Holiday, Road Trip, Sightseeing

Holidays are the best times of the year for everyone. If you are a student, it's good; but if you are working, it's even better. After I had started my PhD (it's more like a profession in Europe), I have been looking forward to every single holiday. By the way, I don't consider weekends as holidays. A real holiday is the day you take off, when everybody else is working.

People can spend their holidays in many ways. But travelling is one of the most efficient way of spending a vacation time. Going to places you haven't seen before, knowing about different cultures... Besides summer and winter tourism, I like the culture tourism more; because you see and learn many new things while you also have fun.

In Europe, travelling by train is very popular, however travelling by car or plane is also fun if you can afford. A good car is essential for the holiday, because the travelling is an important part of the whole holiday as well. Otherwise you might have to push the car, kind of payback. Glad that we haven't experienced it yet. Travelling by plane spares you more time for sightseeing but then it prevents you from seeing some other beauty on the road. And if you are travelling by car, you should keep someone who can read map, on the front right seat. They are pretty handy on the way.

The thing of culture tourism is the sightseeing. When you visit a historical city; what a coincidence, we have lots of them in Europe; you feel like you have to see every important building, park, garden, palace, tower etc. It's actually funny to see all those people staring at those old buildings as if they are architectural experts and they are preparing a detailed report about them.

Another essential thing about culture tourism is taking photos. In order to prove that you were actually there, you should take photos. But taking photo is another problem. Let's assume that you are travelling with friends i.e. as a group, when you see a good view (a fountain for instance), all of you wanted to take a photo. You took all the combinations but one is missing: the one that you all are in. Then you have to ask someone else to take photo of you. But you can't ask every time. Actually I have a solution offer for this problem: "designated photographers". These designated photographers can be provided by tourist information centers, and should be professionals. Therefore you could get your photo taken with higher quality and you wouldn't have to solve advanced combination problems. (Ok, this was a joke maybe, but taking photos can be a real pain in the ass sometimes). By the way Japanese people are upgraded to video cameras nowadays. When they need a photo, they take snapshot from the video.

One last thing I believe about sightseeing or vacation in general, is that you don't have to see everything, i.e. you don't have to run for something all the time. You can go to your hotel or hostel, when you feel tired. But what people think is actually the opposite. They want to spend every minute of their holiday as efficient as possible. That in fact makes you tired. And I am already getting tired when I am working. Therefore I believe during my vacation, I deserve to get some rest too.

take care;

the spoilsport.