The “where” doesn’t matter

The more I travel, the more I catch myself thinking: “Oh, I see myself living here as well.”

SALZBURG — Hey there, this is my first blog post, so please consider it an experiment. It was a spontaneous decision that caught me off guard on my way, so I decided to act on it.

I am often asked whether I prefer Amsterdam to Berlin, and I come up with goofy short replies to brush off the question. What’s not to like? Both cities are beautiful and amazing in their own ways, and I love both.

Before Berlin, where we’ve spent 2.5 years, I loved Konstanz, a 70,000-person German city on the border with Switzerland. Now, I don’t actually live in Amsterdam, I live in its city-satellite, Amstelveen, which has its own benefits, and I love it, too.

These are pictures from 2022, taken at a strawberry field in Konstanz. I loved the nature there a lot, as well as the quietness, and the fact that I could bike to work and be there in 7 minutes.

Coming from Kyiv, I have not experienced a lot of traveling until I grew up, but even then, in my 20s, borders were a huge deal. They still are, of course, and I am aware that writing this post from a rented apartment in a historical cliffside building in Salzburg, I am extremely privileged, but it’s a topic for the next time. My point is that I have been dreaming of traveling, craving it as if it was an answer to all my problems. 

But there was a lot of pressure to it: I had to save up, apply for a visa with so much paperwork like proof of sufficient funds, a reason for the trip, booked hotels, flights, etc and print it out for the embassy. And then you finally go, and since it’s so rare, you feel like you need to use up every second, visit all the landmarks, check all the boxes on the tourist brochures. 

Since I moved to the EU at the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine, traveling has become mundane to me. Partly, because there are no borders here for me to cross, nobody checks my passport, sometimes even my ticket. Partly because technology made it easier to navigate everything: booking a trip to Vienna from the Netherlands through Munich and Salzburg was as easy as looking for the best bike route to a local bookshop with a stop for a vegan cake. Everything is in the phone (I do miss the paper maps sometimes, though). Partly because I oftentimes work on these trips, therefore, they are paying for themselves. 

But also because, as much as I enjoy traveling, I have realized that it doesn’t matter where I am anymore. The world is beautiful, the cities are beautiful, and the people are the people wherever you go. Some are the best, some are the worst, and you will take the interactions based on who you are more than based on where you are or how you are being treated. 

You will be pushed in an overcrowded subway in Berlin and in Paris, you will be smiled at by the bus driver who waits for you in Amsterdam and Budapest, you might as well be yelled at by both. You will be served the best and the worst stare in the cheapest and the most expensive bistros and restaurants of Prague, Brussels, Milan and Warsaw. You will see an old man hugging a small dog on a bus in Bruges, and a young man sharing his carrot with his huge German shepherd on a regional train somewhere in the middle of Germany. 

You will have strangers give you advice, share food with you, carry your heavy luggage, chew loudly next to you, ask you for directions, watch your things while you go to the bathroom, steal from you, mumble to you in an unknown language. And you will take only what you have space for, and give only what you have to share.

On the left: a man holding his dog on a bus in Bruges, on the right: a dog daycare guy in Paris picking up his clientele early morning. Life is full of love and dogs wherever you go.

Have you noticed how some people only tell you about dirty, loud, exhausting cities, where everything is expensive and annoying, and some people tell you how gorgeous the architecture was, and how tasty were the fresh veggies from the farmer’s market, and how cool was the art from that small shop, and how many books they got at a thrift store? They usually talk about the same cities. But they see them differently.

Naturally, we love some things and places more than others, but I am speaking from the perspective of a person who has started over multiple times in different places, and who also had to leave everything behind and start over with just one suitcase. 

It doesn’t matter what you have on you, it doesn’t matter where you go - what matters is what you have inside. What are you looking for to pay attention to? What are you nourishing within to share with the world? What are you able to give? How much do you love yourself and the life you live?

I have been to many places, big and small, and I can honestly say I could have built a life in each city. It doesn’t mean I will stop exploring. I think it just takes off the pressure of a fomo. There is no right or wrong choice anymore. I am at home in myself. Therefore, I don’t care where I am anymore.