Jealous because I don't get to travel as much as I want to

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I don't know why but I seem to feel like I get jealous when I seeing travelling photos because I don't get to travel as much as I wanted to. I started going abroad more at 25 with a trip to Amsterdam and Antwerp in 2015, then Krakow in 2017, then Rome in 2018 and Berlin in 2019 but not before the age of 25. I seem to think that's how old some of the people are in these photos and it makes me feel like why I didn't travel more before then. Although I have been to other places as a child like Australia, Turkey, Menorca (Spain) and France a number of times especially as my grandparents live there. Before I went to Krakow, I hadn't been on a plane for probably over 15 years and I was nervous to start with but I managed it in the end. The thing is also I won't travel somewhere on my own because its like going to a concert or a party, it seems to me like it is less enjoyable being on your own than going with people. And so as I much as I'd like to visit other places I like, I won't book tickets and go on my own and so I end up not going and then it feels like life is being wasted.

Ive never been outside my own county so i could be jealous of a well-traveled person like yourself.
Its all relative.

Yup yup, I'm in the club too Chris! I remember being so jealous as a child when many of my classmates went overseas during the school year and then came back telling stories in front of the whole class... I recall J going to Britain, M going to Greek, A going to China and V going to Spain several times! Sometimes I'm still a little bitter at my parents that we never went anywhere, and now as an adult I know it can't have been just about money; going somewhere close by ship, like Sweden or Estonia, is cheap and was cheap when I was a child, so my parents just didn't want to bother. Seriously, I've made a lots of calculations, and we could have afforded a night or two in Stockholm or Tallinn.

I first went overseas at the age of 17, to Estonia, and now almost ten years later I've been abroad nine times in total, in 7 different countries. Btw Chris, you seem to have traveled more than me.

I'd like to travel more. Mom and I are planning to go to Germany towards the end of the summer to see my sister, who's there as an exchange student, but other than that, I have no clear plans of when and where. I mean, I definitely want to go to Japan at some point, that takes priority, but I'd like to go to USA too, preferably New York. And of course, lots of places in Europe, but that's fortunately easier and cheaper for me than the other two since I'm European myself.

I had a brief travel thing about twenty years ago. I was always aware that to achieve middle class street cred one was expected to be 'well travelled' (lol), so I thought I'd give it a go. Never really considered why I'd want middle class street cred, or whether I really wanted to travel. Anyway, I did go to a handful of countries and yes, some aspects were mildly interesting, but for the most part I found the whole business a whole lot of hassle and often very stressful. I didn't much enjoy trying to negotiate issues like restaurants, hotels, transport, etc in an unfamiliar setting and another language. Even when I successfully achieved some objective (eg visiting some world-renowned location), I often found it overrated.

Maybe I'm wrong about all this, and am just an incurable cynic (not unlikely), but I honestly believe that there's a large element of 'The Emperor's New Clothes' about the whole thing, and that there's a massive amount of snobbery and oneupmanship involved. I once met a woman who was clearly mentally ill (schizophrenia, almost certainly). She did however come from a very middle class background and had lived in a number of countries. On one occasion, she completely lost her temper and self-control, and in a furious rage snapped at me 'Do you realize I've been to more countries than you?!' The remark was completely irrelevant at the time, but in a sense it was just a more brutally honest version of what most educated middle class people probably think - it's just that those people have far more subtle ways of expressing it.

^ I think there are two types of people among those who travel: one is those who actually enjoy it and think that the experience is worth all the hassle, and the other is those who travel because "that's what people do." Nothing wrong with being in type one, but type two people would greatly benefit from not thinking that way 'cause then they could use their money on something they actually enjoy or is useful to them.

^ No prizes for guessing which category you think I belong to, LOL. But thanks for the reply anyway!

^ Aah oops, I reread what I wrote and realized what it sounded like.
I meant it as a comment to the Emperor's New Clothes -part. As in, the other group being the ones that think traveling makes them look good, so they do it for that even if they don't really enjoy it.