I hold a corporate job that hypothetically is 9 to 5, but in reality spans more on the lines of 9 to 9… That and limited vacation days make it next to impossible for me to carve out a chunk greater than 7 – 10 days to simply travel… One reason why my colleagues and professional counterparts simply take a 10 day break and breeze through a Euro Trip enabling them to simply check major European cities off their “Wanderlustful” bucket list 🙂
Amsterdam – Check
Paris – Check
Venice – Check
Barcelona – Check
Vienna – Check
You get the drift…
So many places, such less time…
For those who don’t know, most of the European countries come under the Europe Union or EU and you need to get one single visa called the Schengen Visa on which you are permitted to travel all the countries under the EU like France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Greece, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Czech Republic, Hungary etc
And Schengen Visa costs you INR 4700 per person so it is common sense and a matter of practicality that people opt for visiting a number of countries under the one visa that they get. It is a smart move really…
But when it is Travel that’s on my mind I tend to use my heart more and my head a little less 😛
I travel to indulge my curiosity…
I am the kind of person for whom traveling is therapeutic. I don’t travel to see places, I travel to experience it… I have these experiments in my head that I keep conducting when I am traveling in order to find the pulse of the particular place I travel to. I experiment to see what makes people of different cultures tick, get cross or behave in a certain way… Its all a part of some random analysis that keeps going on in my head… Its fucked up sometimes but that’s how I am really…
Hence, for me it is important to explore a country. I don’t simply want to just check a city off of my checklist and say “Oh! I have been to Paris or Milan or the Swiss Alps”, I want to be able to say I know Greece well enough to tell you the difference between Mykonos, Crete and Santorini. I want to know Italy enough to be able to tell you why you should choose Genova over Venice and if you missed a fast train, which local trains to take in order to reach your destination almost at the same time…
I want to explore to my heart’s content…
Honestly though, 10 days is not really enough to catch the pulse of a country at least not countries with larger areas like Spain, France, Norway or even Italy and there will be those who can genuinely enjoy the luxury of exploring cities for a span of weeks. I however need to keep my job going so that I can fuel my travels and hence I have to be content with just countries – one at a time…
Smaller countries like Belgium, Netherlands and probably Czech Republic are perfect for 10 day breaks however, Italy for instance demands at least a month…
What is your Euro travel strategy?
My Infinite Wanderlist 