By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
I remember waving at my grandmother, cousins and aunts through the back window of the car without really understanding why we were all reduced to tears. The 7-year-old child I was, was quite unaware of what was at stake back then. “We’re moving to find a new home”. That was the only explanation I got from my mother. And the long drive that followed these goodbyes was my first travel. An undesired one. Now I wonder how we all managed to fit in that old Peugeot 309. I remember that it was red, and its color contrasted with the snow-covered never-ending road. Never had I witnessed such a wintry month of March. Our big boots were covered with a 40-centimeter deep avalanche of white flakes, every time we got out of the car to stretch our legs. After a quick crossing of Croatia and Slovenia, Austria’s mountains and Germany’s endless roads, we met France, who had to become our new home. The waiting hall of the emergency shelter was full. Refugees, homeless people, single mothers, drug addicts – the profiles varied. No one could stop me from crying, my childhood innocence led me to despise this exile my parents chose and wonder why we left our actual home. As I was sitting on my brother’s lap, our father fell asleep right in front of us, the couch must have been pretty comfy. His snoring was so loud, and his mouth opened at every breath taken just to make his cheeks shake as he exhaled. We let out our first laughs. Due to the lack of space in asylum centres, for the night, we had been sent to the most beautiful hotel I ever stepped into. There were small chocolates on the pillows, an endearing and reassuring smell and an intriguing view over what would be one of my favorite cities in the world. The warm water of the shower made all worries vanish for the night. We could take a breath. That’s how a 15-year travel started, and a breath was taken, and we started to get to know our new homeland as the memories from the old one slowly faded away. Weekend family gatherings turned into long-distance phone calls and the streets of which we knew every corner turned into labyrinths we would learn to dismantle through the years. However, this new place never acquired the status of home in my mind, neither did my native country keep it. Now, my heart knows that my home is my grandma’s house in Bosnia, the room in the refugees centre in Metz, my favorite Café in Amsterdam, the bench with a view over the Rhein in Köln and the beach towel on the sand of Las Palmas. My home is the people I got to know and the places I fell in love with. My home is the memories piled up and every pillow I will lay my head on. I keep wondering if all this is heart-breaking or fulfilling. That sort of hole just gets wider and wider at every goodbye shared. But seeds are planted in every ground I connect my soul to, leaving them be watered by the love all my homes have to offer. I feel deeply close to Vilem Flusser’s concept of homelessness and as he said, I feel that way “because there are so many homelands that make their home in me”. The Travel I first despised became the breath I am always craving.