Travel burnout is a thing. On the one hand, I think that being tired of traveling and exploring the world rates pretty high among first world problems, right up there with “My Ferrari is in the shop so I had to take the Jag to get to the helipad” and “The maid service moved the bathroom tap and the water came out way too hot. It’s hard to find good help these days.” Despite how ridiculous it sounds on the surface, you can get tired of travel. How that manifests to you and how you handle it can vary wildly. For me, my burnout results in a complete apathy towards planning, which can very easily end poorly.
Since I left home 11 months ago, I’ve been on the road for over 260 days. Some of that was broken up by visits home to see family and friends. On my current leg, I’ve been traveling for 132 days nonstop, covering 6 countries so far, 5 of them completely new to me.
Planning a trip of any length requires a bit of research at a minimum. First of all, what language do they speak, and how much of the local language do you need to know? What currency do they use and what’s the exchange rate? Are credit cards widely accepted or do you need to stock up on cash? What are the entry visa requirements? What’s the political situation and are there riots or protests that you need to be aware of? Where’s the nearest US Embassy, and should you notify them that you’re in town? In which hotel, hostel, AirBnB, or random couch are you staying? What are the recommended restaurants in town and which do you want to check out? What sights are you seeing? Do you need tickets to those sights in advance? Are there tours of the city? If so, are they any good? The list goes on and on. After a while it gets exhausting. Personally, I am up to here with planning.
And, since I’ve been traveling with just a backpack, I’m limited in my clothes. On the one hand, it saves time in the morning since I’m not worried about picking out a fashionable outfit every morning. But I’ve also been wearing the same 2 pair of pants and 3 t-shirts for 11 months. I wouldn’t mind throwing on a pair of jeans and my loafers for a bit. It would be nice to not have to plan on washing clothes in the sink every night or finding a laundromat twice a week. I’d like to take a shower in an American-sized bathroom with a tub, instead of the European shower stalls that I can barely fit in. (And, on that topic, if you’re mounting a hand-held shower head on the wall, why would you put it 4 feet off the ground when there’s plenty of space above? Move it up to a reasonable height so you can shower properly, people!)
Last Tuesday, I was getting ready to wrap up my stay in Malaga, Spain, but I had no further plans. I had no flight booked to leave Spain, I had no specific place I wanted to go or anything I wanted to do. The world was my oyster. But, like an oyster, I just wanted to stay in bed and not think about it.
I couldn’t stay in Spain too much longer because of the Schengen visa rules, which say that you can only stay in the Schengen zone (basically all of Europe) for 90 days out of any 180 day period. Since I know I’m coming back to Germany in October for Oktoberfest in Stuttgart with a group of friends, followed by a motorcycle tour of Spain with some of the guys, I need to reserve a few weeks for that trip, which meant that I had to get out of Spain and either head to eastern Europe, Africa, or back to the US. I picked a random country off my list of places to see and booked a one-way flight to Split, Croatia. I’d heard it was beautiful there and the food was great, so, armed with no other information, I committed to the flight and found a hostel in the heart of the old town.
It wasn’t until I was at the Malaga airport for my outbound flight that I realized that I didn’t know what language they spoke in Croatia. (It’s Croatian. I should have guessed that.) I wrongfully assumed that they used the euro, which meant that my trip to the ATM to load up on cash was completely wasted. While the euro is relatively accepted at stores and restaurants, it’s usually at a less-than-ideal exchange rate, so credit cards or Kuna, the local currency, is preferable. And, to top it off, I didn’t know what the entry visa requirements were. I was at the airport, waiting for my flight, and there was a very real possibility that I wouldn’t be able to enter the country. I’d heard stories about travelers being denied entry for not having enough time left on their passport, not having enough blank pages in their passport, needing to provide photos to the passport officers for visa paperwork, and for not having a confirmed ticket to leave the country. I knew my passport was good, and somewhere in my bag I have a few extra photos, but if I needed an outbound flight or a pre-approved visa, I was in trouble. As it turned out, as long as you have 3 months on your US passport, you’re welcome to come to Croatia. Once again, I was saved from my stupidity solely because I carry a US passport. But that lack of planning is entirely due to me being burned out on planning.
Every week, it’s another round of trying to figure out where I want to go, where I want to stay, what restaurants are recommended, what the key sights to see are, what to avoid, where the laundromat is, and all of that. That’s part of the reason why I stayed in Malaga for 3 weeks instead of the one that I’d originally planned; I knew the town well enough to not need to plan anything, and I could relax and enjoy my time there.
Where does that leave me now? I have no clue. I have lodging booked in Split through the weekend, but after that, I have nothing planned. Split is small enough that you can see it well in 2 days, 3 or 4 if you take day trips out of the city to some of the neighboring towns. By the time I leave, I’m sure I’ll have seen everything worth seeing in Split. If I can get around to planning it, that is.
