Where did I get this passion for traveling? To be honest, I don’t really know. Maybe it was always somewhere deep inside. I think that it has all started before I even knew it.
First time abroad
Since I was 9 we used to go skiing to Italy during our winter holidays. At the age of 10 I took my first flight which was directed to Tunisia. We went to Germany with my secondary school a couple times. But I don’t think that that was it. Alps in Italy, hotel in Tunis I haven’t even left during that week, I was thinking about both of these experiences just as a family vacation. We could have gone to the mountains in my home country or any other huge hotel with pools and outdoor activities and I would probably feel the same.
An early challenge
I think that one of the breaking points was my first international basketball tournament. It was spring 2009 and I was attending 5th grade when our coach came with the news that we were invited to a tournament in France. Everybody got so excited and a few months later we were all in a van crossing the borders. We were so happy to go to another country and there was only one thing I was concerned about… the housing. The reason for that was the fact, that we were not going to stay in a hotel or dorm. They were about to place us in French families who could barely speak any English and let’s be honest, how good can an 11 years old girl be in a foreign language? I went to a few English camps before, but we always had a teacher and a translator to tell us what to do. This was the first time when I was in contact with people from different country who I had to depend on and who I wasn’t really able to communicate with besides the basics. It was a big challenge and I probably didn’t know it back then, but this was a really good experience that gave me a lot.
Foreigners
The second thing is probably the fact that I always found it really interesting how different people from different countries live. This is really individual and every person has his own way of living but there is this cultural aspect that bonds most of them together and differs them from the rest. The language, the morals, the food, the traditions, values, beliefs, … There is just so much to experience and I always thought that if I learn about it, it may help me to understand this world a little better. So, I liked to talk to people from different countries. When I was little, I was fascinated by America so I was attending English camps with amazing people from Minnesota or even Canada, later on I went to Softball camps which were led by these amazing guys from Tennessee. And I never wanted to miss an opportunity to talk to them. Even when we went on tournaments in Poland or Hungary or Bulgaria I always tried to talk to the players from other teams because I found it very cool that they are not from the same place as I am.
The game changer
The biggest step for me as a traveler was an exchange program in America. I went to the US by myself to live in a host family and to attend local high school for a whole year. Getting that confidence, I went on a few work and travels, Erasmus, and some trips around Europe and even further. But if you want to know more about that, just go ahead and pick one of my posts, because that’s exactly what this blog is about.
Where I have been 