Vacation rules

No matter whether you fly far away or you stay close to home, vacation rules!

But there also seem to be rules as to what is appropriate behavior on vacation, at least it seems like it.

When you stay home – on the balcony or by the nearby lake, it is perfectly fine to also spend time online, even more time than you usually do to find the chords for the summer hit song so you can play it on your accordeon, to fiddle around with the layout of your homepage or to just catch up on some blogs you love to read.

When you are away though, taking a laptop is frowned upon. You are supposed to relax! And relaxing these days is equal to shutting off from the online world as well as your beloved smartphone.

But while the exhausted vacationer is fighting the urge to stay up to date on private emails, social networks and the news – BILD is not sold everywhere anymore like it used to be when we were kids and that newspaper was the lifeline to what was happening in Germany J - coffeeshops, restaurants, bars and hotels are stacking up on free wifi. Even tourist offices offer the wireless survival kit for the stressed tourist.

Walking through a city on your vacation – let’s say we are in Zadar, Croatia – you can find QR codes all over the place to teach you more about the church in front of you, the owner of the house you are passing or the square you are about to have an iced coffee in. All this requires internet access though…

And while the phone companies are still too expensive for the data roaming abroad, wireless is all over cities in tourist destinations.

You can see people who are constantly checking whether they have free Wifi – I myself am no exception here – and I am asking myself “In those days can we relax without the internet?”

Just laying at the beach watching the waves is not enough anymore… In an information world where we are connected with many “friends” and constantly want to know how they are, what they are doing and how the weather is in all kinds of places, is it not appropriate to read and answer your email, check on your favorite blogs and even rebuild your homepage while enjoying the view of the playing kids at the beach and the smooth waves of the mediterranean?

Well, I answered the question for myself by writing this blog entry with a view of the waves in the shade of a palm tree in a small town in Croatia, having come out of the salty water just minutes ago.

For me a perfect vacation is one where I can do what I want, one where I can enjoy reading 2 books but also write my thoughts, sort through some of my pictures and have internet to not be overwhelmed by an overflowing inbox when I come back home. A different thing goes for work though… There I am still strictly staying far away from my inbox, so I can have my head free for creative fun, summertime thoughts and the excitement of some new projects that are forming in my head as I am writing this.

Happy vacation!