Who am I?

Introduction: Who am I and why do I like to travel so much.

Hello, I’m Ida.

I’m a girl in my mid-twenties with a huge passion about travel and exploring new places and cultures. I am currently based in my hometown Vaasa, Finland and my first language is actually Swedish. Hence my name is pronounced the Swedish way, so the I in Ida is pronounced like the English E. I do work full time in business administration and travel whenever I am able to.

I’ve loved to travel as long as I can remember. As a child my family and I travelled a bit abroad, but mostly our summers were spent on the Finnish countryside or sailing. We could be living on our boat for a month visiting different islands in Finland and Sweden, and even if I did not like the sailing itself (I get extremely sea sick) I loved exploring all these new places.

As 17 I got to fulfil a long-time dream of mine: going on a language trip. I was extremely introverted and suffered from major social anxiety but I faced my fears and went to Brighton for three weeks all by myself. This was my first solo travel experience (even if I did go in a group) and the first time I spent time in an international environment. And I loved it. I made great friends and just felt that trip changed me as a person.

In my late teens and my early twenties, I mostly went on girls trips with friends. I still went to one destination at a time, brought an extra check-in bag and stayed in hotels. I guess I hadn’t found my current travel style just yet. I also was dependent of everybody else. For some reason I just did what my friends did, and it was like our travels was a mutual decision? I definitely wasn’t at a stage where I could say “hey, I want to go to this place, let’s go!”. Thinking back, I’ve missed so many opportunities to do what I wanted to do because I was too afraid to actually do what I wanted to do.

Autumn semester of 2015 I fulfilled another dream of mine – I went on an exchange semester. I chose Amsterdam and had a great time. Again I was able to be in an international environment and from the Netherlands it was so easy to travel to so many places! I went to an organized trip to Prague by bus and for the first time of my life I stayed in a hostel. To be honest that first hostel experience wasn’t the best one ever, but it did still show me that staying in hostels wasn’t too bad. I still made great friends on that Prague trip and I still keep contact with some of them.

I would say I had developed a lot when I came back from Amsterdam. I decided to get involved with exchange students coming in to my university, which gave me a lot of international friends and I had the best time. At the same time I started travelling more and more, both with friends but also completely solo. My first solo backpacking trip was in march of 2017 to Budapest, Bratislava and Prague and this trip, again, changed a lot. I had the best experiences and I guess I got addicted. I was finally in a place where I didn’t have to rely on anyone else. If I wanted to go, I could just go. I didn’t have to wait for anyone else’s schedules to work with mine. This was ultimate freedom for me.

The last few years I’ve travelled mostly solo in combination of meeting my international friends in different places of Europe. I would say my travel style would be budget but still comfortable. I don’t go crazy budget with the cheapest options of everything. Sure, I do stay in hostels but I try to search for the hostel that gives the most value for my money. I do have a master’s degree in business and economics so maybe that is a part of why haha. I also haven checked in a bag since my exchange to Amsterdam. Partly cause a lot of airlines have started to take an extra fee for a checked bag since, but also because it is just so much easier to travel carry on only.

Since I am a full time worker I am not a full time traveller, so this is not a full time travel kind of blog. This blog is about those shorter getaways that you can do even if you have limited time and money. Since I live in Europe this blog will mostly focus on different European destinations. I will cover bot previous experiences as well as my upcoming adventures (Obviously).

This blog is about my way of travel: The Ida Way. I hope you like it.