Holidays

I love European holidays. Each country has so many of them, and unlike American holidays, a holiday in Europe means week-long vacations.

For example, Bulgaria has several week-long holidays. These are times when everyone--and I mean everyone--takes off work for a week at a time. These are national holidays. 4th of July = 3 day weekend? How about an independence celebration that lasts 7-8 days?

The hard part is knowing that my work waits for no holiday. If I'm under contract with a deadline, I work no matter what. It makes it difficult when everyone else around me is celebrating, but I console myself with the fact that I take time off on days that are typically working days for everyone else. Often times I will take a whole week off "just because", or if I feel like working more on a creative project rather than a paying project. So I suppose it's a switch-off.

Today is a holiday here, in ties with Easter. We are about to head over to Dessy's house for some grilling and lunch, then I'll come back and do some writing this afternoon. I've got another idea for a blog post but it'll have to wait till later. It's along the lines of something I talked about with Evy last night while going to bed, and how people in Europe tend to only work 4-5 hours a day vs. Americans working 8+ hours a day, and the reason behind it being how many people over here have property/homes that have been in the family for generations, thus reducing their need to work 8 hour days because they don't have property/mortgage payments.

Basically, most Americans have a cost of living that is around 3-4k for the average couple. The average European's cost of living is half of that, and in some cases, even less. The reasons why? More on that later.