I’ve always loved to travel. I guess it’s in my blood. There must be a gene that links me to the Berber. It probably runs in the family as my sister and her kids have it too, this need to leave and to go out into the world, to see with our own eyes and experience instead of being told.
But I feel something new. Not the familiar longing to go back to a certain place. Not the breathless thought „I wish I could be there now“. No, there is a must. As if I’ve got no choice.
I always sleep best while being transported, be it in a car, a train, a plane. I don’t even get seasick (so far). I am full of ideas where I have to go next, and there are some dreams about places I’m still in the process of saving up so that I can finally travel there.
I’ve been accused of spending a fortune on a „lavish lifestyle of a globetrotter“ (by people I fail to understand why they think they know all and why they care about my financial status). I’ve been judged for not being able to relate to the German concept of „Heimat“. I’ve been laughed about for „having to go on journeys that take you far“.
People have shaken their heads about me for not needing a steady place called home. I’ve been rated as sort of sick for not having one place to which I long to come back to. I’m looked at sideways for not tiring no matter how long and much I travel.
They may all be right. Maybe I’m strange in loving to always be on my way.
And though one could suspect it, I don’t run from anything. I know no matter where I travel, I always carry myself with me.
I just love it. I love to discover new soil. This moment, when I step off a plane and the light is as different as the air that caresses my skin and the smell that tries me, is one of the best I know.
And now it happened. I found a place to return to.