The real reason

I will share with you the thing I enjoy the most - because no matter if it is by train, bus, car, plane or a ship, when I travel I always feel those butterflies in my stomach, filling my face with a huge smile.

I love walking through all different worlds, cultures, habits and people.

I don't know what is the real reason behind my huge passion for traveling; maybe it comes from the many times I have watched TV and read magazines showing these amazing things, that I would love to discover; maybe it's in order to discover new things - that I've never seen before, things that I'm not able to even imagine… Maybe it's in order to discover again and again the same place, because it's so impressive - every time I find something new:nothing stays the same way, everything changes all the time, even us, so every time it's different.

I find new streets, new roads, smells, street artists, things that make the city looks different - but, at the same time - I feel it's more mine. The kind people, and also the not-so-kind ones, the different moons, seas, and sometimes even the sun – it's all so different.

The truth is that when I'm walking around an unfamiliar city I try to imagine myself living there, in that specific street I'm walking in, adapting my life to their way of living, feeling the weather and enjoying the people, wondering if they could enjoy me as well - and a question comes to my mind: will the thing that amazed me the most still be so impressive if I decide to live next to it?

I shut my head for a minute, and concentrate in the yellings around me - which normally are a whisper to my ear (if I'm not in Italy, of course) - a song among the trees, a drop of water that moistens my ears and sometimes even my face can feel it…

Unfortunately, I don't travel as much as I would like to (but I still have my whole life in front of me), but every time I've done it, the memory of this feeling, that aroused when I first discovered the place, was again saved. The impression, the disillusion, the sadness, the breathless perception, the huge happiness, the people and the moments shared with these people... which people?

The people you get to meet in the street, at the hostel, at the hotel, while doing couch surfing, locals, tourists like you, people who lend you their hands, people who close their doors against you and mostly the ones that stayed at home, waiting for you, because, for some reason, they couldn't travel with you, but you didn't care - and took them with you - you share every second with them, any feeling, every step, any good and bad experience... And that will stay forever.

The trip changes thanks to these people and their actions, they are so strong that they can transform a smile into a tear, an illusion into a disillusion; they can even make you hate the city, the experienceor the whole trip... But what is a trip without this life's traps? Without the sauce that keeps your adventure juicy. There will always be something that would try to ruin our vacation, but instead of killing it, that something makes your trip unforgettable... What could possibly make your trip a @#%&?

Lets see, maybe a robbery, a gypsy curse, heavy baggage, missing your flight, being obligated to sleep in the car, at the airport, at the train station, not understanding a single word of something being said (but knowing it's really bad…), loosing your credit card, loosing your passport, running out of money, giving your umbrella to someone else in a pouring rain at night, not knowing you needed a visa, getting yourself lost at a rainy night in an unfamiliar city - where no one understands you and, of course, the typical fight with your travel partners...

But all of these (that have never happened to me, though, :) give a lot of taste and color to your adventure. And, as I said before, you will never forget it - because in those extreme situations you will always find the one who lends you his bed so you don't sleep in the street, the one who undoes gypsy curseswith a night of laughter, the ones who cooperate with your purse being robbed, the one who guides you for a fee of just a smile, the one who helps you with your (huge) bag, the one who saves you because he speaks your language, the one who let you travel for free and, of course, your good sense of humor – I swear, you will discover yourself laughing alone, remembering those moments, which will stay forever within you, only because you wouldn't be able to appreciate the benefits of the sweetness if you didn't taste the bitter flavor before.

So, to make a resume, YES, traveling is masochism; but this little suffering, that drop of sweat, this despaired tear, the tired body, the bad smell after days without a shower - or even worse, the bad mood because of that freezing shower in a lost beach, the constant delay on your flights, the money you've lost, that crowded beach, the huge line in the museum, that horrible pain in your back and all those days without eating - worth it. They gave me the smell of the streets in Paris, the colors of the Teotihuacán Pyramids, the taste of the Greek-Mediterranean sea in the black beaches of Santorini, the coldness of the Czech beer, the unexpected joy in German parties, the freezing hands of my sister discovering snow, the water of an 80 meters high waterfall sinking me in a Brazilian well, the Santa Claus beard of the guy in Strasbourg handing me a hot wine, the black smoke of the barbecue in the French camping, my mom's smile while sailing between Buda and Pest, the sunset in Boston, the rhythmical noise at the Fontana Di Trevi, the heat of my body with the Swedish snow, the breathless feeling in front of a Dali's or a Gaudi's, the laughters that fill with life a pizza restaurant in Rome, the fear of jumping in that swimming pool in Cuernavaca, the illusion that made me jump into a London taxi, the smile that shined that street with my name, the feeling of being alive hiding in that "tent" in Portugal, the "peaceful" dancing of the Pacific's waves and the transparency of the Caribbean's ones...

But most of all, I will never change those little sacrifices, because they made me share all these moments with people that make my life complete, just because every time I talk about them, remember them or write them, I have the feeling that my heart is smiling...

So I think this is the real reason why I love to travel: It makes me feel happy… I feel alive.

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