I love traveling, but one of the problems I have with traveling is that I can never really decide on new places to visit. In the past ten years, I primarily traveled to English speaking countries such as the USA, Canada, Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, Australia, New Zealand and Malta – and to many of them, multiple times. In fact, I’ve actually only been to non-English countries four times in the past ten years, which were Austria, France, Sweden and Finland (let’s not count the day trips to the Netherlands for shopping). I’m guessing that is because I just love the anglophone world so much – why else would I be studying English studies? The British Isles are just around the corner, making short visits there easy. The American continent, on the other hand, has enjoyed my presence primarily because of my family connection. Being able to have free accommodation close to New York is something that just cannot go unexploited (but luckily my family is always happy to have me).

The year 2015 was a rather uninspired year for traveling, as my boyfriend and I were really undecided about what to do. In January, we were on an excursion to Paris & London, in March we spent half a week in Malta and in June we went to Edinburgh for a weekend. As for a longer, proper holiday, we originally thought about going to Thailand for three weeks, but since I’m constricted to the semester schedule, our only option was September. Since September is more of a rainy season in Thailand, we decided against it. Then my calendar quickly filled up with appointments, leaving us only one week in which to travel. Eventually we were so tired of being undecided that we booked the next best thing that popped up, which is six days on Fuerteventura, full board. That’s new for us – usually we organize everything ourselves. Usually we’re also more the culture and city tourists, not the full board beach tourists. We’ll see how bored we’ll be.

Anyway, during that extensive indecisive period of trying to find out where to travel, I did quite a bit of research on places that would interest me. Therefore, I have tried to pick five places that are very high on my to-visit list (right after I go back to Canada next year…) with which I would also cover the remaining continents that I have not been to yet… sort of.

  1. Israel & Jordan

    Israel was mainly brought to my attention by my boyfriend, who has been there many times on youth exchange. I definitely think that visiting Israel would be a very interesting experience, in particular seeing such (a) diverse culture(s). I also absolutely want to see the Dead Sea before it vanishes, so I guess I need to hurry up.

    While I’m there, I hope I’ll also get a chance to go over to Jordan and visit places such as Petra. However, I hear it’s even more difficult to travel into Israel from countries like Jordan (it’s just difficult to travel to and from Israel in general), so I’m not so sure how that would work out.

  2. India

    Having now seen most of the former British Empire, India is definitely a country I still want to check off my list. My guess is that it’s just too overwhelming to cope. So many places all around India to visit, and all of them full of so many people – it must be crazy.

  3. Namibia & South Africa

    I can’t really decide which of these two I would want to visit more, so I guess I’ll just have to visit both. South Africa is of course another former part of the British Empire and I’d be interested to see the influence of that. But it’s so much more diverse than any of the other former colonies. It also has beautiful nature, such as Table Mountain and of course the wildlife.

    Namibia, on the other hand, is a former German colony – something I haven’t been to yet either. As a German, this would definitely be an exciting place to visit. Also, the nature is another big plus – Namibia is most famous for its desert and Skeleton Coast, parts of which were used as filming locations for movies such as Mad Max: Fury Road or The Fall.

  4. Argentina(?)

    South America is one continent that is missing on my list, probably because I can never really decide which of the many places there I would want to visit most. Peru is tempting with its beautiful mountains, Bolivia with its plains, and Brazil with its jungles, but I think I’d be most likely interested in Argentina. Mountains, lakes, grasslands, horses and cattle – its got everything for a great experience (perhaps even on horseback).

  5. Japan

    Finally and furthest from home is Japan. In Japan, I would want to go on a two or three week round trip from Tokyo to Kyoto to Koyasan to Osaka and back to Tokyo (maybe with one or two more stops in between). However, this is probably also the trickiest of all destinations, as many Japanese people don’t speak very good English, which will probably make traveling pretty tough for me. Luckily my boyfriend knows a little bit of Japanese though.

Despite these probably being my top five long-distance destinations I’d really like to see sometime soon, it’s probably gonna be a long time until I can actually afford them. Instead, I’ll likely do some more short trips around Europe or visit family in the US again.

And these are just the top five – there are so many more places which are definitely worth visiting, such as Iceland, Norway, Hungary, Serbia, Russia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, the Black Sea, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Mexico, and so on… So many places, so little time, so little money!