That’s me
That guy in the photo is me. My name is Andrea and I was born in Sicily in 1987. I studied foreign languages in Turin and one of my greatest passions is travel – I wouldn’t be here otherwise! As a good Aquarius, I’m a free spirit, I hate impositions and I’m a contrarian. I’ve been working as a freelance translator since 2012, although I don’t think this is the job of my life. In the past, I had some brief experiences in the tourist industry in travel agencies, tour operators and at the airport: travel in some ways has always been part of my life.
In addition to passion for travel, I also love photography. It is a passion I discovered recently and I’m trying to improve myself step by step. My craving for taking photos has always found its maximum expression right while travelling. So I can say that these are two passions that walk hand in hand. While travelling, I take photos of every detail, coming back home with hundreds of shots. It’s nice to see that multitude of photos some time after a trip, because each of them makes me think of the moment I took it and the emotions I felt in that situation. That’s why I believe that each photo, even the one considered the most insignificant by others, is loaded with meaning. In this blog, I’ll describe to you readers the places I visit both with words and with my own photos.
Well, there is no shadow of doubt that it is my innate passion. Since I was a child, I loved traveling. I remember the family trips to visit my relatives in the north of Italy during holidays or other occasions; the long train trips I spent looking out of the window. I looked fascinated at every city and the landscape changing from one region to another. I even used to stay awake at night to see the passage of the train in Rome. When I was 5-6 years old, I remembered by heart all the train stops and in the right order. I was so fascinated to the point that as a child I said “When I grow up, I will drive trains”.
Things have gone completely another way. While growing up, tastes and interests have radically changed, but my love for travel, that no, has remained unchanged – actually, it has developed more and more with the years. Studying English at school and my musical tastes made my love for London and the UK grow. These were places I had never seen with own my eyes, but I was charmed by them anyway. This then influenced my choice of studying foreign languages, so far away from my childhood dreams.
For me travel is the best antidepressant ever. It’s the only time my mind gets rid of negative thoughts and problems of everyday life. I face every trip determined to leave home all the things that stress me out and I actually succeed, because the curiosity and the desire to see new places (and not) win over everything. That’s why I named my blog “Happily on the road“.
Travel has also an educational force which, in my humble opinion, even books don’t have. We can spend our lives reading all the books we want, devouring dozens of them in a month, but we can easily forget what we read in a book; reading is very important and also beautiful and relaxing after a heavy day, but the things we see, feel, taste and listen on a journey, remain within us and can hardly be erased. They remain stored in our memory and it’s enough just one taste, sound or photo (that’s the evocative power of photography I was talking about above) to recollect those memories, which make us travel again, even if only with our mind. With this regard, I do agree with whoever says that we live every trip three times: when we dream it, when we do it and when we remember it.
Travel also teaches us to be open-minded and in contact with others and other cultures. But, I don’t really like to talk about diversity. On the contrary, the more I travel the more I find that “it’s the same the world over”.
Travel for me is not synonymous with holiday. You will hardly see me lying on a beach in the sun like a lizard. My ideal trip is with backpack and camera, walking from morning to evening until I feel exhausted. At the end of the day I am not completely satisfied if I haven’t been able to see all the things I had set out to visit. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a trip abroad or just a one-day trip on Sundays, I face it with the same spirit, curiosity and desire to know.
The idea of starting to write a travel blog came a little by accident. I was following several travel bloggers some time before starting my own blog and I really liked what they did. One day I said, “Why don’t I start writing about my trips on a blog?”. The first time I had this idea, I dropped it almost immediately. I said, “Who the hell is gonna read my blog? Forget it, Andrea!” – one of my biggest flaws is a lack of self-confidence, I have to admit it.
Then during my last trip to Prague, this idea came back strong in my mind. I wished to tell that trip in a different way. I start by saying that my relationship with social networks is a little bit odd: I like them and I have accounts on different social media – Instagram and Facebook are the ones I use the most. However, I’m not used to tell and share every single thing I do (nothing against whoever does it, everyone is free to use them at will), but when I travel, something changes and I start to use them a lot more. I don’t do it to brag about being in a certain place, but just to describe the places I see both with words and with my own photos. I like to tell my trips. When back from Prague, I decided to take the idea of the blog more seriously and so, after having gained the knowledge I lacked to face this new adventure on the Internet, I’m here with “Happily on the road“.
