When I was 18 I’d never left England or been on a plane. But I had a hunger to see the world. My so called gap year (before the phrase had been turned) became a gap 3 years. 100 countries later and having lived in 10 of them I still have that hunger (or is it a thirst?).
This autumn I’ll wave off number one son to uni … like all of his pals he is going straight from school and has no desire whatsoever to do any travelling first.
Is this a trend? When I was a teen my idols were Attenborough and Wicker and my inspiration was dusty old history books about Egypt and India.
Has the internet killed off the desire to see the world? I didn’t really know what was out there but now the internet tells you it all.
Have kids lost their sense of adventure? I once stood outside my mums house in Surrey with a board saying Morocco … and ten days later I was there.
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My daughter has twice done, what was called Inter Railing. She’s nearly 21 now and the first time, she went with a friend, having booked the tickets and planned the route. They had a couple of hiccups along the way but it was the making of her. The next year, she did it again with a few more friends and took charge when they got stranded by weather in Amsterdam. They’ve been to Greece, Spain, Italy, France, Holland, Germany, Belgium and a couple of the Balkan countries. We tracked her progress with an app on her phone and it was fun to watch her icon speeding along when she was on a high speed train. I’m a bit jealous if I’m honest.
I would have loved to have that sort of communication back in the day … my dad esp was so fascinated by my travels
I think the way the world has changed has fundamentally affected the way kids think. The world is a much more serious place for them now.
It used to be that employment was still pretty plentiful so you didn’t need to worry about it much. Employers were a lot less corporate and less hung up on academic qualifications. You could get good jobs then without a lot of qualifications, if you were smart and had the right attitude. These days there are less good jobs on offer and you won’t get a look in for a lot of roles without a decent degree on your CV. Kids get this drummed into them and they take life in general and their studies a lot more seriously.
Besides, who can afford to support themselves just travelling around for a year these days? It used to be that you could get bits of casual work abroad. I don’t suppose that’s so likely nowadays.
The desire to own property to demonstrate your status is a thing that society has become obsessed with, while at the same time the young can only see that likelihood receding into the distance, as the property market gets nuttier and nuttier.
Unless your parents are particularly well-heeled your Uni years are going to leave you with a huge financial millstone around your neck. I don’t suppose that makes your college years very carefree these days. Perhaps kids just want to get all that stuff over with quickly and get stuck into the nitty-gritty.
That’s true the job situation was so different in the 80s even under thatcher
I’m not making excuses for it, as I think the whole system stinks, but Student Loan payback isn’t that bad for many. The threshold is well above most graduate starting salaries, the payback rate is 9% above the threshold, and it all gets written off after 30 years.
Someone on £30k will pay back £5 a week. That’s what I paid each month 30+ years ago, and I didn’t notice when it stopped being taken out of my salary.
Kids today seem much more intelligent than our/my generation were at their age. Most of my Offsprings’ friends are pretty much teetotal, and those who are not are less intent on getting wrecked.
I went with the Elder to the Reading Festival for a day in 2019, and they were all so well behaved – almost nobody was off their tits, and nobody was lobbing bottles of piss.
Perhaps they’ll all hit their 40s and have midlife crises.
I hear more and more about tee total youngsters … as an alcoholic who hasn’t had a drink for ten years I rather like that.
We brought Offspring the Elder and all her clobber back from Lincoln on Saturday. The bottle of cognac she took up three years ago is still almost full.
She carried on with her dancing twice a week, but didn’t join many clubs or go to many gigs.
I joined the SU tech crew on day one, and spent many a Tuesday night Band Night de-regging until 3am, followed by double expresso and double Physics at 9am Wednesday morning. Whole terms went by in a drunken haze, and I was regularly ill.
Mind you, it might explain why I got a 2:2 and she got a 2:1.
The boy is back for the summer between degrees and with the nice weather had his mates over for a BBQ (separate bbqs for muslims, hindus and vegetarians – welcome to Bradford)
Asked if they were too loud, tidied up as they were going and stacked the dishwasher at the end of the evening. And listened to Rod fucking Stewart….
What is wrong with the youth of today, etc.
Arf.
Word back via Mrs F from fellow villager who had flat tyre on her wheelchair at the CoOp. Offspring the Younger popped home to borrow my puncture repair kit and pump, then went back to effect a repair. I didn’t even know he’d done it.
He’s almost 19, shouldn’t he be hanging around the war memorial, drinking cider and smoking fags?
To be fair Starship or Bonnie Tyler weren’t on stage…
I wish I had enjoyed that sense of adventure, but I’ve always been very self-contained. I was thinking about gap year travel when I saw that the son of a cousin of mine (is that second cousin or cousin once removed?) is spending the summer InterRailing. I hadn’t even realised that was still a thing.
My other half’s daughter spent her first uni holiday on a sponsored trip to build a playground in Uganda and seemed very blasé about the travel element. ‘How will you meet up with the group?’ ‘Oh, they said to look out for them at the airport at the other end.’ It was all fine and her greatest mishap was having her trousers confiscated in Kampala because camouflage clothing is banned in Uganda.
No I didn’t know inter railing was still a thing (I think it’s now available to all not just kids) I thought about it when I was young but my sights were set a bit further afield. Inter railing is a good thing in these climate conscious times.
I only realised Inter-Rail was still a thing when, post-Brexit, the GB/UK rail announced they would drop out of it. There was an outcry, especially from UK-based hostel owners who stood to lose out on European visitors. The plan was quickly dropped and GB/UK remain a part.
I had a lovely time back in ’90/91. I was set up to go with a pal who dropped out at the last minute, so I went on my own. It was ace.
I took a year off after graduating and 2 years at work, which was a good plan on reflection. Bus to Athens, worked in Crete picking grapes and potatoes, 4 months in Israel, toured Egypt then hopped cheap flight to Italy and train hopped all the way to southern Morocco with a short stay in Marseilles.
Lots of great experiences I’ll never forget, and one or two I would very much like to. We had plans to go further into Africa from Egypt but various wars and areas of high stress meant this wasn’t really a goer, and when we got back after 10 months I was ready to get on with life.
Twang Jr is obsessed with the Scandi countries via his love of black metal and plans to tour there and live in Norway after uni. He has a mate who is Icelandic and has learnt some of the lingo and said his trip to Iceland was the best he’s had (over, say, France, China, Poland, Germany etc etc).
Were you on a kibbutz? My first foreign trip was to Israel for a year on kibbutz Gesher Haziv (right up in the north west corner)
Yes, to start with. Kfar Hahoresh, near Nazareth.
I had a summer job before I went to university, then more or less a full grant for 3 years which covered everything, plus unemployment benefit in the summer holidays. I was able to save enough to Inter rail around Europe for a month when I graduated, with a job in London waiting for me on return. People of my generation were lucky.
Same here.
Summer employment before University, a 4 year sandwich degree with paid work during the course and a job guaranteed at the end of the degree from my last work placement.
Different times!