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When I first moved to Switzerland 16 years ago, I had a lot of visitors from the UK. Nowadays since I’ve been here so long, visitors are few and far between. So it was a wonderful surprise that an old university friend decided to visit for the day. I thought it was a lot of effort for a day and suggested that he at least stay the night.

I was really touched that he made the effort to visit us. He’s really good at keeping in touch with people, often visiting places to spend time with friends and family.  He’s travelled a lot over the last few years to the point where he has racked up frequent flyer status and now purposefully maintains it.

One thing that struck me was how he talked about his travel. For me, air travel has been something that just gets me from A to B and typically I want to get there as fast as possible. After speaking with him, it opened my eyes to other possibilities; he talked about travel as being an experience in itself, as part of the holiday. 

He would occasionally deliberately put in stops along the way to his destination to experience something different. Of course his travel experience is enhanced with lounge access and such perks, however it got me thinking that holidays can be started a lot earlier than arriving at the destination airport.

Food for thought for my next travels.