After kicking off the summer with a trip to Italy, I didnt really have any further travel plans and thus I wasnt expecting to be writing again so soon - but here we are! Life has a habit of keeping you on your toes.
The pandemic has changed the world of work forever by forcing millions of office workers to work remotely and for across the globe, this forced experiment proved to be a huge success, as employers realised that productivity could be maintained or even improved, and employees realised that they really didnt need to be in the office every day anymore - that work could now be much more flexible and convenient than ever before.
I am fortunate enough to be working for that has not just embraced remote working, but have taken things even further by introducing a week for all employees. The very generous remote working policy means that is obligated into the office anymore; meaning that if you want, you can work remotely 100%!o(MISSING)f the time. Your physical location now scarcely matters.
I do enjoy living in Berlin so am happy to stay here for the foreseeable future; and I do actually enjoy going into the office a couple of times a week to see colleagues (even if hardly anyone shows up there anymore). But one possibility that I can now take advantage of is the ability to work temporarily from somewhere else; with weekends giving me ample time to explore a particular destination, I no longer necessarily have to take days off to visit a place anymore - I can simply just work from there, for as long as I want. You could call this a working holiday.
has always been pretty progressive and were planning to introduce remote working and a week anyway, but the pandemic merely accelerated the process. In my opinion, this is future of work and there aint no stopping it.
I would love to have been able to do working holidays and digital nomad stints when I was younger, but I might as well make the most of it now. Scott, Vinny and I were originally thinking about working for a week in a villa in Mallorca, but it would
A falla in the main square of Sant Vicent del Raspeig. These monuments get burned down at the end of the fallas festival.
have been way too expensive. So when Scott - who now lives in Spain - instead invited me to stay with him for a week in sunny Alicante, I jumped at the chance to have a holiday without using up any leave. Britta was going to be on holiday with a friend for a couple of weeks at the same time, so I thought that I might as well.
This isnt the first time I have written about a work trip in this blog, but this is certainly the first time I have written about one quite like this.
I have also written about Valencia before, which is where I was flying into, with this visit being in fact, my third to the city.
With so many airports across Europe short of staff after the pandemic, I was a little worried about delays at the airport or even my flight getting cancelled. But other than a long wait at security, it was relatively painless at Berlin Brandenburg Airport.
I had to change planes in Zurich, which I had also done before; I remember the last time I did this, my friends and I had to sprint between gates. This
time, it was much more relaxed, as I literally got off one plane and walked straight onto another. You could say it worked like Swiss clockwork.
Although I didnt have to pay for my down in Alicante, I still had to pay for a couple of nights in Valencia, as well as for the flights, both of which were relatively expensive. Even a dorm bed in a hostel costs around 50€ a night at the moment, not helped by midsummer prices and a general hike in inflation thanks to Putins war in Ukraine.
