All Work and Little Fun: My Unusual Travel Summer
My travel summer this year has been rather unusual compared to previous years, with little fun and a lot of work.
A busy summer with little travel
Summer isn’t my favourite time for travel, generally.
I much prefer the shoulder season for cheaper prices, nicer weather, better transport availability, and, most importantly, lighter crowds, so I usually travel less in July and August than in the months of May, June, September, and October.
Even so, this summer has been unusually quiet compared to previous years.
A trip to Wroclaw and Berlin
My only trip this summer was a 10-day trans-European train journey, taking me from Bucharest to Wroclaw in Poland for a short city break with friends, then on to Berlin for work, before returning by train to Romania, with only a brief half-day stopover in the Austrian Alps that felt vaguely like a leisurely break.
Although I did manage to enjoy the train journeys and my stay in Wroclaw, the trip was stressful in many ways due to a personal injury (an infected wound on my leg), some health issues with my cats back home, and my phone breaking mid-trip.
Apart from this trip, my summer months involved a lot of time spent at home behind my laptop working, with no opportunity to travel, and even very little time for fun activities in my own city, as I simply did not have the time for any.
There were no new travel destinations explored (I’ve been to Wroclaw before), and not even a day or two spent relaxing by the seaside.
Travel writing
Anyhow, all of this is not meant as a complaint.
Even though this summer may have paled in comparison to previous years, I know I was still lucky to have enjoyed a short trip, as many people cannot afford a holiday at all or are unable to travel due to personal or family circumstances.
The main reason I’m writing this is the relative silence on my website, as I have hardly managed to publish a post over the past month.
As most of you know, the Paliparan website is purely a hobby project.
Although I earn some money from advertising and affiliate links, it is far from enough to provide a full-time income, which is why I had to work on numerous other paid freelance projects this summer.
It is all this work, combined with some health issues affecting my cats that required time and money, that has made the last few months so unusually low in travel and website activity, as I needed to devote most of my time to these matters and paid work projects.
What to expect the coming months
The low website activity has led some followers to ask when (or if) I will finally update the trip report series I started to write.
Of course, all the chapters of those trip reports will be fully written, and the good news is that over the next few months I should have much more time to focus on this!
I know that some of these trip reports – such as those on Central Asia, the Cyclades, England by train, and Taiwan – have been in the works for quite some time, but I hope to write them up fully soon.
However, in case it takes a little longer than anticipated, please understand that a considerable amount of effort is involved in writing such articles.
Although I can generally write travel news articles in an hour or less, the same isn’t true for reviews and destination articles, as I often need to do considerable research, they are not exactly short (many exceed 2,000 words), and I also have to edit pictures (it’s not uncommon for a guide to a large city – such as my recent one about Singapore – to include well over 100 pictures).
YouTube
If you’re waiting for new articles to be published on this website but haven’t yet checked out my new YouTube channel, you might want to give that a look as well!
I’ve recently released a video about Romania’s century-old Malaxa railcar, which is still in operation, as well as another video on the fascinating history of Piața Romană metro station, with its unusually small and dangerous platforms – a story that involves the mad wife of a communist dictator.
In the coming weeks, I will launch a new video about my week-long trip through Luxembourg, which I took in spring.
If you haven’t done so yet, please subscribe to the Paliparan YouTube channel – I can monetise it once I reach 1,000 subscribers, which will greatly help me publish more content both on my website and on YouTube.
Conclusion
Compared to previous years, this summer has been a bit unusual, with very little travel and hardly any new articles published on this website, as I had to devote much of my time to other work and various issues.
However, the next few months should be better than this unusual summer, with hopefully more fun trips and more time to actually work on finishing some of my trip reports and other travel articles!
