Quote: (04-21-2016 09:29 AM)zatara Wrote:
Quote: (04-21-2016 05:55 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:
Ninety international airports mean jack diddly when you have to constantly connect at other lesser airports. When I have to fly back to my flyover state it's almost ten solid hours of flying from the UK to some eastern seaboard city like JFK or Logan before I end up landing in the midwest. The cost for this ticket is around $750 one way if I book it in advance. Round trip that's a lot of money. Flying around in Europe and even the Mediterranean basin costs pennies.
And second, just because an airport has the "international" designation doesn't mean it's going to fly anywhere worth going. A prime example of this is this airport: http://www.buffaloairport.com/Flight/fly.aspx two seasonal flights to Puerto Rico and Cancun? I betcha the ticket costs of those flights will be the nearly the same amount to fly to Europe. Don't forget, America is a massive land mass compared to Europe.
The US is not really geographically isolated in terms of travel to international destinations either, though. Australians and New Zealanders have similar standards of living to the US but far longer to travel to reach their nearest international neighbours, and pay far more for flight costs than Americans do. Yet the rates of passport ownership and international travel are far higher in both of these countries than in the U.S. Which would imply the casual factor in American's lack of travel is not geographical.
As I said previously , Americans don't need to travel internationally when you have such geographically diverse places like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, skiing in Colorado, New Orleans, the American southwest, heck you even have the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. All while not having to go through the annoyance of passport control.
Most don't see the point in going abroad and to be honest outside of foreign women there isn't much Europe offers overtop of America beyond history.
As for cultural charm, maybe it is just me but I don't see it in Europe. The majority of Europeans come off as liberal Americans with funny accents/different languages considering all of the westernized attitudes and behaviors.
Quote: (04-21-2016 09:29 AM)zatara Wrote:
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The point I was making was in my initial quote. European unemployment is higher because Europeans demand more time off and think it's culturally acceptable to have month long spans of goofing off. Businesses have shown that they don't want to have to support employees finding themselves, hence why the zone is broke and its people unemployed.
Northern Europe (Scandinavia, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands etc) has comparable income (higher in some cases) and unemployment levels to the US. Yet all of the countries still maintain 30 days+ a year of holiday leave. Conflating holiday leave with economic problems is a false correlation. The broken southern European economies have far more serious problems than holiday leave legislation.
I'll be bluntly honest: I don't see European vacation packages lasting much longer in this day and age. Part of my job is helping roll out a software package that will make it easier to offshore our development from said northern European countries to places like China and India. After seeing how much time people take off, I don't blame them.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
Quote: (04-21-2016 09:29 AM)zatara Wrote:
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Moral of the story: people who take gap years end up having no money and experience to show for it.
This is...an extremely closed minded view. Do you personally know anyone who has actually taken a gap year and either set up their own business or traveled extensively in the developing world? For middle class British, Australian, Irish etc people its a default part of life, a huge number of people take a year off either before or after uni. If they were all becoming unemployable wasters immediately afterwards it wouldn't be quite so commonplace and socially encouraged.
My opinion is based off of three guys I know who did just that and don't have anything to show for it:
1. Irish guy: took a year off to travel around America on a j1 visa after his undergrad. Once he finished he went to graduate school and now makes the same amount of money I do . Arguably doing the best albeit he is drowning in student loan payments from not paying any off (i'm stacking cash instead).
2. Australian guy: Went to law school and ended up becoming a lawyer. Worked for a few years in Melbourne and then decided to take a gap year. That single year became two and now he is in rehab after a crazy stint he did in Thailand or Malaysia I'll have to ask him.
3. Canadian guy: Dad gave him $10k after graduation. He ended up going to Costa Rica to learn Spanish. Went home after 6 months to live with his parents after acquiring a white nose and barely passable Spanish.
Anecdotal experience be damned, but this is all I have to go off of. All three dudes have crazy stories to tell and the time off certainly added to their wealth of life experiences. However talk is cheap and they're paying for that time off in other ways.
I love being proven wrong so OP if you have a plan to start a business or do something actually useful do it. If you want to take a year long vacation, know you'll be hampered in other ways.