You’re maybe wondering how I found myself, at 27, with the opportunity of having travelled through over sixty countries around the world.

I could simply tell you that the calling of the road has always been stronger than the rest, for my nomadic soul in constant quest for freedom and discovery. And this is true, in part. However, to really understand how I came to wander our beautiful planet over the years, I need to give you some context.

Let me thus try to summarise my story for you.

When I was 16 years old, I went to live in Spain for 9 months in order to learn the language and open up my horizons. Unsurprisingly, by the time I returned, I had changed a lot. I had managed to assert myself a little more, but I had also been confronted with an unhealthy world of the night, where my body was constantly sexualised, where appearances reigned supreme. The new traumas I brought back with me nonetheless did not prevent me from finishing high school, and once I graduated, undecided about my future and curious to discover what could be beyond my mountains after the insight I had been given, I decided to fulfill a dream: to travel around the world.

Therefore, at the age of 20, I left and threw myself into whole new realities; I volunteered in very rural areas in West Africa, I found myself alone in Southeast Asia, and I slept in strangers’ homes in Australia, to name but a few. I lived a completely different life for a few months, and for the first time I felt really happy, I felt like I belonged.

I still had to keep moving forward, so I prepared to move to a new city to begin my studies. A guidance counsellor at the time had advised me to get into social work, and my volunteering experiences helped convince me to choose that course, even though I knew it wasn’t really my dream either. My real passion was writing. I have always loved telling stories, but after hearing so many times that I could never make a career out of it, I had stopped believing in it a long time ago. I thus became a student in social work and social politics at the University of Fribourg. I was surrounded by a lot of friends, I had good grades, a comfortable apartment. I was on the path that was all prepared for me for years, and I supposedly had everything to be happy.

But I wasn’t. I had left the path for a while. I now knew that there was something else, that somewhere out there, people were living differently. No matter how hard I tried to convince myself that I had to put those memories in the corner of my head until I finished school, I couldn’t turn off that little voice inside me that wouldn’t forget. So the process began… and it was unstoppable.

Above all, I didn’t recognise myself in the ‘study-career-marriage-family’ model that we are supposed to dream about. What thrilled me was the call for adventure and discovery, the exploration of different cultures and ways of living. I wanted to try to see if it was possible to live in a world where our comfort would not be built on the exploitation and disrespect of the rights of those who are not as fortunate as we are. But few people were ready to hear such reflections, so I felt extremely lonely in my inner storm. However, I still didn’t want to remain silent.

And then I remembered the smiles of people living so simply, in that other universe where I had once set foot…

The following months were a long battle between my mind and my heart. The logical choice would have been to stay and finish my studies, to get a good degree and then decide what I wanted. At least that is what most people around me were trying to convince me to do. However, even if the social sciences I was studying were exciting, and despite my excellent results, something deep inside me didn’t feel right. Everything was too theoretical, I couldn’t see any connection with reality. The idea of continuing along this path seemed so unbearable that I had gradually stopped going to classes, while plunging deeper and deeper into a dark depression. I was afraid, afraid to admit the truth: all this life I had built for myself was collapsing. I finally hit rock bottom.

I stayed there for a while, contemplating the words ‘BE REASONABLE’ written there. But the desire to get back to the surface overcame my doubts. The light that would bring me out of this tunnel was somewhere else, somewhere where no one around me had been before: no certainty was waiting for me there, unlike the dead-end street I was in, surrounded by all those people but so desperately alone.

I have seen and done many things in the meantime. After an initial eight months of travelling, I decided to give more meaning to my project, and to travel to Palestine to volunteer and learn more about the politics of that part of the world. To see the reality beyond what the media presents us. I came back overwhelmed, and the euphoria of leaving had since been replaced by a deep pain in the face of all the injustices of the world. This trip also gave me the gift of a great love story with a young Palestinian man. Unfortunately, the news of his illness and then his passing a few months later only reinforced my despair, and I almost lost myself for good.

It was only when I returned to Switzerland after all of this that I could really understand the meaning of my privilege, and it allowed me to make peace with my country. The journey did not end there, however. I notably walked 900km on the ‘Camino de Santiago’ in 2018, which allowed me to grieve and to reconnect with the simple joys of life. Today, I may not be as animated by the same carefree enthusiasm of my early twenties, but I have learned many valuable lessons along the way. It hasn’t always been easy, but I have never regretted for one second that crazy decision I made one day, which changed everything.