Traveling is picking up speed again. The corona hurdles and covers are falling everywhere, people smell spring air. That’s actually nice. Only: Nobody can answer the big question for you. This question is: where to?
Mediterranean, yes, would be nice, Greece for example. But do you want to go to a country for which the tour operator Tui alone is aiming for three million guests this summer? You can stay at home then. Japan would certainly be less crowded and worth a trip again – the food alone! The temples in Kyoto! The cherry blossom! But: Europeans are not yet allowed in because of Corona. And the long flight would be a CO₂ outrage anyway, not to mention the outrage on the knees in economy class. But now that Russian airspace is not open to Western planes, a further detour has to be flown. Even more CO₂, even more knee problems!
It’s not cheap either. So rather go back to Germany? Beautiful country, nice people; You can also understand the language, and you don’t have to experiment with food. And if the borders are closed again, you would already be there.
However, it is not cheap to go on holiday in your own country. According to a survey by the Federal Statistical Office, Germany was one of the most expensive travel destinations in Europe in February in terms of hotel and restaurant prices. According to this, holidaymakers in Italy paid three percent less than in this country, in Greece 21 percent and in Turkey a whopping 64 percent less!
That would speak for an extended holiday in Turkey – if Erdoğan wasn’t there. By the way, there is still a lot of snow on the mountains in Turkey, it was a very cold spring there.
That’s why it’s worth taking a look at the mild Rhineland: Bonn instead of the Bosporus. The former federal capital is currently boasting something that Japan is actually famous for, with the cherry blossom. In Breite Strasse alone there is an avenue of more than 100 blossoming cherry trees that have formed a pink tunnel. Whole busloads of Japanese and Koreans living in Düsseldorf are said to be already on their way, according to Japanese tradition, to do hanami, as the joint viewing of the pink magic is called in Japan. If that isn’t a good starting point for an almost CO₂-free holiday: take the train to Bonn, walk to the old town and feel like you’re in Kyoto among all the Japanese people in Düsseldorf snapping cherry blossoms. And then eat out in one of Bonn’s unusually large number of Japanese restaurants – it can be so easy to go on an exotic holiday!