Come to think of it, I haven't travelled all that much...
Being European makes it sometimes more easy to travel to nearby countries with different cultural and political backgrounds, with lots of interesting sites containing modern and ancient architecture.
The country I've been too most often is surprisingly enough... Switzerland. I was still very young then and went there with youth organizations and school. Nevertheless, I do remember a lot of
those visits. A wonderful country with its snow-capped mountaintops, fresh air, green pastures and accompanying sounds of cowbells. But you should realize it's pretty barren to be living there, and
also... there's not much to do in those parts.
I've been to Tirol as well, which is pretty much the same, altough I have to admit the people there are generally more friendly than in
Switzerland. If you love long walks through forests or over mountain trails, go skiing or even 'langlauf', then these countries are really where it's at.
It's funny but I haven't been that many times in France. I should though .... it's really a beautyful country with enormous richness. We once crossed it from North to South on an academic outing , which enabled us to visit towns such as Paris, Avignon, La Gaude, Nice and Cannes.
My biggest and most personal vacation was a three-week adventurous trip through Turkey. This was an important phase in my life and I'll cherish it for ever. I decided against taking the easy touristic trips and preferred going on an exploration of Eastern Turkey. I am not a solo traveller really, so I had to look for an interesting way of travel. It became a travel in group with eleven persons who had never encountered one another and one travel guide. We traveled from Istanbul directly to Erzurum and from there on to Kars, Dogubeyazit, Van ( which is close to lake Van), the barren Hakkari, Tatvan with his ancient burial site, Dyarbakir, (Sanli)Urfa, Malatya and back to Istanbul, where we stayed for several days and visited the mosks,labyrinthine bazaars and of course the Topkapi museum. Next to the hospitality of the people and the visits to ancient temples and castles from Persian and Roman times, it was also interesting to learn more about the typical Kurdish music, which is very rythmic and intoxicating and made us dance the whole trip through.
I do have to admit that, although rural regions and barren landscapes are wonderful to visit, I love dwelling for hours or even days in capitals like Berlin, Brussels, London, Amsterdam, Prague, Istanbul and especially ..... Paris!
My recent big voyage has been to Asia, more precisely to Thailand and Cambodja. It took us a while to finally decide to go there, but we're very happy we did venture there. Thailand and Cambodja are mainly Buddhist countries, and the people are very friendly. Of course they're friendly, we're tourists to them! So they try to sell us whatever they think we need. But seriously, The countries are very different and have their distinctive points of interests. The one thing in common to both is that you visits lots and lots of Temples. In Thailand the are from ancient to Brand New, in Cambodja the most important thing to visit is the Angkor Site. In comparison, 22 days of visiting Thailand ammounted to 380 pictures taken and just two days and a half in Cambodja ammounted to 300 pictures!! In a Nutshell, we stayed a couple of days in Bangkok, moved to the North, namely Mae Hong Son, Chiang Mai and then to Chiang Rai. This was the most pleasant part of our trip: beautiful, lots of different cultures, wonderful weather (even in November!). And we finally ended in the Abbyss: Phuket Island. The tourist trade over there has gradually evoled along the sleeze line. Phuket, well known for er...watersports! After those two days in the South we took a plane back to Bangkok and then on to Siem Reap in Cambodja, in order to get our 3 day visit to the Angkor Temples. This was really quite something. We visited Angkor Thom, Angkor Wat, Bantey Kdei, Bantey Srei, and of course the now well known "Tombraider" temple: Tha Prom. The final day we visited the Vietnamese boatcamps and it was back home.