My love,

What makes a trip wonderful? What makes a day beautiful? What makes our life happy?

For me, there is one answer: friends and family.

I travel to make friends, to meet different people who will make me feel something different, who will make me see the world a bit different and who will teach me to live differently than before.

I travel to confront and forget my old worries, fears and even hopes and forge new ones.

I travel to shed my own skin and leave a new layer take over.

I travel so I can be myself in the shadow of being nobody.

I travel so I can never forget how short my life is and how silly it is to be afraid to live fully.

This year I traveled to see you again. I had too. You gave me no choice. You made me lie in bed at night thinking of you, trying to remember your smell and imagining how I will feel when my hands will touch you again.

You, my amazing, ideal lover: you make me cry and you makes me laugh, you take me to busy streets, fancy restaurants, overwhelming me with warmth, then you take me shopping to beautiful stores just to wake me up in a cosy small cottage nestled between mountains covered with snow in the sound of Christmas carols and the smell of fresh baked cookies. In your arms, I feel at peace, proud of what I am, curious of what I will become.

So, between a love which just passes and one who just waits around the corner, there is always you, faithfully waiting to wipe my tears and make me feel alive once again.

We have a small house beside the river in Giethoorn, Holland. After a delicious breakfast in an open air cafe on the shores of the Bosphorus, we go hiking around Lake Como in Italy, then straight into the Ice Caves in Austria. We spend our afternoon swimming and watching the sunset over the wineries in Corniglia, Cinque Terre and go for lunch first to Hotel Obermayr near Salzburg and have a garlic soup and then to a Parisian fancy restaurant which serves delicious beef tartar. We spend the night on a boat in Monaco, feeling happy and free.

When you will ask my hand in marriage, assuming I will accept, we will go for honeymoon in Corniglia, sunbathing on the cliffs, listening to the loud, lively Italians sitting in front of their houses gossiping, having a true Italian pizza with a good glass of wine. I know that all these simple things will give us a feeling of surreal peace and happiness. I won’t take with me any laptop or iPhone. A camera, some books and you will be all I’ll need.

For now, I am back to the land of Oz dreaming of you, missing you and talking to all my friends about you. No matter how far I go, how much time we will be away from each other I will never forget you.

With all my love,

For my lover: Europe

Me.