsurfing and received various interesting people from all over the world at my place. The guests would usually integrate into my student dormitory household of eight really quickly and be a member of the 'family' for a few days. I learned so much, they'd teach us their favourite recipes and games, and we'd show them our favourite parks and cafés. All without having to go anywhere or spend any money.
Your thoughts on the Anne Frank museum reminded me of my trip to Berlin. It was school trip, and we were a very big group of first year architecture students. As architecture students we were encouraged to travel a lot. To see the different buildings and architecture styles in place. Our trip to Berlin naturally included a lot of WWII sites and to this day I still feel the discomfort I felt back then at being at those sites as a tourist, especially with such a big group of people. It just didn’t seem right.
Re: souvenirs, my husband and I always get three things: a magnet, a mug and a christmas tree ornament. They're all things we interact with/look at and reminisce over, and our christmas tree feels like a collection of joint memories.
The thing I believed about travel that I have given up on was, you have to make the MOST of your time during travel. I would always schedule all the things, leave no time for recovery and get home burnt out needing more time off.
If i travel to a new place i spend my time sightseeing and trying to speak to people and try new food,etc. If i need a rest i go upstate to my friends' cottage in the woods. Then i feel no pressure to do anything other than relax, swim, kayak, drink beer and lie in the hammock.
I went on a study trip in may to Krakow, Poland. We visited pedagogical institutes and learned about the cultural differences (dutch versus polish). Since we went with a big group of 35 students and were only there for less then a week, we needed to prepare. So when we were there, we had insightful conversations with Polish people working directly with children. For me personally, I got out of it that I had a power in me that could manouvre a big city on my own. I did love to connect with other polish people and students too, would love to do it again in the future.
On the topic of staying at home, my mum does this more often, but she does tend to just do more work around the house. And sometimes that's good, but when she reflects back, she realises that she didn't really rest. So from now on, she likes to plan small trips like going rowing in a city nearby or meeting up with me or her friends, which does help!
And thanks by the way for this video. It was just the right tone and nuance I needed on the topic of travelling and sustainability. For a long time it has been - and still is - hard to grasp the right balance between choosing for me and choosing for the planet (it doesn't always aligh, but sometimes it does, fortunately!).
We can rely on Leena to offer us credible information on various matters that we may be lacking complete understanding of. We know for certain her insights are straightforward and contain substance.
I've become that 'get a fridge magnet of all the places I've been to' kinda person. Small, the art is cool and I get to decorate my fridge/freezer.
Travel is a priceless(or actually, very pricey) privilege but as you mentioned reading is an incredible way to become an “expansive person”. You can grow in ways that certain types of travelers who get around may never grow
This is such a great video! I'm rewatching now as it's around the time people are planning summer holidays again - in the 10 months since this came out I've thought about these points a lot, so just wanted to let you know and say thanks!
I love your videos, it’s one of the few channels that I feel so refreshed after watching your video from!
for souvenirs i always buy a fridge magnet too. i love seeing the fridge covered in memories!
I have to admit, it was a bit of a challenge to click on this video. As always, you've handled the subject matter with great nuance (though the intro was funny) and I appreciate hearing your thoughts on the topic to spur me to think deeper about my own travels.
Re: Souvenirs
I like to buy a postcard everywhere I go. It's small, easy to pack, and usually costs $1-2. I tape them into a travel journal, and write down some memories/ reflections that I want to remember. I buy a new leather journal every couple of years from a smaller artist.
Been struggling with my feelings on travel for awhile. This video really helped me think it through!
LOVE this video. Can see myself revisiting it whenever feelings creep in, that I'm missing out or living a lesser life if I'm not travelling... thanks Leena, thought provoking content as always!
I had a pretty powerful trip last autumn. I found out my depression has more to do with what my life is like than I had thought and realised a few key things that I need to change.
My depression pretty much was GONE when I was away! And that's not how depression's supposed to work. It doesn't just switch off. I realised I can't mentally handle being 24/7 responsible of other people's (and a dog's) wellbeing. I've been a single mum for like 4 years. Since January this year I've gotten every other weekend "child free". It's not much and I still have to care for the dog, but it's really helped. I still mostly just sleep my free days, I'm hoping I'll make it to a point where I have energy to do some stuff just for me.
Thank you for such a great video!! This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently as someone who is in a temporary long-distance relationship while we are both school and ends up travelling between Canada and the US 2-3 times a year. I have felt a lot of guilt about flying often and I really appreciate the nuance you approach this with!
Very insightful. Tea towels for souvenirs. Yes, we need to learn to rest where we are without guilt.
I’ve met people with “the list” who are rushing around checking it off. Can’t relate. I have found a few places I love and go there for long stays and just live there, not rushing around as a tourist. Now that I’m old, I’ve learned to just please myself and not worry about what other people think or trying to “keep up” with them.
i needed that reminder that taking a plane flight once a year across an ocean i have no other way cross easily to visit people i love and havent seen in ages and ages does not make me a terrible person
Also remember that the plane goes two ways , have they been to see you? X
@@christinebeames712 yep twice its my turn now :)
The irony of Wanderlust is that in German, it's simply a desire to go hiking. We use that if we really want to climb the nearest mountains again, nothing more... It has nothing to do with actual travel.
One thing I’ve been doing (and encouraging my friends and family to do) is sending postcards while abroad! I don’t like the idea that other people need to buy me souvenirs while they’re traveling and I think this is a nice way to replace that. It also feels great to receive them. Love your thoughts on travel, thank you for this video!
It's cute. However is it not airmail and taking a flight too ✉️✈️ . Just a thought
Great video Leena!! I always love to hear your thoughts and commentary about this spinning planet that we live on. I’m from 🇨🇦… a global hotspot in the month of May. We’re on fire over here!! This really makes one (hopefully) think in detail about leisure flying and its associated negative impact on this planet. Ⓜ️ary