5 reasons why you should travel

Sometimes I hear people saying something like this: “travelling is not for me. Weird food, different people. Let me just have my normal 9 to 5 life with a routine so predictable that I can dream how my life will look like for the next 60 years.” Well, that last part I just made up but you get the point. I strongly believe that it will do good for everyone to see something of the world. Want to know why? Then read along.

1. Learn

While travelling, you learn and see and incredible amount of things you won’t normally come across at home. You see for yourself what’s happening in the world, it widens your perspective. Travelling is also great for gaining more ‘practical’ skills like learning a new language.

2. Connect

It doesn’t matter where you go or if you go alone or together: you’ll connect both with other people and the world itself. Unless you’re a complete unsociable fool of course. You connect with the country, you experience what other people’s every day life and routine looks like, you get to know new smells and tastes. There’s no picture or documentary that can really ever do it justice what happens to your senses when you’re in a place new, completely out of your comfort zone.

3. Understand

Travelling will make you a more understanding and compassionate person. We usually form our opinions about people, religions and countries based on stories we’ve heard from others or worse… the news. When you go and see for yourself, I’m sure that you’ll always be pleasantly surprised by how naturally kind, helpful and welcoming people are regardless of where they’re from or which religion they have.

4. You Learn to Appreciate

When you travel, you’ll start seeing the world and your life differently. You’ll start appreciating things you’d otherwise have taken for granted. What I for example realized myself lately, is that while I used to wish to live in a country with a year round summer, I now understand the charm of having 4 different seasons. Take Autumn in Amsterdam for example. It’s stunning! The different colours are amazing. Never in my life have I ever loved Autmun and now I do.

5. You Don’t Have Control

Let’s be honest, most of us have a little control-freak in us. We tend to freak out when something doesn’t go as planned. When you travel you can most certainly plan things, but sooner or later you’ll realize that sometimes you have no other choice than to let go. And guess what? giving up control can actually be really pleasant sometimes.