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Comment by ideamotor | Hacker News Reader

Assuming the trip to Greece was a joke was pretty good, as was the comment about hearing other people’s hobbies and just thinking about the expense. There are definitely cultural signifiers from wealth. Discussing housing endlessly is the biggest one.

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Taking a 3 day vacation overseas definitely is a joke. You'll spend as much time sitting in a plane or waiting at the airport as you'll spend at your destination, how's that supposed to be relaxing?

Maybe from the US (unless you go to Cuba or the Caribbean). In Europe it makes total sense, even from far away Scandinavia. You can easily be in South of France before noon.

Yes, the difficulty of traveling "overseas" is closely correlated with the size of the seas over which one must travel.

If you fly business/first class. I know people who went to Macau for a weekend or Paris and that is how.

Business and/or First class do not make up for the jetlag.

I had this near mythical idea of flying business class, but when I finally joined a company that actually had me fly in it, I was sorely dissapointed.

I mean, it’s definitely better than flying economy, but you’re still stuck in a pressurized tube for 10+ hours.

> Business and/or First class do not make up for the jetlag.

Jetlag isn't as much of a problem if you're going for the nightlife.

I don't know whether Greece is that sort of destination, but know of people who jaunted off to Ibiza, for example (from the East Coast, anyway).

First/business class is not miserable, but it’s also not relaxing. For a three day trip, spending a whole day of it in airports or on a plane is not at all relaxing, no matter what class you’re flying. Personally, I draw the line at a week for non-business travel to Europe, and two weeks for Asia.

> Personally, I draw the line at a week for non-business travel to Europe, and two weeks for Asia.

Sounds about right, especially when you factor in jetlag.

Since Concorde service was discontinued, business or first class passengers are not going to spend less time on board of the airplane than economy passengers.

12+ hours for each way quickly dampens the enthusiasm for the weekend.

I just looked it up and flights from SF to athens and back are almost 35 hours. Add in a few hours at each airport, an hour to/from the airport on each side and you're talking 40-45 hours of door to door round trip transit. That's insane.

I'm sure it's a much better experience if you fly first class.

The part that's the worst isn't being on the plane. It's going to and being at the airport. First class doesn't fix the god awful experience that is flying.

There are plenty of ways to make the airport part more pleasant with more money. Priority check-in desks and security mean you don't need to get to the airport as early just in case, it will be consistently fast. Priority boarding removes the need to queue. Leaving first probably means shorter queues at immigration. Lounges are much more pleasant to wait at than the general access areas. Does first class baggage also get offloaded first?

If you are in first class, I assure you that's going to and being at the airport will be much relaxing.

Average workers at tech startups don't fly first class...

Plenty of people fly to New York or Vegas for a long weekend from Europe

Bullshit. I know my share of wealthy people and nobody does that. Especially when you have plenty of vacation days to use anyway.

Las Vegas is 14-15h away from most European hubs. NYC is 8h. Even the best case scenario (first class and the airline staff walks you through immigration) means 10h door-to-door.

Bachelor parties or Boys weekends in Las Vegas is quite common for Londoners in some circles. Leave Friday and come back to work on Monday morning. It's not much different from a weekend Crete or Canary Islands or Weekend away in the Caribbean

That's certainly not the behavior of plenty of people.

If you have this kind of disposable income, why not take a few days off?

Colleagues at work in the City didn't at least once or twice a month. Well not to Vegas/NYC (probably 2-3 a year) but Crete, Berlin, Ibiza for partying/clubbing many times etc. I can see it happening more now that companies are more open to remote work. You could work remotely from the place on Thursday/Friday and then party and come back on Monday morning

I have done it in the past went to Switzerland or Hong Kong for the weekend to buy things as it was cheaper to fly there then to buy the same product on the grey market in London (saved $3-5k).

It's just as stupid going the other direction IMO.

Plus nobody would 'recommend a hotel'. An island, maybe

Why would you not? I would definitely disrecommend hotels.

You said that because you’re poor too. Rich people travel right into resorts, not specific places, because resorts sell you the dream directly.

I definitely saw the videos of those dreamy Greek hotels with in-room balcony pools and if I were rich I would know their names too. I’m sure that if you contact them you’ll just have to drive to SFO and the rest will be taken care of by them.

> because you’re poor too.

Well you say that because you haven't visited greece ;). It's not the "spa" type of tourism, and those kind of luxuries are usually sought after by spoiled arabian princes. The aspirational SV person would choose one of the many hotels, book trips and food tours around the islands, or hit the beaches and the nightlife. In fact all-inclusive hotels are geared towards pensioners and budget-level UK teenagers.

But it's certainly not possible to do those in 3 days with jetlag.

Not all rich people want to go to cookie cutter resorts, seems more like an upper middle class thing. Maybe it's different in the US.

The rich people I know have their own vacation homes in nice places and/or make exotic travels where resorts are unusual and unneeded. Less rich people aren't usually interested in constrained luxury experiences like resorts and cruises; the closed environment doesn't compete well with freely experiencing a proper tourism hotspot and its varied attractions and extravagant luxury doesn't compete well with a better location or a longer stay with a cheaper, good enough accommodation.

Resorts are a specialty for amateurs or a resource for special cases (e.g. a safe environment in unfriendly locations like Egypt or Maldives).

Are indoor rock climbing and adult soccer known to be especially expensive activities? I haven't done much indoor rock climbing, but I've done a lot of adult soccer, mostly for free.

Indoor rock climbing for sure. A gym will cost you at least $50 a month (where I am, but I doubt it's that much different elsewhere), and the equipment costs aren't astronomical but do add up, especially compared to "cheap" sports (at least $200 for shoes / harness, and additional gear depending on what sort of climbing you want to do).

I'd say even the receptionist at a SV startup can easily afford to do rock climbing if she wants to.

Right, but if they just started at that job, and they previously had worked for much lower pay, they wouldn't be exposed to indoor rock climbing much at all. I don't think the author is saying that they couldn't rock climb if they wanted to, it's just a very different context when people can suddenly have (relatively) expensive hobbies.

The indoor wall where I'm from was at a YMCA, which has financial assistance programs for people who qualify. On a tech salary the author would probably be looking at full price, but if she were still poor it'd be a cheaper option.

At least. NYC is more than double that: $120-130 a month.

In my country the price to do adult soccer is "one soccer ball", many soccer fields are free, you just go and if no one is playing you can use it. The only problem is that you can't play at night because no one is going to turn on the light for you.

The fancier soccer fields with lights on cost 25€/hour, divided by 22 players it becomes just 1€ each ( and you still need to bring your ball )

The gyms in my area are several times more expensive than regular gyms, but as far as a hobby goes it's pretty cheap.

I'd say a hundred bucks a month keeps me in shoes, chalk, and a gym membership

And you know Association football (soccer) is lower class in the UK.

Found that bit surprising one. For European startup long weekend in Greece isn't that special. The flights can be quite cheap and Greece generally isn't that expensive country. A few hundred all together could probably be done.

Would the European startup workers you know fly to Malaysia or Peru for their 3-day weekend?

Sure, but it’s quite a flight from San Francisco

Yeah, and I don’t think there are any direct flights, so it’s even more painful. Best-case scenario is a stop in Frankfurt, IIRC.

I’ve always been surprised by the flight costs of some European airlines. It seems cheaper to fly around Europe than it is to fly within the US. I recall during the peak of the pandemic some people I know posting pictures of $5 flights while in the US they were they were still 10-11 times that for domestic flights.

The idea that "A few hundred all together" isn't that special is precisely what the post is about!

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