Back in the city, no longer my home
If we think about it logically, home is the first place we know. The place where we are supposed to feel safe. Our place on Earth. Pretty simple, right?
But then you start travelling. At first, it’s just a week in another country. Sounds fun. Temporary. Harmless. Then you want to see more, try more, meet more people. Suddenly, you find yourself in a foreign city, living in a shared apartment or maybe a dorm room, spending not just a week but six months there.
Maybe it’s an exchange semester, or you moved away for university. It becomes a new place where you sleep, eat, study and build your daily routine or perhaps create a completely new one. You learn the streets. You have your favourite café. You know which bus to take without checking the schedule. Slowly, without even noticing, something unfamiliar starts feeling familiar.
And then, eventually, you have to go back.
When you return, nothing is ever the same. Or maybe everything is exactly the same and you’re the one who has changed. The streets look identical. Your room is untouched. Your hometown continues its rhythm as if you were never gone, but you have been gone. You have seen more, felt more, become more.
So, what is home, really?
Is it a building? The people? A feeling? A safe space?
Everyone would define it differently. Perhaps home is not just a place on a map. Perhaps it is a feeling. The feeling built from memories, moments and the people who shape us.
Travelling forces you to grow in ways you never expected. You face fears simply because you have to. You are on your own and no one will do things for you. You step outside your comfort zone. You try new languages, new food, new versions of yourself.
The people you meet come from different parts of the world. Different backgrounds, cultures, perspectives. You grow close without even realising it. Then one day your exchange ends and the person you saw every single day goes back to the other side of the world. Suddenly, distance is measured in time zones.
The world feels bigger than before, but your heart feels divided. You feel at home in more than one place now. You feel comfortable speaking different languages. Each place, each experience; they take a small piece of you. And when you return to your hometown, everything feels the same, yet completely different.
Because you are different.
What makes it even more complicated is going back to the city that once felt like your second home. You visit your Erasmus city again, expecting familiarity. The streets are there. The buildings are the same. But your apartment is no longer yours. Your exchange friends are no longer there. The life you had existed in a specific moment in time. And that moment is gone.
So are you really going back?
Or are you just trying to revisit a version of reality that no longer exists?
Maybe the truth is that you never truly return home. Not because home disappears, but because you are constantly evolving. The place remains, but the person who left it does not.
