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girlfriend, graph, holidays, picture, travel, reblog, submission,
(Via ilovecharts, and The Economist)
It’s sometimes so easy to forget just how easy it is being British, particularly when it comes to foreign travel. When I book a holiday, I don’t even begin to think about whether I’ll need a visa or not. I just assume that being British grants me entry without one.
It also serves to highlight why the girlfriend so loves going on holiday. When she first moved to Britain nearly a decade ago, she was a Zimbabwean citizen, with a Zimbabwean passport. This meant having to get visas to go anywhere, which added to the cost of a holiday, and then her passport ran out. To get a new one, she’d have to go back to Zimbabwe, I think, which was almost out of the question because she wrote for a newspaper that was critical of Mugabe, and was/is on a watchlist.
After being here for a few years, she was able to apply for British citizenship, and get a British passport. In fact, the week after I met her she took her first foreign trip in many years, and hasn’t looked back since.
Being a British citizen since birth, I didn’t really appreciate what it was like to be trapped within one country and essentially being unable to travel. I think I’ve been out of the country at least once every single year for as long as I can remember, and since I left university those trips are becoming more and more frequent, especially since I met the girlfriend.
I love to travel, to see new places and experience different things. It’s a bonus that it doesn’t cost me anything to enter the vast majority of countries in the world (166 out of 190ish, according to the above report), which means I have more options than most.
Reblogged from: ilovecharts
Originally posted on: I Love Charts
