#travel financing

[beingjellybeans]

A traveler's guide to unlocking global adventures with credit cards

Traveling the world is exciting, but it can also come with a lot of financial challenges. From high costs to unexpected expenses, managing your travel budget can be tricky. However, with the right credit card, you can simplify your journey and make the most of your travel experiences. Credit cards offer convenience, security, and rewards that can help you navigate global adventures with…

[nipuni]

Casanova sketches!

[dopeasmilan]

this lifestyle is the goal & i won’t settle until it becomes my reality

[ohsalome]

[anna0826]

Flowers and a beautiful day

[time-to-write-and-suffer]

Ugh everyone dunking on Steven are soooo cringe 🙄

Shane and Ryan are grown men who stood by this decision, so please dunk on them too lmao.

[lastthroes]

found out there's a pnach cheat you can use to mute nova's calls in xillia 2 (she gets REALLY insistent if your current gald is over the quantity of the next payment) and now i'm imagining nova calling him and ludger just stares at the ghs in silence and blocks her number

[iero]

I've decided that next year if My Chem doesn't do any tour dates, but does book a festival (like they did this year), I will concur and I will probably be going.

[gemsofgreece]

https://fortune.com/europe/2024/07/09/mayor-of-athens-overtourism-greece-not-viable-visitor-tourism-economy/

Nothing new but the Greek government should really invest on other aspects except from tourism. Like yes it's profitable but it can't be the only source of income alongside with agriculture.

OH MY GOD yes! Kudos to Haris Dukas for saying this, I suppose it's still a very unpopular and brave opinion among the politicians, who are known to care only for the short-term non-viable benefits.

I have a lot of feelings and thoughts regarding overtourism, given that I started this blog exactly because I am interested in the tourist industry, in touristic promotion in general.

A few days ago I scrolled through an article which was saying that some smaller country in Europe is getting more and more tourists and aspires to reach Greece's numbers by also competing with us over our tourists for a similar tourist product (beaches and sun) and there was this tinge of annoyance I felt because it's a cool country and I have been there but I have an opinion on this, so I was like somewhere between "bitch please" and "why, are we doing something wrong?". I mean, I wish the best for them but the annoyance was about kind of targeting tourists interested in Greece with cheaper offers and also because I am interested in this, the travel promotion of Greece, even as a hobby, so you know it sort of affects me, lol . But as I was scrolling down the article, I saw the other Greek comments and they were like "Good, let them go there and leave us in peace".

This gave me such a pause. It was one of the few times I found the comments shaking me towards their direction instead of making me angry or sad. I paused and thought, shit, they are actually right.

Let's be real, Greece does suffer from overtourism. Not only this but its overtourism is very disproportionately distributed in the country. Greece's travel product is also badly, old-fashionedly promoted (still the sun-and-beaches of the 70s which was only targeting Northern Europeans). All these create those masses of tourists following blindly the horrible itineraries of poorly informed, outdated travel agencies. Half of these people have no idea why they are coming and what they are supposed to be seeing and doing in every place.

I will go back to the notorious example of "Santorini is overrated and Greece has no trees" that you will hear a few of them say. You have people boarding a plane from the other side of the world to visit and stay on a half-submerged volcano crater and they are wondering where the forests are! People really have no idea where they are going and what for. Now this is a type of tourism we resolutely do not need. If you have to explain to someone what Santorini is AFTER they have gone there, everything was entirely lost on them, it was doomed from the beginning.

One of the most maddening videos I have ever watched was an American woman doing a travel video. She followed the AmericanTM tourist plan: she found a resort and just stayed there locked until the day of her return came. She also had just become a mother and she was dragging the baby in a different continent, only to walk it around the resort over and over. For some reason she made a youtube video for this. She didn't say anything negative but obviously if I knew nothing about Greece and I watched this, I would be like "wow what a boring place Greece is, you can't go anywhere, it's just a resort and a small market nearby". Is there really a need to overbuild the country with such massive resorts only to accommodate people who have no idea why they are coming and what they are supposed to do once they come?

Ultimately, tourism must NEVER be the main product of a country's economy. NEVER. It is very unsteady, unreliable business and when it starts doing too good, it means it will very soon ruin the country. The tourism industry must always remain steady, balanced and viable. There should be a predetermined viable percentage of area and investment that should be dedicated to tourism in every region and NEVER surpass those limits. In short, tourism should be only a side business for a country's economy and not the main thing. Even as a side thing it can become destructive. Look at how the Spanish and the Italians have started taking wild measures against tourism. There are literally protests in Barcelona with people asking tourists to leave to their face. We don't have this in Greece yet because for us it is our main industry so we still prioritise the financial need but it will soon happen here as well.

There is urgency to boost the first and especially the dead second sector in Greece. There is just no other solution. There is no light in the end of the tunnel. The first sector should not expand a lot (because its shrinkage the last decades led to the improvement of the once overexploited ecosystems, we do not want to undo this) but we should boost our produce's quality and its prestige in exports. Is there any Greek who hasn't discussed with their family that the local produce often tasted better than the imported one? Literally all of us. Greece can not produce in quantities but it can produce in quality. One example, I don't know if you know it; Greece sells olive oil to Italy and Italy rebrands it as Italian olive oil (which so far is more well known worldwide) and exports it internationally. This is an agreement between the two countries from which Greece gets fast and sure money and Italy covers deficits in the quantities required by its importers. All is well but Greece is once again getting the short end of the stick, because in the long term consumers who buy this olive oil and like it will form an affinity for what they think is the Italian olive oil and not the Greek one. Greece loses from the prestige it could perhaps have gained and it loses the chance to sell Greek olive oil more competitively for what it really is. Like, every choice we do as a state is a shot in our face. I don't know how we do it. It's a talent.

(BTW no bad feels to Italian friends, this is only critical of the Greek exporters' choices, both Greek and Italian olive oil rock but I am sure if the roles were switched and Italian olive oil was sold internationally as Greek, you would too maybe feel a little awkward about it.)

I won't even go to the second sector, I won't even go there. I will just say, whoever had PITSOS electric devices in their house in the early 90s ... is probably still having the very same devices right now as we speak. I know my parents do. PITSOS devices are what we call in Greek "bad dogs". They just don't ever break. At least not in the first 30 years of usage. Fortunately PITSOS re-opened but it will take ages for them to regain all the lost ground and even try to compete now with the foreign brands, even on a local level. And they have been so ruined that I can't tell their new products will be of an equal quality as the old ones. Greece had a lot of industries. It even had good fashion industries. It's crazy that it was much better self-sustained pre-EU. By the way, I am not blaming the EU or the tourists above. No, I am blaming the Greeks for getting worse and worse and worse at managing themselves.

Should I go to the merchant navy? Let's have a laugh. Greece is still miraculously the world leader in merchant navy with Greeks owning the 25% of commercial ships in the world. Of course, a few decades ago it was the 50% but we would certainly do our best to lose that. The problem is that most of the tycoons have left the country and have their bases in the UK and other countries due to a better tax system and they sail under different flags. The funny thing is that I was reading some articles and the president of the Greek tycoons was saying that they come constantly in contact with the Greek state to discuss all this, there is interest on their side to come back, to work things out but it's always to no avail. At this point, even the TYCOONS can't work in Greece!!! XD Top that. By the way, I am not concerned about how the ship owners will get by, trust me, but these businesses are always two-way relations. Imagine all the bases, all the shipyards, all the ship making, all the jobs in ship making and in the commercial navy. Imagine owning 25% of world's ships and NOT being an international leader in shipmaking. Plus, Greeks have historically and traditionally been seafarers, this is a quality of ours we should keep cultivating, even as part of our heritage, even for the heck of it.

We have destroyed all this and have thrown all our efforts to a badly planned, unstructured mass tourism. We are running towards self-destruction head first in every possible way. There are so many foreigners who are totally sold on the stereotype "Greece has no economy, never made anything". It wasn't like that. We had and still have fine produce. This is why Greek food is considered tasty. It's not having super complex, surprising recipes. It's the quality of the produce that makes Greek cuisine famed for being both tasty and healthy. We used to have good or at least very decent industries. I think apart from cars we were pretty self-sustained on most other things. And we used to have balanced, healthy tourism with travellers who knew why they came and they often came back again and again and even stayed for life after pension because they knew why they did it.

So, I am not against tourism, I will never be but it needs to become quality tourism again and a SIDE thing for us as well. When I say quality tourism, I do not mean luxe / expensive tourism because I hate the idea of a place being inaccessible to someone who truly desires to visit it, unless they are a millionaire (let alone that luxe tourism would also stop locals from travelling inland, which already is happening) but tourism needs to become intentional again. Meaning, a tourist should be a traveller, an explorer. They should understand what they come for and take their time to explore the country properly, with respect and genuine well-meaning interest to the best of their ability. By the way, this should apply for every country. And this is honestly the safest way you can have an authentically good experience in a new country.

As for those smaller countries which try to reach Greece's numbers, well, good luck for the five years until your country gets utterly ruined.

[obstinatecondolement]

I was finally able to get plane tickets for my flight on Friday (💀) and have checked myself in and printed my boarding passes, so now I can stop freaking out about whether I'll even make it and start getting excited about sending postcards once I'm there.

[fereldanwench]

BOLD THE FACTS ft Valerie Powell

→ Tagged by the wonderful @corpocyborg--Thank you so much! ♡♡♡ → Answers are based on her status during the in-game events

✧˖°. PERSONAL

$ Financial: wealthy / moderate / poor / in poverty

✚ Medical: fit / moderate / sickly / disabled / disadvantaged / non-applicable / would be in great shape if not for the brain worm

✪ Class or Caste: upper / middle / working / unsure / other

✔ Education: qualified/ unqualified / studying / other

✖ Criminal Record: yes, for major crimes / yes, for minor crimes / no / has committed crimes, but not caught yet / commits more crimes (bribes law enforcement) to avoid charges / yes, but charges were dismissed

✧˖°. FAMILY

◒ Children: had a child or children / has no children / wants children

◑ Relationship with Family: close with sibling(s) / not close with sibling(s) / has no siblings / sibling(s) is deceased

◔ Affiliation: orphaned / abandoned / adopted / disowned / raised by birth parent(s) / not applicable  

✧˖°. TRAITS + TENDENCIES

♦ extroverted / introverted / in-between

♦ disorganized / organized / in-between

♦ close-minded / open-minded / in-between

♦ calm / anxious / in-between / highly contextual

♦ disagreeable / agreeable / in-between

♦ cautious / reckless / in-between / highly contextual

♦ patient / impatient / in-between

♦ outspoken / reserved / in-between / highly contextual

♦ leader / follower / in-between

♦ empathetic / vicious bastard / in-between

♦ optimistic / pessimistic / in-between

♦ traditional / modern / in-between

♦ hard-working / lazy / in-between

♦ cultured / uncultured / in-between / unknown

♦ loyal / disloyal / unknown

♦ faithful / unfaithful / unknown

✧˖°. BELIEFS

★ Faith: monotheist / polytheist / atheist / agnostic

☆ Belief in Ghosts or Spirits: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care / in a manner of speaking

��� Belief in an Afterlife: yes / no / don’t know/ don’t care / in a manner of speaking

✯ Belief in Reincarnation: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care / in a manner of speaking

❃ Belief in Aliens: yes / no / don’t know / don’t care

✧ Religious: orthodox / liberal / in between / not religious

❀ Philosophical: yes / no / highly contextual

✧˖°. SEXUALITY & ROMANTIC INCLINATION

❤ Sexuality: heterosexual / homosexual / bisexual / asexual / pansexual

❥ Sex: sex-repulsed / sex neutral / sex favorable / naive and clueless

♥ Romance: romance repulsed / romance neutral / romance favorable / naive and clueless / romance suspicious

❣ Sexually: adventurous / experienced / naive / inexperienced / curious

⚧ Potential Sexual Partners: male / female / agender / other / none / all

⚧ Potential Romantic Partners: male / female / agender / other / none / all

✧˖°. ABILITIES

☠ Combat Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor/ none

≡ Literacy Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✍ Artistic Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✂ Technical Skills: excellent / good / moderate / poor / none

✧˖°. HABITS

☕ Drinking Alcohol: never / special occasions / sometimes / frequently / alcoholic / former borderline alcoholic turned sober

☁ Smoking: tried it / trying to quit / quit / never / rarely / sometimes / frequently / chain-smoker

✿ Recreational Drugs: tried some / never / special occasions / sometimes / frequently / addict

✌ Medicinal Drugs: never / no longer needs medication / some medication needed / frequently / to excess

☻ Unhealthy Food: never / special occasions / sometimes / frequently / binge eater

$ Splurge Spending: never / sometimes / frequently / shopaholic

♣ Gambling: never / rarely / sometimes / frequently / compulsive gamble

Tagging: @medtech-mara, @vayneoc, @themermaidriot, @itzsassha, @elfjpeg, @morganlefaye79, and @vox-monstera ♡

dividers by @saradika | masterlist here (awesome resource--thank you so much! ♡)

[yz]

Cash register. The Courier Cafe. Urbana, IL. August 2024.

Fujifilm X-T50 and XF 18-55mm f/2.8-4.

[dykephan]

sorry for this selfish rant but the reason i didn't want it to be a tour is because i won't be able to realistically go to one. so i'll just have to watch from the sidelines while they're going to be busy with the tour, probably not posting as much regular content and potentially burning themselves out again especially so soon after wad which means even less content. i would rather just have regular videos tbh 😭 excited for the insta stories though...

[drinkingbitterboy]

hello i just wanna say all the folks i've found in this little community are fantastic and fun and i'm happy i'm here :) still on my break though because it's a real rough time of it, but just wanna say i'll be back soon :)

also thank you for the feedback on the thing i drew! getting back into drawing after a decade off has been...rough... but the nice comments and especially encouragement from @blacktrickle have been so helpful. love y'all

[anna0826]

Vienna night scene

[mary-mmw]

Meet abdulrahman” abdo” he is my little baby brother , he born during the war on gaza, abdo has an operation in his lungs,and now needs care and eat healthy to stay alive, he must eat vegetables and fruits like other normal kids, but here in gaza there is nothing enough to feed ourselves, if you find something it gonna cost you alot because everything is so expensive!💔💔

A little makes a difference

Here is my campaign QR to take you easily please donate so we could survive 🙏🏻❤️