It was a love affair that started a few years ago, in the Fall of 2011 to be exact. It was one that swept me off my feet into a chaos that was so different from anything I’d expected, one that would leave me breathless and reminiscent for years to come.
I had not realized that I had been missing such a huge part of me that I had not yet met. I had not even known that it was possible, but it was then that I realized for the first time that:
"I'm in love with cities I've never been to and people I've never met."
I understood the meaning of "fernweh" in its fullest depths and complexities. How had I been homesick, for so long, for a place I had never been to?
Italy.
Falling in love with Italy was like waking up from a deep sleep, one I had not realized I'd been in.
I can pinpoint the exact moment I felt my life change, down to the time, place, smells and people; to the words being spoken around me and even the laughter of the children playing in the background. I remember the silky feeling of the silver moonlight on my skin as I sat on the terrazzo outside Florence, at my host family's country vineyard. It was only my third day ever in the country, but I could physically feel the plates of the earth and the gears of my futures paths shifting and moving.
When I returned back to the States and back to reality, this fantasy, this dream I had been living in, vanished; just as the wheels of the plane hit the pavement of the airport in Atlanta, Georgia. It was then I knew, that I would never truly feel whole again until I returned.
And so I did. The next summer, but to Milan this time. Fast forward through one of the best summers of my life, I returned to the States again for a few years to finish college and then started working until I decided what to do with my once carefully planned out, (and previously medical school bound), life.
Such clarity hit me like a sack of bricks only when I found myself postponing, for a second time, the commencement of my Master’s program at an art school in Los Angeles.
Italy.
I had already thrown my meticulous life plan out, might as well go the whole nine yards and just go after everything I truly wanted.
And so, months of applications and complicated logistics later, I was on a plane back to where I’d left half my heart. I’ve been here for almost a year now and I can tell you that this is the best relationship I have ever been in. Every day truly gets better and better. I feel my eyes constantly widening in awe at every small detail, my infatuation growing just walking down the streets and quaint winding alleys here. If it is possible to be head over heels in love with a place, I am.
This intense love of foreign living, languages, travel and culture, has only grown. My over-brimming sense of adventure, love of the unknown and desire to live anything but a routine life, has surpassed into my habitual routine of becoming lost in translation in, and with, the rest of the world.
Meeting people from other countries, living in, and seeing other perspectives, is something that truly feeds my soul, there is nothing else like it. I whole-heartedly believe that travel is the perfect remedy to most things and the best way to not only meet your true self, but become that self that you so desire to be.
Travel constantly pushes our boundaries and ideas of comfort, routine, thought processes, ideologies, religion, tastes, friendship, family and home. It is a deepest wish and passion of mine to truly seek out and find the beauty of the world we live in; sharing my experiences, perceptions, visual snapshots and stories from on the way, with those around me.
Join me while I loose myself in this world and its wonders, striving to live a life that is anything but ordinary.
For it is only when we are lost, that we can truly find ourselves.
xoxo,
~Nis
It feels good to be lost in the right direction...
Currently based in Milano, Italia.