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Why America is off of my list of places to live

In order to maintain the nickname, Carmen Sandiego, as well as a blog called The Catch Me If You Can, traveling is absolutely necessary. In order to travel I need money, meaning that a job is absolutely necessary. So what happens when the two of them conflict? That is to say, what happens when you work in a country where your government doesn’t guarantee you a minimum number of weeks of paid holiday? That people, is life in America.

Since living overseas (specifically Europe) I have definitely fallen in love with their holiday culture. In many countries, offices, during the month of August, are ghost towns because people take a solid four week break to unwind and relax. For many workers in the US this is impossible, paid or unpaid. A recent article on CNN.com tackles the topic. In the article, “Why is America the ‘no- vacation nation’?” they explore American work and vacation culture, highlighting the fact that Americans not only work more, but working brings them happiness. Another point the article touches on is that countries such as Finland, Brazil and France guarantee their citizens six weeks of paid vacation, whereas the US government mandates nothing, leaving a quarter of the workforce with no paid vacation, whatsoever!

Whenever I have friends from the states come to visit me in Europe, my European friends are always surprised by how short the stays are, usually no more than three days in any European city. The reason for these “hit it and quit it” trips, as I refer to them, is because many people do not have the luxury of taking five or more days off of work in one go. Because of the short time period they have for vacation, they try to take in all of the European capitals or popular cities in one go, meaning that in ten days an American “sees” Paris, London, Rome, Barcelona, and of course they squeeze in Amsterdam. While this is a gross generalization, I will admit that back in 2007 I was one of those American tourists, squeezing in London, Paris and Madrid on a ten day trip. But the longer I stay in Europe the more I see the benefit of enjoying cities and entire countries on separate trips rather than country hopping.

So you see, for this reason alone I cannot foresee myself leading a happy life back in the US and being unable to take long vacations to see the world. So for those of you that would like to see me living in the US again, please start lobbying your government so that you can live the same wonderful life that Europeans do (Let’s not even mention healthcare!).

This Post Has 5 Comments
  1. Hey Jessica. I completely agree with you! European/Australian/New Zealander holiday culture is amazing and Americans (and the US tourism industry) have no idea what they are missing. That said my job here in San Francisco offers 18 days of vacation (just under four weeks) plus 11 legal holidays plus sick time during your first five years of service. And best of all people actually USE their vacation. No banking it up for decades…

    Hope all is well.

    -Bill B.

  2. Haha. G. Nash, that is such an accurate description of what would happen to members of congress if they tried to mandate that. Not sure I want to work for the American government though so you need to be more convincing than that to get me back there.

  3. As somebody who would like to see you in the U.S. again, I will say that if you work for the American Govt. you can actually get some nice time off… You get 13 American holidays and after 15 years of work you get an automatic day off for every two weeks that you work. The govt. work week for Americans is 40 hours a week (still more than Europe) but if you do any more than that you get time off or paid for it, so it's not the U.S. government that needs to be convinced, it's the evil private industry folk… and you know when anybody in the government here wants to start "mandating" and "regulating" anything they are hung with barbed wire and burned at the stake : )

  4. In order to globetrot and "eat, pray, love" one needs to hold passports from Western countries.

    Regardless of how much vacation they get or don't get ppl with passports from Africa, South Asia and Latin America and let's not even get started on the Middle East need to plan trips 3 months in advance and spend tonnes of money in visa fee.

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