Freddie Mercury sent me on an adventure to find myself

by Erica Commisso (Canada)

I didn't expect to find Switzerland

In 2016, I decided that I wanted to go to Freddie Mercury's birthday party in Montreux, Switzerland. I am the biggest Queen fan I know, and his 70th birthday was an iconic way for me to celebrate the legacy of a person who inspired me and so many others. But, I decided to take a cue from Freddie's playbook and do something that scared me--I went completely alone, with absolutely no plan for the rest of the week that wasn't occupied by the party. It was my first true solo venture, and I bought a train pass and one night in a hotel, leaving the rest to a whim and and not-fully-honed sense of adventure. And so, off I set, largely unaware of the country's history, beauty and culture. But, I was also unaware of the person that I was. You see, walk around towns like Luzern--where you don't speak the language--completely alone, you're forced to be your own travel partner. Without the ability to speak to someone else, you're often left to find things in the corners of your mind--things you didn't know were there, or things you tried to avoid. And so, there I was, standing at the place where Mary Shelley once vacationed or marvelling at the church that began the Calvin religion, having internal conversations about what it was that attracted me to these places and these histories, what I found to be objectively beautiful, and what compels me to get out of bed every morning. I watched sunsets from mountain tops in Bern, got into a local's car so he could show me the countryside from the tops of the Alps, and walked across a bridge that I have since deemed the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, floating above crystal blue water, adorned with red flags, and complete with signs that tell stories of rebuilding after fires. I learned so much about a country I never knew I loved and, more importantly, for the first time in my life, I came to love the one entity I needed to love in order to live my life--myself.