Four years ago, I moved back to Romania, initially for a sabbatical. I started a project in real estate development here and then the pandemic arrived so the initial year was extended. Over time, I decided not to move back to London, although I missed it a lot and visited often. Because the decision was a difficult one for me, I reflected on what home means to me and where I want to live.
I have always had a special relationship with the place I call home. I grew up in a village and moved to Bucharest when I was almost 9 years old. By the age of 13, I had changed my home three times in the city, as my parents managed to gradually move from a studio to a three bedroom flat.
The biggest change was to move to such a big city after living in a village with only a few hundred people. It was not about the size, but about the vibe. I loved the school library, my dance classes, my teachers, and the abundance of new activities. But I missed the stillness of the sunset and the dusty roads, my friends and our garden in the village. That stillness is actually the place where I feel most at home and what I always search for.
Growing up, I started traveling to other countries and even bigger cities. I have always been fascinated about civilizations, new cultures, and innovations. My eagerness to travel and discover more motivated me to take my first part time job in high school. This is how I came to earn some money and visit my first European countries as a student.
Traveling is a never ending story. The more you travel, the more places you want to go, and this world is abundant in terms of discoveries. To my joy, I visited the most developed countries in the world, imagining how my life would be if I settled there. I love city life. I can easily adapt to living in any big city. I can say that developed countries have more in common with one another than developing countries. Every developing country has its own uniqueness, as developed countries follow more of a pattern.
After this quest of discovering the world in so many ways and living in three developed countries that I could easily call home, I acquired some powerful insights. The first one is that once I felt at home in more places, I would never feel 100% at home in only one place. I called Bucharest home for many years, but after living in London and calling London my home, I feel now that both of them, together, are my home. And when I am based in one of them, a part of me misses the other.
The second insight I had was that I was a village soul looking to recreate the stillness of village life in the city. I felt at home in places where I could live parts of my village experience. I loved my first flat in Bucharest because of its garden in a quiet area of the city. My home in London was a flat that was close to nature with a big terrace and amazing sunsets. But now I have come to believe that neither Bucharest nor London were 100% home to me because in the core of my soul I had already felt at home in my village.
Last, but not least, having the option to create a customized experience in a city is a prerequisite in being able to call that place my home. At this point in my life, I needed a combination of active social life with nice places in my proximity to visit and green areas to spend time outside, go for walks, and connect with nature. Both Bucharest and London offer many varieties of lifestyles. They depend on the area I live in, the people I spend my time with, and places I frequently visit. I love the fact that I can have different living experiences if my preferences or needs were to change.
As I am writing this, I have moved to twelve different places that I called home. All of them form a puzzle about my concept of home. It is not about the place, nor the country, nor the shape. It is all about the vibe. Somehow for me the vibe is the one I experienced in my village, and I want to recreate some aspects of that home, even if it is in some of the world’s biggest cities. And this puzzle is work in progress.
What is your relationship with having a place or more to call home?
Are you a village or a city person at heart?