You’re an American. You live in a land bordering only two other countries and so, for short term trips, you are mostly restricted to going to other states. That is, if you don’t want to fork up the cash to get yourself to another continent. Whenever other people talk about travel, you imagine yourself going on an epic trip, “doing Europe,” “exploring Asia” or “visiting Africa.” Which is all fine and dandy, until you realize that those are continents and not countries. And that means, there are a lot of places to go within each of those large places. But you can do it! Conquer that continent in a two-week span! It works, I know from experience.

I spend an average two-three days in each country that I visit, which seemed a decent enough idea to me. You hit the big touristy spots, maybe do a day trip somewhere, and eat all the things that begin with that country’s name. (i.e. Belgian waffles, Swiss cheese, French fries) I thought I was majorly killing the traveling game. Because you check so many countries off of your bucket list, and it’s in one fell swoop. I reported back to other Americans all the great things that I have done, and I felt incredibly accomplished and proud of myself. That is until I told a European about my travels thus far. “What?!” “You spent howmany days there?” In short, they were mortified that I attempted to see all of Italy in a week. They were flabbergasted that I thought Portugal could be summed up into three days. They were disappointed in my conclusion that I had begun to “experience Europe”. Now, to be honest, this on some level completely shocked me. I thought I was becoming well traveled, and beginning to understand the world outside of the States.

But then came the moment when I realized they were correct, and that I, like many Americans before (and I’m sure after) had made the number one grave error Americans make while traveling abroad.

We try to stuff WAY too much into a short amount of time.

Let’s use my fall holiday as an example of this. I had nine days of holiday, and so I was fully prepared to make each and everyone one of them count. I made a grandiose plan of going to Geneva, Switzerland, Vienna, Austria, Budapest, Hungary, and Zagreb Croatia. I would stay two nights at each place, and it would be perfect. People told me I was crazy. People told me I would be exhausted. People told me I would get sick. I said,“no, screw you, haters, you’re just jealous” and went about my trip.

Long story short — they were right.

While it was so cool to be able to do all the things that I did, I thought I could do way more in such a short amount of time. I was disappointed that I didn’t get to go to as many cool places in Croatia as I wanted, I took a few moments to get used to each place I went to so I didn’t spend as much time actually exploring. Which is totally fine, and I should be allowed to be a human, but I didn’t expect that when I was planning out my trip for my so-called superhuman self. By the last day, I was exhausted, I was sick, and I was ready to go home and sleep in my own bed.

So that’s why I say that the number one mistake Americans can make while abroad is to try and stuff too much itinerary into too small of a timeframe.

It’s easy to be unsure of how much time to spend in a certain place, but I can tell you from experience that the worst thing you can do is go to Rome and assume you have seen all of Italy, or spend a few days in Barcelona and claim that you’ve “done Spain”.

I know it may seem ideal to tackle as many countries as possible when the flight over to Europe has made a hefty dent in your pocket.

And I get it. Because I’ve now seen both sides of the coin. As an American, I am SO stoked on the idea that I can get to a new country in a few hours. I can’t believe that if I wanted, I could rent a car and drive through several countries in one day, and even more if I had a week. I imagined that if I traveled every weekend to a new place, I could make it to every country in Europe within a semester. And granted, there are positive aspects to visiting a crap ton of countries in a short amount of time. But I also now understand that I was kind of missing the point. I was checking places off of a list instead of immersing myself and understanding a new culture. I was competing for the remiss title of ‘most accomplished traveler’ without such a thing even existing. Worse, I was wearing myself out, and spending more time in transport than I was in the actual country.

Lesson learned, and hopefully, lesson passed on so other people don’t make the same mistakes that I have.