Quick check
What: Vacation
With whom: Our partner or with a friend
Where: Our home country
Why: ... It's complicated, next question.
How:
☻ strict time planning - forget it
☻ watch the language - daily reminder
☻ emotional level - different it is!
Can you already feel the smell of vacation in the air? I do and I love it! I can imagine that some of you are still looking for a quiet place under the sun and that others have started looking for the suitable footwear for the mountains. I know a lot of people who, due to the long Corona-lockdown, could not visit their home country in the past months. Therefore this has become the only place they can now think of for spending their next vacation. If you cannot wait to travel to your home country either, this series of articles offers ideas to make your time there even more pleasant.
If you prefer to listen to this article instead of reading it, I recorded it for you at the end of this page.
For starters let’s roll out the scenario where we’re travelling to our country of origin for the first time with our partner or with a friend. We have probably talked about it many times before, most of us can hardly wait to get there and see all our dear persons and places again. Before we start packing our suitcase, let’s bear in mind a few things for ensuring a pleasant vacation for our invitee as well.
What to consider when planning this trip?
☻ While planning the visit, let’s try to incorporate our fellow traveler’s wishes – for example visiting the vicinity of our home town or just a quiet afternoon indoors. This way, the vacation is not aimed at fulfilling only our wishes, but a chance for our invitee to discover places or activities of their own interest.
☻ We should keep in mind that we are the only one in this equation with a direct emotional connection to the place we are travelling to. All the happy times we spent there are ours alone and no matter how often and in how much detail we have talked about them, our travel companion does not have the same type of connection to this place as we do. So, for everyone’s peace of mind during this visit, we could remind ourselves as often as possible that our invitee may not share our feelings towards the chosen destination. How do we notice that? For example, we can hardly sit still on the plane, car or bus due to the excitement of coming back to our home town, while our co-traveler quietly enjoys the trip. This contrast might lead to conflict, so let’s try to live our emotions at their full intensity while giving our companion enough space to feel emotionally comfortable as well.
☻ For a smoother integration, our partner or friend could use some hints on what to expect at the destination – e.g. cultural differences, family habits, commonly spoken language or dialect. This way, these aspects will be somehow familiar to our invitee and will not trigger surprise or rejection when encountering them for the first time. There is a double advantage here: firstly, our companion learns in advance about the particularities of the new place they visit and thus their vacation is not burdened with getting accustomed to them firsthand. Secondly, the more our invitee gets to know about such situations in advance, the higher their chances of an easier connection with the people encountered in our country of origin.
☻ This works the other way around as well – the family members and the friends we plan to meet during our vacation should also know a few things about our invitee before greeting them for the first time. I suppose they get to hear about our partner more often, but let’s give them some hints about our friend, too. Let’s consider talking about our companion’s general likes and dislikes, e.g. their culinary preferences, especially if our guest is allergic to an ingredient or a dish that is common in our country of origin. Thus we create some ties between our dear ones in our home country and our partner or friend even before they get introduced to each other. Thus a more natural conversation is facilitated from the start. Furthermore, we minimise the risk of awkward moments such as “I booked a table at a steak restaurant, I can hardly wait for you two to try the steak there, it’s phenomenal!” “Ahm, my friend does not eat beef”. “Oh, I didn’t know that!”
Meeting new people
☻ Since the topic of meeting our dearest persons came up, let’s consider it in more detail. It might be a good idea to try to limit the number of people we see during this vacation. On one hand, we thus have the chance to allow our companion to get to know our family members and friends without the time constraints imposed by scheduling one appointment after the next. Especially when meeting someone new, we all need more time to find common subjects, to reveal ourselves and to create a bond with these people. On the other hand, we avoid turning our vacation into a rush through meetings scattered across the city and a collection of broken conversations instead of catching up in a relaxed way. Additionally, we also avoid the imperative need of a second vacation for recovering from the busy schedule during this visit.
☻ For avoiding unnecessary pressure, we should not expect our invitee to join all our planned meetings just because we’re both in town. The people we choose to see are our favourite, but our partner or friend might not be interested in meeting them. Whenever our companion joins us, let’s try to keep the conversation from slipping into reliving too many memories we shared with our friends or family members. It may be helpful to shortly introduce the current topic to everyone present, so they all get on the same page and we avoid the situation when someone feels left out because our discussion deals with unknown topics to them.
☻ Last, but certainly not least: our partner or friend might not speak our native language or dialect fluently. So let’s take a moment in the beginning of each conversation to kindly ask everyone to decide upon a common language for our discussion. This way, our invitee has equal chances to contribute to the dialogue. Otherwise it could be entertaining for them for a while to pay attention to a conversation in a familiar language, but sooner or later it will get tiresome to keep up with it. From my experience, it can get easily frustrating not to be able to take part in a dynamic conversation because we cannot formulate our opinions fast enough due to a language we are not confident in.
Try out at least one of the suggestions mentioned in this article and let me know in the comments if it worked out. Advice of your own on this topic is also welcome!
And keep close, as this is the first article on a vacation-related series. Coming up soon: tips and tricks for confidently planning a vacation to our home country with the children.
Yours confidently,
Corina