{"id":4766,"date":"2014-09-10T07:00:02","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T05:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/urbanpixxels.com\/?p=4766"},"modified":"2024-06-04T15:14:05","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T15:14:05","slug":"expat-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbanpixxels.com\/nl\/expat-holidays\/","title":{"rendered":"Why you deserve more holidays as an expat"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Why<\/figure>\n\n\n\n


Remember the days when visiting your parents and other family members was something you did without much planning? When catching up with friends was just a normal activity on any ordinary day? And when holidays were spent exploring new exciting destinations, travelling to places where you didn’t know a single soul? Yeah… those days are definitely gone as soon as you become an expat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I realise that I’m probably one of the last people that should complain about the amount of travelling they get to do. I get to travel quite a bit for work, and most of my friends will join me for a weekend away as soon as I mention the words city trip<\/em>. But when you live in an other country than your (old) friends and family, you’re going to spend a fair amount of your well-deserved holidays on trips back home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because I hadn’t been home much this year I decided to spend my summer holiday in the Netherlands. I felt optimistic at the time that I booked my ticket when temperatures in London (that are exactly the same as in the Netherlands) were actually feeling like summer. I saw myself relaxing in my parents’ backyard, reading lots of interesting books, going to the beach and in between catching up with all the friends I hadn’t seen for so long.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good plan. Not very realistic. Not so much because of the weather (which wasn’t so summer-like in the first week). But because catching up with everybody is – yes – a lot of fun, but anything but relaxing. I was staying at my parents’ house in between The Hague (where one half of my friends lives) and Amsterdam (where the other half lives). Of course I could have asked them to come my way, but The Hague and Amsterdam are so much more fun! So every day I took the train up north to Amsterdam or south to the Hague, and some days even both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because I desperately wanted to feel like I was on holiday as well, I spent exactly 1.5 day sitting in my parents’ garden as planned. Divine! Got to page 200 of the first book I started reading (out of a reading list of about 5), but still. It’s something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So now I’m back at work. I still remembered my computer password (I love it when I don’t!<\/em>) which is ‘exhibit A’ that this wasn’t a real<\/em> holiday. And I don’t have any funny travel anecdotes or amazing sunset\/rise photos to make my colleagues jealous (‘exhibit B’). Which is why I think expats should get at least two additional weeks to ‘recover’ from their trips back home. And to finally finish that damn summer reading list!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remember the days when visiting your parents and other family members was something you did without much planning? When catching up with friends was just a normal activity on any ordinary day? And when holidays were spent exploring new exciting destinations, travelling to places where you didn’t know a single soul? Yeah… those days are definitely gone as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-expat-life"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanpixxels.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanpixxels.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanpixxels.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanpixxels.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanpixxels.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/urbanpixxels.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanpixxels.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/urbanpixxels.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanpixxels.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/urbanpixxels.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}