Your vacation is over? You
are stuck at home for the foreseeable future? You believe that is going to be
horrible? There is a word for this: PTD (Post-Travel depression). Think again. It
is so easy to hold on to that happy vacation feeling at home.
1. Remind yourself that after the trip is before the next
one.
2. On your flight back home, read the airline magazine it
gives great inspiration for your next vacation.
3. Look at your vacation snaps, if they are great why not
consider turning your home into a gallery space?
4. Talk to everybody you meet about your trip, they might
start talking about their recent trips too, this is seriously going to be the
best talk ever.
5. Start to plan your next trip as soon as you leave your
vacation spot (at least do so in your mind).
6. Buy food when on vacation, e.g. honey, jam, oil, salt,
tea, coffee, biscuits, spices and use them at home.
7. Buy locally-made beauty products on vacation, like
body oil or body scrub and use it there. When you use them back home the smell will
trigger that happy feeling.
8. Make regular visits to the travel section of your
local book store, dream away while you browse their coffee table books.
9. Throw away your TV, start reading and dreaming of
foreign places.
10. Get yourself new cookbooks, open one page (blindfolded)
and cook that dish that night.
11. Hang up a giant wall map (exactly like the ones we
sometimes were made to schlepp for our teachers from the archive to geography
lessons at school). It is the best way to be close to the world.
12. Catch up regularly on worldwide current affairs, so
you will stay connected to the world around you.
13. What was it that made your last hotel stay so special?
The bed linen? The table cloth? The cutlery? Decorate your home, why not live in
style all year round?
14. Decorate your home with travel memorabilia, old
suitcases, globes, photos, cushions.
15. Play tourist in your hometown. Look at everything
like you would see it for the first time, take a camera or use your phone.
16. Have you ever heard yourself saying: “I went to xxx
and people were so friendly?” Talk to people at the bakery, laundry, cash register ...
and smile often to recreate this careless vacation atmosphere at home.
17. Listen to music from your last vacation spot, and
dance wildly in your living room. You went to Greece? Think of Zorba the Greek.
18. Go to the cinema, theatre, concert, museum, gallery,
be as active as you would be on vacation.
19. Eat at restaurants, visit cafes for coffee and cake, go
outside, and enjoy your hometown.
20. Join Instagram and connect with people from your
favourite places. You can meet me, THE TOURISTIN there too.
 |
| If you want to be happy, be. (Leo Tolstoy) |
Hope these ideas help to keep you in the travel spirit and bring back all these good feelings. We all know travelling is the best thing in the world … next to chocolate.
How do you overcome the Post-Travel Depression? Can’t wait to
hear from you.
From Berlin with love