Some questions for Euro-Dopers

In My Humble Opinion
21
  1. What country do you live in?

England (err, Britain, the UK, the British Isles …)

  1. How much time off (i.e. vacation) do you get?

*I’m part-time now (coming up to retirement). But private school teachers get 17 weeks. :eek: *

  1. How do you generally use this time? Travel? More time at home? In large pieces (weeks) or spread out over time (days)?

Play board games. Travel (Vegas, baby, Vegas!). Relax at home.

  1. How easy do you consider it to be to leave your country and visit another? Is it a big production or is it a “Hey, let’s go to Amsterdam this weekend”?

It needs preparation outside Europe, especially for security reasons. But I went to Turin, Italy recently at 48 hours notice. :cool:

  1. How often do you leave your country for any reason?

Two or three times a year.

  1. How common amongst your friends and families is it to just decide to move to another country?

One distant friend emigrated to Australia (which is reasonably well-publicised here).
Nobody else I know has gone anywhere.
I know one elderly person who has never even been outside this county (which is less than 150 square miles!)

22

1. What country do you live in?

UK

2. How much time off (i.e. vacation) do you get?

Statutory 20 days (plus 8 Public Holidays) + 5 as part of my package, and 1 day per year long service. I can also carry up to 5 days over from the previous year. So this year, 27 +8.

3. How do you generally use this time? Travel? More time at home? In large pieces (weeks) or spread out over time (days)?

Travel almost exclusively. Usually one big long-haul vacation (places like Thailand, Hong Kong, China - and this year I’m going to Nepal), and several short breaks (in the last year I’ve been to Paris, the south of France, Brussels, Barcelona, Dublin, Budapest, Istanbul and Bruges).

4. How easy do you consider it to be to leave your country and visit another? Is it a big production or is it a “Hey, let’s go to Amsterdam this weekend”?

The latter for Euro destinations. Particularly since the Eurostar became accessible. But that said, my recent trip to Turkey wasn’t any biggie either. Long haul requires a tiny bit more preparation, but it’s not really a huge deal.

5. How often do you leave your country for any reason?

In the last year, 8 times for pleasure, once for business (the US).

6. How common amongst your friends and families is it to just decide to move to another country?

Not incredibly common, but I myself have done it several times over the years, so I meet people who are a bit more mobile than your average Britisher.

23
  1. What country do you live in?

England

  1. How much time off (i.e. vacation) do you get?

20 days plus the 8 statutory bank holidays (New Year’s Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, May Day Holiday (first Monday in May), Spring Bank Holiday (last Monday in May), Summer Bank Holiday (last Monday in August), Christmas Day, Boxing Day).

  1. How do you generally use this time? Travel? More time at home? In large pieces (weeks) or spread out over time (days)?

For my 20 days, exclusively travel, either to a croquet tournament in the UK (or occasionally) abroad, or for a week-long holiday with my girlfriend. The bank holidays are for croquet in the summer and seeing family in the winter.

  1. How easy do you consider it to be to leave your country and visit another? Is it a big production or is it a “Hey, let’s go to Amsterdam this weekend”?

The latter, although I’ve never actually done a spur-of-the-moment trip abroad, mainly due to the above.

  1. How often do you leave your country for any reason?

2 or 3 times a year.

  1. How common amongst your friends and families is it to just decide to move to another country?

Very uncommon.

24

I hate to nitpick (well, actually I quite enjoy it), but since the OP is explicitly asking about how much vacation we get, the statutory minimum annual leave in the UK actually includes the 8 public holidays.
The statutory minimum increased from 20 to 24 days a couple of years ago, and goes up to 28 days in April. Won’t affect your typical full-time employee much, because we all get at least 20 days + public holidays already.

25

1. What country do you live in?

The Netherlands (wow, there are a lot of Dutch people here, relatively)

2. How much time off (i.e. vacation) do you get?

25 days per year, but I do a lot of overtime and can generally spend somewhere between 30 and 40 per year.

3. How do you generally use this time? Travel? More time at home? In large pieces (weeks) or spread out over time (days)?

I have a great employer, who agrees to let me save up all my days for the next year. Last year, I didn’t spend too many days, so this year I’ll go to Egypt for a couple of weeks and will rent a motor bike in India for 8. I’m a big traveller and consider it a waste to take a day off and not spend it on a trip of some sort.

4. How easy do you consider it to be to leave your country and visit another? Is it a big production or is it a “Hey, let’s go to Amsterdam this weekend”?

Very easy. This year alone I had a bachelor party in France, did some shopping in Belgium, had a weekend trip in Prague (Czech Republic) and visited some friends in Germany. Previous year I drove to Kopenhagen for the weekend just because I’d never been there, and my job sent me to Madrid, Rome and some satellite towns of London.

5. How often do you leave your country for any reason?

See above. At least 5 - 10 times a year.

6. How common amongst your friends and families is it to just decide to move to another country?

I’ve lived in Scotland for about 18 months, a friend of mine in London. My sister worked in Swtserlad and Italy for a while and quite a few friends from school have moved to Australia, Peru or any other far away country. I’d say it’s pretty common.

26

Yeah, I suppose it couldn’t hurt to answer my own questions!

1. What country do you live in?

The US.

2. How much time off (i.e. vacation) do you get?

At my company, I get decent vacation, which comes out to roughly 18 days plus 6 paid holidays. I should note that our sick time rolls into this pool so I have to use a vacation day if I get sick.

3. How do you generally use this time? Travel? More time at home? In large pieces (weeks) or spread out over time (days)?

I usually travel due to spread out family / friends. I usually travel to Florida to visit my brother almost every year, to Oklahoma to visit my mom, and to NYC to visit my long distance girlfriend. I’m going to NYC tomorrow, in fact.

4. How easy do you consider it to be to leave your country and visit another? Is it a big production or is it a “Hey, let’s go to Amsterdam this weekend”?

Around here, it’s a huge production. Almost no one I know just takes a long weekend to leave the US, but it’s possible to head up to Canada or take a trip to parts of Mexico without much issue. It seems that very few travel any further than that with any regularity.

5. How often do you leave your country for any reason?

I have left the US on exactly one occasion ever - just last year (I’m 31 years old). I know tons of people who have never left the US. But for perspective, last year was my heaviest travel year so not including my trip to UK/France, I went to Orlando once (1,894 km), Tulsa, OK once (1,097 km), NYC twice (1,316 km), and San Francisco once (3,389 km). All distances calculated with Google Maps driving directions and translated to kilometers :slight_smile: I also travel somewhat regularly to my hometown to visit my dad, which is roughly 220 km away.

6. How common amongst your friends and families is it to just decide to move to another country?

I think I’ve known one person who moved to Australia once but she has since moved back. Another friend of mine is currently teaching English in Prague. Aside from that, though, I can’t think of anyone I know who has even moved to Canada.

27

Perhaps you should ask how often we travel outside Europe.

Me, not a big traveller, I have been outside Europe just twice. Many, possibly most people I know are better-travelled than that, though. It seems like almost everybody’s been to Australia/NZ and North America, and Mexico, Hong Kong, and African Mediterranean countries such as Tunisia are also common destinations.

28

:confused:
I think you are in dire need of having your ignorance fought if you think Hong Kong and Mexico are on the Mediterranean.

ETA: but then of course you changed this around even before I managed to finish posting this. Never mind.

29

Ah, the perils of comma-delimited lists…:smiley:

30

As I’m unemployed at the moment, I’ll answer like I would’ve if i weren’t.

  1. What country do you live in?

Iceland

  1. How much time off (i.e. vacation) do you get?

2 days per month worked, which adds up to 24 days you get to take out once May arrives (so you collect days from June-May)

  1. How do you generally use this time? Travel? More time at home? In large pieces (weeks) or spread out over time (days)?

I travel as much as I can, but usually don’t take more than a week at a time

  1. How easy do you consider it to be to leave your country and visit another? Is it a big production or is it a “Hey, let’s go to Amsterdam this weekend”?

It’s quite a biggie, as the only way to leave is by plane.

  1. How often do you leave your country for any reason?

A couple of times a year, to meat friends and family.

  1. How common amongst your friends and families is it to just decide to move to another country?

Pretty darn common. All of my aunts and uncles have lived abroad and most of my cousins and friends too. Me, I’m working on moving (back abroad) myself :slight_smile:

31
  1. What country do you live in?

Norway

  1. How much time off (i.e. vacation) do you get?

25 days paid vacation. Since I don’t get paid for overtime I usually have a lot more time to spend.

  1. How do you generally use this time? Travel? More time at home? In large pieces (weeks) or spread out over time (days)?

I use it as long weekends or take some time off a week at a time. Most people use their vacation on the summer hollidays, but for me the summer is fieldworktime.

  1. How easy do you consider it to be to leave your country and visit another? Is it a big production or is it a “Hey, let’s go to Amsterdam this weekend”?

Its only a couple of hours drive across the border to Sweden to shop cheap booze.

  1. How often do you leave your country for any reason?

I’m abroad something like 10-15 times a year.

  1. How common amongst your friends and families is it to just decide to move to another country?

I am an alien myself. I have both family and friend that have moved abroad either for studies or work.

32

Cheap booze in Sweden?! You’re joking.

33

I’m taking a break from a hideous paper, so this is what it was like for me when I was a Euro-Doper.

  1. What country do you live in?

Bulgaria.

  1. How much time off (i.e. vacation) do you get?

I was an elementary school teacher, so I got off all regular school vacations. I was supposed to keep myself occupied with work stuff over the summer, though, so I couldn’t just spend three months at the sea. I can’t recall how much official vacation time I got, but it was more than I could use.

  1. How do you generally use this time? Travel? More time at home? In large pieces (weeks) or spread out over time (days)?

Travel. Of course, I was an expat and wanted to travel as much as I could because I knew I wouldn’t be there forever.

  1. How easy do you consider it to be to leave your country and visit another? Is
    it a big production or is it a “Hey, let’s go to Amsterdam this weekend”?

Extremely easy, but I have a US passport, so I didn’t have to deal with visas or anything. I travelled all over the Balkans, all on the bus. I couldn’t afford to go to wealthy countries, though. There’s an invisible line that cut off us poor countries from the wealthier and once you crossed it, prices shot up. I never went to Greece in the whole two years because one night at a hotel in Thessaloniki would have cost a quarter of my monthly salary. (Not hyperbole, I had to cancel a planned trip to Thessaloniki when I realized this.)

  1. How often do you leave your country for any reason?

I left Bulgaria about twice a year. This is quite unusual, though. Most Bulgarians rarely leave the country, with the exception of the large ethnically Turkish minority. They go to Turkey a lot to visit family. But it’s not too unusual to meet a Bulgarian who’s never left the country. Most travelling is done by bus - my host mom once told me proudly of the one time she flew in a plane, to the other side of Bulgaria. There’s now a single low-fare carrier flying out of Sofia, but it only goes to Rome and London and I don’t know many Bulgarians who would actually be able to afford lodging and whatever in Rome or London. Not to mention, it’s still about 100 euros, which is really expensive by Bulgarian standards anyway. That would have been about half of my monthly salary. I think the only people using it are British folk who’ve bought vacation homes. (This is a pretty big deal. Lots of British people in Bulgaria. No offense to our excellent UK Dopers, but they have a lousy reputation as total jerks in the Balkans.)

  1. How common amongst your friends and families is it to just decide to move to another country?

The way you put it, very uncommon. Bulgaria is part of the EU now (to Brussels’ chagrin, I think), but most other EU nations aren’t allowing proper immigration, as equal citizens. Working as a guest worker doing unpleasant jobs is pretty common, though. Plenty of Bulgarians I know would be happy to get a job working as a maid or construction worker in the West. Popular destinations are Italy, Spain, and Greece. I think everyone in my host village has a family member working in a factory in Milan.

34

Compared to Norway, Sweden is way cheap!

35

I’m an ex-pat living in Europe (originally from Canada - here now 8 years), but no one’s answered for Germany, so:

1. What country do you live in?
Germany (see above ;-))

2. How much time off (i.e. vacation) do you get?

By law 25 days, plus stat holidays. Most (decent) companies give 30 days, but mine, unfortunately, does not.

3. How do you generally use this time? Travel? More time at home? In large pieces (weeks) or spread out over time (days)?

Pretty much 100% travel. Both my wife and my families live on opposite sides of the world, so we spend a lot of time visiting them and our friends there. Also mostly in large chunks. Depends on your company, the current economic climate, your boss’s mood as to how much of a chunk you can have off at one time. Most companies have written rules as to what is allowed. My company has no written rules, so it depends much more on the boss’s mood and the current (or expected) workload.

4. How easy do you consider it to be to leave your country and visit another? Is it a big production or is it a “Hey, let’s go to Amsterdam this weekend”?

Super easy. Flights are ususally fairly cheap (regularly 100€ return), trains are also very convinient, if not always cheap.

5. How often do you leave your country for any reason?

Pretty much whenever we travel.

6. How common amongst your friends and families is it to just decide to move to another country?

Also pretty common. Although the majority of my friends here are also foreigners. Germans not that much. Although many do 1 or 2 year exchanges during highschool.

NB

36

Boy do we ever get fucked for vacation time in North America!

37

UK, but I was born in Norway.

28 working days

Travel, gardening, chilling out, DIY, whatever. Usually take a few large pieces (2 weeks) and some small bits (day or two to make a long weekend)

Depends on the country. Within western Europe it’s trivial. From London it’s easier to visit my SOs family in the Netherlands than my mother in Wales.
Last summer we had a week off booked, and got around to booking the travel/accommodation 3 days before we left. We intended going to either Norway or Austria but the weather was crap so in the end we went to Spain. All very easy.
Kenya - bit more involved because of the vaccinations etc.

At least twice a month usually - less this year probably because of work budget cuts and the pound being rubbish.

My girlfriend is Dutch - we met over here, then she moved back to NL for a year, then moved back again. We plan to emigrate to sweden sometime in the next decade or so. My parents met and got married in Uganda, I was born in Norway, grew up in Devon. Half the people I know are either from outside the UK or have lived abroad for a stint.

38

How does this work, BTW? It’s really confusing from a european perspective. Over here, typically ‘holiday’ means a day off work with full pay. If it’s not paid, then it’s just a non-working day e.g. if you have one of those 7-on 3-off shift patterns or are on flexitime. And sick days are (generally) completely separate and limited not by contract but by law.
So you are allowed 18 days off work without pay, 6 days off work with pay, and if you are sick for a total of 18 days then you get no time off that year? Sounds a bit harsh. I’m allowed to just call up my boss and go “I’m sick, see you tomorrow if I feel better” and that’s that. More than 3 consecutive days sick needs a doctor’s note, and there’s all sorts of red tape that would kick in for long-term sickness or if I pulled a lot of sickies in a year, but generally it’s pretty OK. Not so OK if one gets paid by the hour or piecework, obviously.

39

Nope, that’s 18 paid days off for use whenever I like. The 6 days are holidays in the US vernacular, i.e. Christmas, New Years, 4th of July, etc. But yes, if I’m sick 18 days in a year, then the only days I’ll get off are the sanctioned holidays. I’ve known companies that offer you NO time off except holidays during your first year - talk about a drag.

That’s more or less how it works for me, as well. With a lot of companies, they’ll tell you that you get maybe 10 days paid off and then 5 days of “sick time”. For mine, they just call it YTO (Your Time Off), some call it PTO (Personal Time Off). It’s basically taking the combination of paid days off and sick time and putting them into one bucket. I actually like it that way because I rarely get all that sick so I’d rather have those days to use as vacation time at the end of the year. Luckily, my office is pretty relaxed about that sort of thing and don’t really get too detailed about your days off. My department has an attitude of “Get your work done, make sure everything is taken care of” so if you need a day off here or there, they won’t begrudge you that even if you don’t have one accrued at the time. They’ll work with you on it to come up with some kind of alternative solution like extra hours on a couple of other days or borrowing from next year.

40

That’s the thing that freaks out people from Europe. Here you’re entitled to whatever the law sets out as your sick leave allocations and everything else is unaffected - your company can’t penalise you for getting ill by deducting holiday.

Glancing at our particular company rules, I need to provide a medical certificate if I’m absent for more than 7 continuous days, and if I’m absent for more than 21 days then Occupational Health would get involved (meaning presumably The Management would take notice) but if I was genuinely sick for 18 days during a year I would still get my full 28 days holiday as well.