I'm a simple emigrant, and previously I would take time off to work on side projects

Quite a few of my friends didn’t go on vacation at all and simply received a year-end salary adjustment with vacation pay. And then I moved to Germany, where there’s practically no option not to take a vacation. In 2024, the residents of Germany went on vacation 68.3 million times! And that’s only trips longer than five days. It’s clear that among this number there are people who take five—and even ten—vacations a year, but the figure is still impressive, considering that Germany’s population is a little over 83 million. Almost a quarter of these vacations were for domestic tourism—no surprise, there are really a lot of beautiful places in Germany. Of foreign destinations, Spain is the most popular: it accounts for 15% of vacations. I’m sure that Mallorca pulls the ranking; it’s even called the 17th federal state of Germany—Germans adore it that much. And the reason is very simple: why reinvent the wheel when all your neighbors and relatives have already paved the way, and on the beach, surely, there will be a crowd of your fellow citizens in Birkenstock sandals and socks. In second and third places, almost equally, are Italy (8.6%) and Turkey (8.5%). Besides the fact that Germans generally like to go there on vacation, such a large percentage is also because the first waves of emigrants were precisely people from these two countries. For example, generations of “local Turks” have grown up here now. There are so many of them that they are changing modern German language; let me know if you’re interested in more details about this. I won’t even mention the number of Turkish businesses: doner kebabs or barbers on every corner. The culture of vacation in Germany is not quite familiar to us: put vacation into the calendar, set up an auto-reply on email, and that’s it; the probability that you’ll be bothered during vacation tends to zero. In most cases, no one even tries to stay connected for work while resting. From a similar culture: in some companies they prioritize people with children, because they are heavily restricted in choosing dates to travel with the whole family. And have you already planned your next vacation? Tell in the comments what you’ll do!