Italy | The perfect vacation

Much delayed disaster tourism: Pompeii Photo: picture-alliance/Barone Now that everyone is back from vacation, I would like to talk about vacation. I was in Naples for ten days, bathed with a view of Mount Vesuvius, ate one wonderfully fluffy pizza after another, discovered Pompeii, had the best time! Barely two days back and I was already stressed at work again. Why does recovery often last so short? Or did I recover “wrongly”?

The so-called “DRAMMA” model for recovery says the following: A combination of distance from work (detachment), rest (recovery), autonomy, experience of success (mastery), meaning (meaning) and connection with family and friends (affiliation) should create the perfect conditions for a relaxed mind and body. I actually had everything, although having to fight through Pompeii in 40 degrees shortly before heat stroke, point number two had to suffer a bit.

At this point, Leni Karrer dedicates herself to paid care work and writes every two weeks about phenomenal things from pop culture, the digital world and feminism.

However, several studies have found that it is not the vacation itself, but the anticipation of it that has the greatest recovery effect. If we expect something beautiful, the prefrontal cortex in the brain becomes active and releases a lot of dopamine. Neurologically, it works like this: The brain can use anticipation to anticipate a future reward, so that the dopamine system remains activated until the reward actually occurs. So if you start looking forward to your vacation in August from January onwards, you can benefit from this effect for a very long time. 

I can confirm this because months before the vacation I googled the best restaurants in the area, took a virtual walk through beautiful parks and bought plenty of sunscreen. The anticipation felt like the tingling feeling of fresh in love and literally carried me through everyday life.

The idea and the actual experience of a moment can definitely differ - but that doesn't make the anticipation worthless in retrospect. Maybe that's why planning a vacation can sometimes be just as nice as the vacation itself - and yet when we return we still end up back in the daily grind surprisingly quickly.

According to research, it appears to make little difference to long-term recovery whether we travel for two or three weeks at a time. The highest level of relaxation was achieved on average after the eighth day, but many small vacations have a more long-term effect than just one long trip a year. So does this mean we all need to take more vacations?

That would of course be great, but vacations cost time and money - and few people have both to the same extent. Many people lack the money or the care options for children or relatives - others are self-employed and cannot completely withdraw from work. Recovery is also a social question.

Maybe we should not only learn to recover better, but rather ask why we need so much rest in the first place.

However, according to studies, anticipation can also be specifically integrated into everyday life. It goes something like this: plan beautiful events well in advance and actually put them on the calendar. Try something new - a hobby, for example, or cook a dish with ingredients you don't yet know. I think I'll start small and make a Neapolitan pizza fritta soon. I'm already looking forward to that.

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