That moment when your plane touches down in your destination country is priceless. Traveling can be the best way for you to boost your personal and professional development. Everyone here is willing to catch a plane, train, or bus and go on an adventure somewhere around the world. With this short article, we would like to tell you why you should grab every opportunity on your way and how to experience the best of it!

Exploring the world can open your mind and give you life-changing opportunities. It doesn’t matter if you’re going on an Erasmus+ training course, Youth Exchange, Conference, EVS, or a seminar. Everything is an opportunity for you to travel, learn more, meet other cultures, realize your biases, and grow to be a better person.

Should you be traveling more often?

It is believed that traveling has long-term benefits for your personal and professional development. Exploring places, cultures, and people’s habits can affect positively your cultural, social, and political awareness, communication skills, empathy, and decision-making. When you are traveling you need to make decisions independently and sometimes really fast. In that way, you’re practicing and improving your decision-making skills, which together with other skills can be useful for your future career.

With traveling you meet new people and interact with them. Interaction with people from different parts of the world will boost your communication skills. Visiting new destinations and gaining knowledge from people with different backgrounds is essential for your personal and professional growth. If you’re a closed person, traveling can help you to become a “people” person. As a result of your travel experience, you can learn new languages, cultures, and norms, but most important is that you can meet people who can become your close friends.

Traveling for fun or traveling to go to an Erasmus+ event will increase resiliency. By attending sessions and training you will face challenges and new ideas. You will be able to try new things and experience new cultures by trying their food, beverages, traditional dance, and more.

Also, you can present your habits, language, and music, to show to your new friends the beauty of your country and culture.

What about the environmental impact?

Nowadays, traveling is accessible more easily than it has ever been before. The cheap European airlines offer flights to many European cities, promoting short weekend trips. Flying became as common as any other mode of transportation.

However, with the issue of climate change’s effects increasing on our planet, one should consider the effects of the aviation industry on the climate. According to the research, it is 2,5% of all global emissions. To fulfill the picture, according to the CarbonBrief article, other non-CO2 factors such as water vapor, aerosols, and nitrogen oxides are impacting the environment, too. On top of that, the gases from planes form cirrus clouds that have a warming effect on the atmosphere.

It is not to say, we should not travel. However, choose a more sustainable approach to our travels, their purpose, and the mode of transport.

TO SUM UP

It is amazing how much you can learn and grow by exploring new cultures. Start with small steps and look for your surrounding areas in your country. Plan some short trips and events. Give it a try and we promise you that soon you will become addicted to new places and events.

If you are lost and do not know where to go next, check out our latest Erasmus+ events on our web page and start planning your next travel experience!

By Aleksandra Krstevska – Creative and Human Resource Director

Edited by Wiktoria Wilk