Holiday Fever

The summer holidays are getting closer and closer. So I have been thinking about my summer plans, especially where to travel to. Because I long to travel. To satisfy my desire for journeys and adventures. To get to know foreign countries and cultures. Travelling is one of my favorite hobbies, but unfortunately, also the most expensive. So I always save the money I get from my summer jobs and spend part of it on one nice journey.

I started travelling with my parents as a young child. Like many Austrian families we went to Italy several times, for example to Lake Garda and to Tuscany. And we visited the Greek islands of Rhodes, Crete, Zakynthos and Cos. Rhodes and Zakynthos have been my favorite places for several years because those islands are simply picturesque, with beautifully clear water and perfectly sunny weather. I have been there several times. But today I am more interested in trying to see as many different countries as possible.

When I took my first big trip abroad without my parents, it was an exciting experience for me. I was fourteen and on my way to Cambridge, England. I was going to spend three weeks with a British host family and study English at a language school. I met lots of nice people in Cambridge. And I found out a lot of new things, like how to find my way on my own in unfamiliar surroundings. The next journeys I took without my parents were in high school. In my first year of high school I once again travelled to Cambridge with my fellow students and several teachers. In my third year we went to Cannes, France. Both trips only lasted a week and their main purpose was for us to practice our English and French respectively. I enjoyed both trips very much. Even though I had to attend school almost each day, I still had time for sightseeing. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in Cannes during the Film Festival. I would have loved to catch a glimpse of a famous movie star. Around the age of sixteen, who isn’t crazy about good-looking Hollywood stars? It was also around the age of sixteen that I stopped travelling with my parents. It just wasn’t cool.


In recent years I’ve been travelling with my boyfriend. Five years ago we went to Egypt, to the Red Sea. It was a relaxed holiday because we simply swam and sunbathed most of the time. The two highlights were our quad bike tour into the wilderness and our one-day snorkeling trip. Both excursions were quite an adventure. With the quads we went up and down the sand dunes and explored remote oases. On the snorkeling trip, we saw gorgeous corals and all kinds of multicolored fish. So even though we had a more or less recreational holiday, we still experienced some adventure.


The following year we took a short city trip to Paris. It really is a wonderful city with lots of attractive sights to see. We saw the Eiffel Tower, the Moulin Rouge Theater, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre Museum, to name but a few. I thoroughly enjoyed experiencing the typical French way of life. And it was a perfect opportunity to refresh my French. However, talking to real French people is always different from using a language in school. Not everyone is willing to talk as slowly as your French teacher. Not everyone is willing to repeat each sentence three or four times. Nevertheless, I was able to converse with several French people somehow. And this was highly advantageous for us so as to get along in an unfamiliar city. Because it is commonly known that the French dislike using any foreign language.


Then two years ago, we got the opportunity to go on a one-week cruise in the Mediterranean Sea. We started out in Italy, went to Greece, Turkey and back to Italy via Croatia. We visited Venice, Izmir, Istanbul and Dubrovnik. And though we only had a few hours to sightsee in each city, we were able to get a wonderful first impression of each destination. I had never seen so many different places, people and cultures at a time. This diversity is what makes a cruise such an attractive way to travel.

For this year’s summer holidays I haven’t yet planned my journey. Maybe I’ll do a short city trip again. I would be interested in more exotic cities like Moscow, Petersburg, Budapest or Stockholm. But I might stay home and put some money aside for a future journey. Because some time soon, I would like to go on a longer trip through the United States. So in case I don’t go abroad this summer, I’ll travel around Austria. There are still parts of my home country I would like to see. The main thing is that I am able to satisfy my longing to travel.