By VENDULA
I’ve been living away from home since 2011. It all started when I left for Erasmus to Sweden and lived there for one year. It was the best school for life, being there on my own, far away from your friends and parents. Studying pretty difficult uni with high level of English wasn’t first easy at all, however I handled it (and you would handle it too because you simply have to). Everyone who went for the study program knows how cool life it actually is, not realistic though but cool. You hang out with people all over the world, you don’t care about money that much, learning so much about different cultures, religious and every day is different, full of exciting activities. Once I tried it, there was no way back. I moved to Mallorca (Spain) and lived there for 3 months. Got enrolled in a Master course in Czech only to sign up for another Erasmus. I moved to Denmark, lived there for an awesome 2.5 years where I successfully finished my Master degree.
With a “I don’t give a fuck attitude” I bought a one way flight to Vietnam and went solo travelling to South East Asia. I traveled through Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, went for a spontaneous trip to Thailand and New Zealand and came home to witness the beautiful weddings of my two best friends. In 2017, I moved to New Zealand and I have been living here until now. I can’t describe how beautiful heaven on the Earth is and how grateful I am to live here.
I’m not writing this to show off, the reason why I’m writing this is that a lot of people say they want to travel, but only very few get to actually experience the wonders of the world. They say they can’t pursue their dreams from different reasons – lack of money, time, family or relationship issues.
“I want to show you that everyone can travel – it’s not expensive, it’s not time consuming and in the end it’s not even that hard – you just have to choose the kind of travel that suits you.“
Because travel has a different meaning to everyone – some do it to escape their everyday life, some do it to take the kids on vacation and some travel to find themselves. I traveled first to find myself, to learn more about myself and what I really want in my life but not anymore. I live to travel – I want to make a life of travel.
I realized I don’t want a conventional life, a life that I need to escape, filled with discontent and comfort. I don’t want to be stuck in the office building all day, live to save up for something, be happy once I get promoted, get enough money etc. I don’t
want to be a slave to the job and never able to wander away when it’s time to leave. I’ve always wanted more than that and I finally realized that it’s possible.
Travel to me means waking up at 4 am, hiking a mountain with a head torch to get to the best spot to watch the sunrise. It means getting lost in a different country and rely fully on help from strangers. It’s about trusting people you barely know and putting your faith in the world that things will all work out because you know that can be you who will get into troubles next time. It means going places to truly explore, not just going places to say you’ve been there. It’s recognizing it’s better to stay in one country for a month than try to jam in three. It means forming relationships that leave you in tears when you are forced to say goodbye.
Travel made me learn to live with the bare minimum and realize that’s all I really need. It’s realizing that possessions do not make you happy but suffocate you. It made me really live in the present and appreciate experiences more than things.
All I want from travel is to learn as much as I can from everyone I cross paths with about their culture and ways they see the world. I want to trust that where I am is exactly where I’m supposed to be.
This is what travel means to me – to live fully, to accept others, to learn in every area you can and to allow the world to shape you into the best person you can truly be. Because to me, travel is far more valuable than money will ever be and I want to inspire, help and encourage all of you to step out of your comfort zone and do something you are afraid of.
Because what we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.