I had big plans for traveling in 2020, but you can imagine how that turned out. Apart from being in Japan the first few months of 20201 and some light travel inside of Germany, I didn’t travel at all. While it’s still unclear whether we will be able to properly travel again in 2021, here are some destination that I would like to go.

Norway

I’ve been to Norway once with my friends last year. It was one of the best trips ever. We stayed in a small hut with seven people, no electricity, no running water, nothing. For some, this might sound horrible, but we enjoyed it so much that we were hyped to repeat it the next year. Of course it didn’t happen in 2020, but I’m optimistic that a trip like this will be possible in 2021.

I’m also planning, separately from the above, to go to Norway and stay with my friends who live there, for a month or two. My work currently allows us to work from anywhere, so this would be the perfect opportunity to do this without convincing my employer to allow it.2

Denmark

Every year since 2010, my group of friends has organized a trip to a large vacation home in Denmark. In the beginning, we were around 15 people, but throughout the years this grew to as much as 32 people! Of course, this trip also had to be canceled3, but I’m hoping that we can do it next year. The dates are already fixed because we could only move our reservation, not get a refund.

Japan

When I booked my return flight in March 2020, I noticed that it was cheaper to book a two-way flight than to book a one-way flight. So what I did was that I booked a flight from Tokyo to Frankfurt for March 2020, together with a “return” flight from Frankfurt to Tokyo for January 2021. While I’m 99% sure that Japan won’t allow tourists to come in January (at least not without quarantine), I’m hoping that I can move the flight to later in the year and still take advantage of the fact that I already have a flight. Needless to say, I won’t get out of this cycle until I book a single return flight or skip a flight someday. 😅

Greece

A while ago, I randomly got into a conversation with someone on Reddit who’s from Greece. What I didn’t expect was that we would become friends over time, and we’re still in somewhat regular contact now. If it’s possible and if she’s even in Greece at that time, I’d like to go visit her there for a week or so. (Hi if you’re reading! 🥰) Also, one of my good friends here in Germany has family in Greece and we’ve been thinking of going on a trip together, so maybe I can combine those two things!

Estonia

I don’t know why, but for a while now I’ve had this urge to visit Estonia someday. I basically know nothing about the country (except roughly where it is and that the capital city is Tallinn4), but somehow I still want to go there. This is definitely a lower priority, but someday I would like to go.

France

Believe it or not, I have never been to France before! It’s a neighboring country and I know a few people who live there, but I never ended up going. So maybe in 2021 or 2022, I can finally fill this gap as a European and go to France. I also promised some Mexican friends I met in Japan last year that I’m going to join them for their Paris trip, so maybe that’s going to happen at some point.

Portugal

Another country where I haven’t been to. I’ve heard that it’s very beautiful there. I recently watched one of Nathanial Drew’s videos where they were in Portugal and it looked amazing.

Germany

Last but not least, I want to mention that I definitely want to go to different places inside of Germany. I’m not particularly interested in the cities, but I do want to visit friends and they live all over the country. Even if international travel is not possible yet in 2021, I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to travel a little bit inside of Germany, at least.5

As you can see, except for Japan all of these destinations are in Europe. I am aware that traveling by airplane is bad for the environment, so I’d like to travel to more places that are close to me. And the flights I do take, I always offset the carbon emissions (yes, it’s always better to not fly at all…).

I also don’t think that I’ll be able to go to all these places even if travel is possible again in 2021. At the very least, I’ll run out of money since I’m only working part-time. But it would be nice to go on at least a few trips.

Are you excited to travel again? What are your next destinations?

  1. …which I am very grateful for! ↩

  2. If possible, I’m going to try to make this happen early, maybe already in February or March! Also, if I like it as much as I think, I could imagine moving there for a longer period of time. It’s still my plan to someday move to a different country, and currently I think I’d prefer to stay inside of Europe so that I can still see my friends once in a while. ↩

  3. It would have been possible to go, but at the time when we had to make the decision, the situation was still unclear, so the majority of the group decided to move the reservation to next year. ↩

  4. Admittedly, I had to look up the spelling. ↩

  5. Also, I got a so called “BahnCard 50” in September, being optimistic about traveling inside of Germany, but I’ve only ended up using it in September and once for visiting my parents in October. 😅 ↩