My parents are real travel fanatics so they dragged me halfway across the world before I could properly walk. Them also being teachers, all of our holidays were really field trips. I’ve seen more churches than I’ve bothered keeping count, many hundreds at least. Personally I’m more of a nature than a city guy (especially mountains) but this list reflects the best of what I’ve seen in my entire life so far, so naturally also includes destinations my parents picked.
- Austria
Austria may not sound special but the country has a special place in my heart. I’ve been to a ton of places there. I guess you could call it my home away from home. From my first eternal snow in Kaprun, nearly dying in the Salzach near Taxenbach, to the yearly (at least) skiing trips to the Steiermark, Austria is by far my favourite country. Two skiing favourites of mine are the Speedstrecke between the Kreischberg and the Bergstation, and the various pistes descending from the Rozenkranz to my favourite ski hut The Schluckspecht. Several other ski resorts like Hohetaueren and Flachau are also worth a stopover. The Frauenalpe are really tiny but if you are doing some tourskiing then it’s great because you have the mountain to yourself and maybe five other people. Austria was also a convenient stopover on my two month tour of Eastern Europe. A funny/scary story about a summer hiking trip in Austria you can find here: Getting lost in the mountains.
There’s too much to see there for me to cover in a paragraph but I’ll link some highlights:- Die Eisriesenwelt, impressive ice caves in Salzburgerland.
- Die Sigmund-Thun Klamm & der Kaprun Stausee
- Das Naturhistorisches Museum in Wien, science junky candy land.
- Die Alpenüberquerung, an absolutely great hiking trail from Germany to Italy.
- Der Günster Wasserfall
- The mineral museum and shop in Turracher Höhe
- India
My tour of North-West India was maybe the most special single trip of my life. I could talk about it for hours. After winning 3rd prize in a Utrecht University competition for best high school science report (profielwerkstuk) they sent me and five other high school kids to attend the YUVA Meet youth-leader conference on climate change organised by TERI in New Delhi. We also did quite a bit of sightseeing in New Delhi and Agra. At one point we even became the tourist attraction ourselves when visiting the kitchens of the Sikh temple Gurdwara Bangla Sahib:
Everyone wanted to take a picture with one of our teachers (he is 2m and 10cm).
Also:
Be prepared to not understand some things and blunder! Like in this photo above. Dumb tourists that we were we thought that the bowls of sauce we were supposed to dip our thin bread in was actually soup so we drank the bowls in one big gulp. One liter of water per person wasn’t close to enough to quench the flaming torture unleashed on your mouths and throats.
Another fun story about my time in India can be found here: - Morocco
This country has so many fun and interesting places to see I’ve spun them off into two different posts: - Western United States
Honestly the US is massive and we mostly went to see my family but we did check off some big ticket items such as L.A. (Paul Getty museum and the La Brea Tar pits), S.F. (Golden Gate bridge, Chinatown), the Grand Canyon, Navajo territory with Monument Valley, seeing the sequoia trees, visiting the Mormons, and going to see the town Tombstone in Arizona:
- Plitvice Lakes, Croatia:
These stunning lakes in central Croatia are some of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been too. It is also for this reason that the walkways over the lakes get very busy in the afternoon. If you want to appreciate these lakes properly get here early in the day! I visited this on a grand tour around the Adriatic a couple years back. - Venezia
Paris is overrated. If you want a romantic city trip go here. Also you can’t miss the “Beer of the Entire World Cafe” just outside the Jewish Ghetto in the north of the old city.
- Czech Republic/Prague
I’ve been to Czechia three times now. Once as a long summer holiday, once as a school trip to Prague and the small village Žamberk, and once as a student exchange trip to Olomouc. Prague is a great city trip though a repeat visit felt superfluous. Funny story: during my high school trip our teacher lost 42 students after he put us in a restaurant with money for drinks and went back to retrieve a single lost pupil (we took the money and went to a bar to get beers, rebellious teen phase). - Iceland
Jumping from Europe to North America, relaxing in the Blue Lagoon hot springs, seeing the Northern Lights and the black basaltic beaches and dining at excellent restaurants in Reykjavik are all worth a visit to Iceland! - Albania
I visited Albania on my first of two 2-month holidays (2015 and 2016). After starting in Venice and visiting Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia with my student association, I continued to do the Valbona-Theth hike with a friend of mine. The mountains were beautiful! The busses in the region and the Komani ferry were truly dilapidated though. Worse than in India. Plane tickets from Albania to Italy are really cheap since they are mostly empty return flights so that’s a tip if you want to add Italy to your visit of the region. - Istanbul
Istanbul is a vibrant city with lots of beautiful architecture, wonderful restaurants on the Galata bridge and much much more. There I also had:
- Scotland
Scotland gets its own category in this post because it is the site of both some of the most terrible misery I went through and a great time I had there.
In 2017 two of my friends convinced me to hike the West Highland Way a 154 kilometer long trail of agony and suffering infested with midges and drenched in incessant frigid rain. First holiday as a vegan wasn’t a success. There was little to no vegan food available along the route. My two hiking buddies didn’t really help with that particular situation wanting only haggis and steak. Two other friends of mine with whom I did the Alpenüberquerung recently told me there was plenty of food, so maybe the situation has improved there, though they were vegetarians not vegan. I love hiking I really do, as much as I love skiing, perhaps even more, but I’m not doing this again. If the forecast is bad I’d rather replan my holiday into a city trip and/or add a week to walk when it’s not raining.
On the other hand I had a blast in Scotland last year when visiting the MOND conference in St. Andrews where I presented this poster though!
Continental Hotspot 
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