For me it is just a matter of priority. I love to travel and see the world so naturally I prioritize this in my life. My plan is to have visited all the countries in the world before I die :P
I would say that 95% of the Danish population in the age from 20 – 60 go on a vacation somewhere outside Denmark at least once a year. Many of these families save up money all year from low salaries to just go on this vacation. I don’t think that traveling has much to do about money to be honest. Naturally if you are dead poor then you most likely won’t travel, but otherwise people do find the money for it. (and want to)
This is the mentality of Danish people – most Danes enjoy traveling around the world and we like seeing new and different cultures. Naturally you also have the people that go to the same place over and over again. Take my grandfather for instance. He has been to Tenerife (Small Island of the coast of Spain in case you don’t know) 56 times with my grandmother and they are going again next week. They enjoy those trips but also travel to other parts of the world as well.
I my self travel a lot and always want to travel more. I also happen to have family in the US so I have been in the US at least 20 times for vacation and business.
I think that one of the reasons why many Americans don’t travel much is because they really don’t know what they are missing out on. What I mean is that the majority of the Americans I have met, have been interested in things happening in the Unites States, about places in the US, about things going on in the US but they don’t really pay much attention to what goes on in the world outside the US. Now I don’t mean this in a negative way but if you don’t know what is happening in the world around you why would you want to go visit it? Most people go with what they know so if an American guy knows about Miami then it is more likely he will go there for his vacation than go to Europe for instance.
I recently spent two weeks in Miami and the price for that vacation was extremely high compared to all others I did. The plane ticket was basically nothing (cheaper than going to LOS) but the accommodation, food, entrance fees to various stuff etc etc. I bet you that a US family going on vacation in Florida could take a vacation in Europe for the same if not lower amount of money.
Also the fact that most Americans don’t have that much vacation which of course will play a major role in any vacation planning. If you only have two weeks and you even split them up as separate weeks, then you don’t want to waste 2 days traveling. I see that completely. Here in Denmark we have 6 weeks paid vacation – I don’t know what the other European countries have.
Finally I think it comes down to the values and ideals that various nationals have for themselves. A US citizen has some totally different values than a DK citizen. All life we are brought up with a certain value set and it is hard to break out of that.
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Originally Posted by JayBee
There isn't any person living anyhwere in Europe who could travel 1000, let alone 2000 miles and not be either in another country or on another continent. So unless you are a complete couch potato, you really need a passport. If you lived in Italy, for example, within a 2000 mile radius, how many countries could you visit. I would need a list of UN membership to answer that question, but it must be about 100 countries.
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Not quite true Jaybee. If you live in Norway, the distance from one end of the country to the other is around 2500 Km or 1540 Miles. I think that Sweden is around 1600 Km or 1000 Miles too if I’m not mistaken.
In Scandinavia it has also been possible to travel around without your passport for a long time now. With the Schengen agreement the countries in the European Union is also heading this way, but I bet you that people still will get the same amount of passports because they still want to explore the world.