“Travelling is a way of living”

By Dionne Hosters

“Travelling is a way of living”. That does not mean that you have to be on the road all the time but it means that it is a part of your life.

In my opinion it also means that you are able to feel at home at different places and in different countries. But that does not mean you don’t miss the place you are from or the people back home.

Travelling is one of the ways to give people a satisfied feeling, you get to see a lot of places, meet new people and through that you might get to places you might not have gone to if you wouldn’t have met them.

Talking about meeting new people, a more important aspect of that is getting new friends all over the world. My opinion about that is that it has got pro’s and con’s. Through travelling I have met my best friend. The situation was a Malaysian girl and a small town Dutch girl living together in a so called ‘home away from home’ in Melbourne, Australia. We met at 2 AM and from the next day on we became very close friends. Thinking back about that, if I wouldn’t have done my internship in Australia I probably would never have met her.

I know there are thousands of similar examples like couples who have met each other while travelling or living abroad and now are a family.

It sounds like the perfect life and situation, seeing lots of places and having friends all over the world but the bad thing about those friendships is that you cannot see each other whenever you want to, simply because you are so far away from each other.

I would like to come back to my own example for this because I know we all have got loads of ways to see each other and talk and I definitely don’t complain, but at some moments you just miss being together and simply be able to go for a coffee together.

But as stated “travelling is a way of living” and these situations also belong to it.

I know that there are loads of people out there who know exactly how I feel and what I mean because during my own travels I have met a lot of people and I know for sure that almost every single person has made new friends for the rest of their life.

A good example it people who go on an exchange programme, studying abroad for a longer period or do an internship abroad. You live your ‘normal life’ in another country and experience a whole new way of living. Your ‘normal life’ is completely different from the way you live it at home. A very exciting aspect of those situations is also the trips you get to make, alone or with other people who you might have met while living abroad

I think the best way of travelling would be people who just go abroad for a longer period and just go out there to see places. Because they can go where ever they want or follow their scheduled trip.

I do not have my own experience with this (yet) but I am pretty positive that it is an experience that influences your life in a way nothing at home would be able to do. I believe that in most cases this is positive but in some it might also be negative. This is of course in every way of travelling and everyone has good and bad days.

But in my case I tend to forget the bad and remember the good times because that is what makes you happy and we should all try to live life in the best way we can.

So in the end “Travelling is a way of living” is just a statement I thought of and want to keep rolling.

My motto is; ‘Live life, love life and live your dreams!’

Because why shouldn’t we all try to make the best out of life in the situations we all have been given? We all know life can be tough and hard but in the end we should all try to make the best out of it and for a lot of people travelling helps doing that!

© Adeline Chang