Unprecedented

The university research project I’ve been working on the last years is sadly coming to an end at the end of this month. Can you imagine my surprise when I went and asked the secretary how many days of vacation I had (expecting three or four) and she says nine! This means tomorrow is my last day of work.

Well, at least officially tomorrow is my last workday. I’ll have to go in regularly for the next few weeks because of previous commitments made to some of my colleagues (e.g. co-writing a paper, working on a final presentation). On the good side, some of this work can be done from home or under the shade of a tree, which is quite wonderful, since my present office’s temperature is above body temperature by noon.

What is unbelievable is the fact that I had nine days vacation that I didn’t know about. This is completely unprecedented in my twenty-five years in Germany. How far the pendulum has swung!

When I first arrived in Germany, we had six weeks of paid vacation, ten days of statuary vacation (bank and religious holidays), one day off a month if you worked overtime beforehand, and the company was closed between Christmas and New Year’s. I thought I had arrived in holiday heaven. Don’t get me wrong, I love to work, but boy, do I love to travel. To make the situation appear even more surreal, at that time, vacation pay was 135% of normal pay because you need something to spend on vacation!

As you can imagine, I spent a lot of brain time devising an algorithm that concentrated on how to distribute the wealth of vacation time in such a manner that would maximize on consecutive blocks for travel opportunities. Unlike what I read in this article (US workers gave back close to 574 million vacation days in 2006), I am not a gal to look a gift horse in the maul!

So, what am I going to do with my nine days? Enjoy them. Unplanned, unexpected, unhurried, I will savour them with pleasure and then sit down to the challenge of finding myself a new job.