Holidays have always been, for the Centea family, an opportunity to relax, to strengthen personal bonds and to educate through pleasant and spontaneous activities. Tim's maturity grew quickly, trying – on these group getaways - to enrich himself with each new place visited. This is what has happened, over the course of 10 years, with visits to Canada, the United States, and Europe. He always prepared for these trips, reading guides and making itineraries. Meanwhile, he continued - regardless of school or vacation - to read, continuously changing genres and moving from the great Russian classics (read in English) to esoteric readings (Edgar Allan Poe), or SciFi (Asimov, Bradbury). Visits to Romania, England, France and the United States - generally based on cultural objectives (major museums) and visits to major universities (Oxford, Cambridge, Sorbonne, Harvard, Yale) proved fruitful and sustained his inclination towards academia.

But Tim also appreciated vacations in Nature (East Coast beaches, Florida or the national parks of California and Nevada), being very impressed with the Cape Canaveral Center and the Air and Space Museum in Washington, where he returned, subsequently, on a regular basis.