Before Travel Was Freedom, It Was Survival
Why did travel become a necessity for me, not a hobby?
My story of travel begins with the fragile age of 10. I was born in the post-communist 90s in Bucharest, Romania, when arriving at the end of the month was a challenge for my parents. Despite my young age, I already understood that my mom was struggling with everyday life, but I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else. Like many adults at the time, my mom made the bold decision to leave the family and the country. So, she started the divorce process and then converted her studies to work abroad. Without much preannouncement, one day I was put on a plane with one suitcase in my hand, and the next thing I knew, I was in Venice-Pordenone. A beautiful postcard city, yet an alien planet called “new home” to my eyes. For many years, I struggled to know who I was and where I belonged. I didn’t understand it then, but that first journey — taken without choice, without language, without control — shaped the way I would travel for the rest of my life. For years, I confused movement with healing. It took solo travel, and later love, to teach me the difference.
As time passed, Italy became my true base. The memories and the relationships I built there became an integral part of who I was. Little by little, I felt that I was contributing to the place where I was living - I was finally part of it. The culture, the food, the hospitality of people, and the nature were so rich and stimulating that I couldn’t help but want more. I travelled and lived for short periods of time in different regions. From the east to the west and from the north to the south, the country was never the same. Soon enough, Italy started to be too narrow for me. I craved to explore the world, and live exciting experiences like the characters of the novels I was reading.
I did a few trips abroad with friends, and I had a great time. But it never felt authentic or deep enough to me. Every time I traveled to European cities with my friends, I went to the same tourist spots - museums, the best restaurants on TripAdvisor, and followed what other fellow Italians were doing. In these first trips, I barely spoke English, and I didn’t interact with the locals unless in a transactional way. Inside, I was thirsty for experiencing cultural shocks, challenges, surprises, and overall meeting new people. Somehow, I wanted to go back to what I felt the first time I landed in Italy to embrace a new life. Little by little, a light inside me started flickering with a new awareness: I need to travel for real.
Someone told me, “If you need to move all the time, maybe you are escaping from your own self.” These words stick in my mind. I thought this restlessness was a flaw — an inability to settle, to be satisfied, to stay. In other words, to be normal. I didn’t yet have the language to understand it. I only knew that moving felt safer than standing still, and that places shaped me more than people did. I was traveling, but I wasn’t choosing myself in the process. That would come later. At that point, all I had was the quiet certainty that something in me was still unfinished — and that one day, I would have to learn how to leave without being taken away.
To be continued …
Disclaimer - this is not a guide, it’s an origin story.
