Travel

Four Countries in Half a Day

It sounds like that trip you did when you finished college. I assure you, it was the opposite.

Three of the four countries I was in yesterday. (Photo by author)

We all have that one friend who once went to Europe in their 20s, but neither now nor then has any idea where they went because they ripped through 15 countries in 5 days, drowning in Jägermeister, on a package tour.

If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit to having done that too.

The eye rolling prospect of hearing their stories again mercifully declines as you get older, because by the time you get to this age, one’s understanding of and approach to travel has hopefully changed.

There’s a slowing down with this stuff and the realisation that there is a serious difference between being in a country, seeing things in it and taking photos of it all, and actually understanding it. The former is a question of minutes, hours and days. The latter can take a lifetime.

I did have it in mind at one point to get to every country in the world, but have sensibly put that aside. Meantime, there is no shortage of people on YouTube who are busily documenting their valiant attempts to do just that. I’ve wondered how living an experience and filming the whole thing and then spending just as long or even longer…