15 months

Yes, it’s been a while. 15 months since I have been on an airplane. Even though I know that flying is not good for the environment the system makes it pretty hard not to fly. I paid 36€ to fly from Vienna to Lisbon and found a return flight for 15€. 15€. For anyone who’s on a budget, how are we supposed to not fly? If I’d drive imagine how often I’d have to put in fuel. One load of fuel is more than 30€ and I’m not sure if that is really better for the environment. The fuel I’d need is also bad and a train ticket is pretty much unaffordable. I know the best way would be to stay at home. But what travelling gives me is something money can’t buy. The way you can develop yourself with everything that you see and learn is priceless. I mean is it selfish? Selfish to think that travelling is more important to me than our planet? Yes, it most definitely is. So I guess I am a selfish person.

But the thing is once you’ve done your first trip alone you cannot stop. It’s like a drug. An addiction. I know I managed to not travel for 15 months so how can I be addicted? Well, I know this might come off a bit crazy but think about serial killers. There are actually a lot of documented cases where the killer was able to not kill for more than five years. But murderers are different. They look for the adrenalin shot they had when they first killed someone. With travelling I have the feeling of excitement with every single trip. I’d even say that with every trip you make you get more experience so actually every trip is more and more exciting.

You meet all this amazing people who help you to educate yourself and you make friends all over the world. True friends who have deep conversations with you. Especially for me as someone who was raised in a culture that is not very open minded those experiences are incredible. And even though I’m trying – words cannot describe the feeling.

Back to our planet. Obviously I’m doing other stuff to do my duty like sorting my trash and trying to avoid to throw away groceries. The big grocery chains make that part really hard if you are single because they only sell huge amount of packages. But luckily there are more and more local farmers who sell their vegetables single. So I put extra afford in grocery shopping. And I try to use stuff for a long time. For example I wash my face masks instead buying new ones (YES, you can wash each and every face mask also the blue ones!). And I try to only buy the clothes that I need.

Could I do more? Yes, I most definitely could. But like I said I am just too selfish. I know it’s an easy thing to say that if each and every person would do something small, it would be enough and also I personally think that only the big companies and politics could really change something. Another thought of mine is that in the past literally nobody was interested in the climate and the past generations were flying how often they wanted to. So am I supposed to stop flying because I was born into this generation?

I don’t think so. My name is Karoline and I am a selfish person who loves to travel.