Foto di: Giada Da Boit

Erasmus is simply what you live for 6 or 10 months out of your home. At that moment you do things that most people, in your same situation, do: it is an extrasensory experience that you can’t explain to anybody. When you’re in Erasmus or more simply when you live in a country that is not your own, you get to know new people who have the most outlandish customs that you’ve ever heard, and you spend your time, your months with these people in that country; the senses awake more than they ever did. And, you know why? Because, there, you are man, alive, pure, natural, virgin. Away from the society to which you belong, because it’s you that you feel able to push it away. Your senses open like a bud of a flower during spring. They welcome everybody: bees, butterflies, caterpillars, and all the most strange insects, beautiful and ugly. Your senses turn on. They leave to the human instinct, that instinct that you think you’ve already met during all those years of life before you move your ass and made you shit yourself. But your instinct comes out and you don’t realize, you don’t know, you know just when you look back and see that you made it, in a so easy way, because it’s so human. Erasmus is also falling in love with people next to you, unknown people or known for just a month, falling in love with the naturalness with which you fall in love with everything you do and with everyone you meet in the foreign land.

Now tell me, I came back 5 and a half months ago now, everyday I wake up with the narrow streets of that city in my head, with the noise of the market under my home that roared down my room, the perpetual smell of pita on the roads that, at any time of the day, never bothered me, the wind breeze that blew in Theatraki that carried you to the place of your dreams: right there where you were.

Although I have thousand of things to do, every day I think about how much I miss Patras and the generous and friendly atmosphere in which my friends made me live in: every time at every hours we went out, without time limit, without even asking who was there because we knew we would have fun like crazy in all circumstances, but that, all together, we would face any difficulty, despite seemingly insurmountable.

Now tell me that even you are back and you don’t feel to be able to explain to anybody what you feel: it isn’t nostalgia, it isn’t melancholy, there is still no word that can express that feeling that you feel when you return home. No one except someone who did Erasmus, will ever understand what you felt and what you keep on feeling even after 5 and a half months and the worst thing is that they will not understand you even your boyfriend/girlfriend, your best friend, the people that, before leaving, they spent every day with you, those “lifelong friends”.

Here’s why I don’t pacify myself: when I was in Erasmus I felt indescribable emotions every day, even in a simple day when I woke up, I began wandering along the streets of the city and I knew that all the others people felt, like me , the same things. Sometimes we talked about those emotions, sometimes we were silent and could just say “Fuck, that’s amazing!” shaking our head left and right, incredulous of the beauty of an emotion so humble and so hidden in our small or big daily adventures , incredulous that all of us were thinking in the same way, were feeling the same emotions and we were quiet, because, there, we became every day more aware that it wasn’t all an appearance that set of strange emotions we felt. No. It was all true, it was true because they were shared. I never understood the true meaning of the phrase “Happiness is only real if shared” until I went on Erasmus, I knew beautiful people and places, I shared strong, humble and amazing emotions with strangers, friends or people I had known from a few days. Because, really, happiness is real when you share it and this happiness that I felt I can still touch it with my hand and I can do it for ever because I’ve shared with you, my friends, whom are scattered around my beautiful Italy and others scattered all over the world.

What comfort can be bigger than knowing that my happiness is spread throughout the lands of this planet! These people I’ve met, have shared with me this happiness and they brought it in their native country, just as I did.

Don’t worry, I will be responsible too for guarding your happiness.

Don’t worry about it guys, it was all real!

A cura di: Giada Da Boit

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