What’s your postcode again?

Ayvalik

Airports are arenas of emotions, information, objects and human activity; rinks for scintillating scientific performance, which never ceases to amaze me. When people around me complain about the blah food served by the x airline and the limited inflight entertainment options, I divert to the proficiency, competence and intelligence that lead to the arduous event of flying. Absolutely my first air travels in planes weren’t so sophisticated, and by its nature, traveling, regardless of the transport modality, is conquered with practice.

Born in Bulgaria by Bulgarian parents and raised in Greece with the authority of an essentialist national ideology that advocated “You are born Greek, you cannot become Greek”, I was actually nurtured by a secret ambition to become a citizen of the world. Stern necessity or strong personal voice? — living in South Korea these days, I am still an unbroken traveler who is not quite sure where this knack of movement stems from.

With time, I have grown an aversion toward nationality as the definitive answer to one’s personality, skills and chances in prosperity. When my mother inquired about my sister’s grade in Greek Literature back in my sister’s high school days, the teacher replied: “What is wrong with grade 17? You are definitely not suggesting that your Bulgarian daughter’s Greek language is at the same level as her Greek classmates.” The truth is that my sister’s Greek was at much higher level than her classmates — she is a gifted polyglot after all. My own class memories spin around my mates gawking at me upon every mention of the word Bulgaria and its derivatives in History classes that were examining the hostile Bulgarian-Greek relationships of the earlier 20th century. Ever since, in social occasions that I have to mention my Bulgarian origin, I get a sudden feeling of warmth spreading through my upper body and face: embarrassment.

Travel to investigate

In the cultural frenzy of my teens, traveling was my pass to invisibility — in these short therapeutic journeys around Europe and to America, I was free to reshuffle my Golden Rules, and come a step closer to who I wanted to be, without the heftiness of what people expected me to be. Upon return I was facing the tangible uphill struggle: holding onto the new nonchalant, lenient and easy self I anticipated. But to be honest, traveling in adolescence is predominantly a whimsical and romantic bliss — I was traveling for the adventure, for the adrenaline rush that hits you in a moment of excitement and for meeting new characters (friends or enemies, lovers or partners).

Travel to learn

Going to England to study a Master’s was the natural walk of life to choose. The journey of international education, which is a small part of the traveling picture of my life was the most enthusiastic and eye-opening outing. The enthusiasm was the result of youth and ignorance — as sophomores we weren’t worrying about whether we could or couldn’t change the world but how we would! Now, I wish we had set our sights on changing the few annoying bits about our neighborhood. What a change we could have brought to the elderly, the coloured, the immigrants, the mothers, the homeless and the drug addicts of our street.

Travel to belong

Goodbyes are the stumbling block to unbiased traveling — the moment you have to enter the airport security area, and you tear yourself apart with anger and sorrow for where you are heading to and whom you are leaving behind. I had been preparing for my trip to the African continent for a few years with interviews, desk research and double shifts at work that boosted my savings account. The day I booked my ticket to Accra, I was holding in my hand (I purchased a physical ticket) all I had ever wanted: a journey to Africa. And my other hand was tangled in my today’s husband hand. There is this feeling of belonging to more than one place that makes me travel.

Travel to understand

My passport is Greek. My husband is a British national, born in Saudi Arabia from Eritrean parents. My extended family (cousins, uncles and aunties, grandparents and nephews) lives in Bulgaria. My sister holds an American only passport and her husband is Ghanaian who was born in Czech Republic and has lived all his adult life in the USA. My two-years-old niece is somehow the flower of all these seeds and my children will probably be born in different countries, unsuspected to me at the moment. In a world defined by the speed of change from traditional to modern and the speed of travels and information, it’s at best vintage to talk about single identities and pure nations.

In his book The World Until Yesterday, Jared Diamond comments: “In the modern Western world we have come to take the freedom to travel for granted, but previously it was exceptional. In 1931 no New Guinean born in Goroka had ever visited Wapenamanda a mere 107 miles to the west; the idea of traveling from Goroka to Wapenamanda, without being killed as an unknown stranger within the first 10 miles from Goroka, would have been unthinkable.” Yet, in 2014 only, I have traveled 20,000 miles internationally and I am getting to know South Korea by taking long weekend trips in despair to seize the world.

Travel to follow

I traveled to South Korea because I followed my husband nine months after he first landed on the country with a two-year employment contract. The confusing mixture of similarities and differences between South Korea and other familiar to me societies, such as the Greek or the British, is part of what fascinates me about this country and its people. South Koreans have a self-contradictory tendency: they are shy but they are open to meeting new people and welcoming them to their lives; the parents are strict but at the same time they let their kids hang around with them in restaurants and bars in the late-night hours.

South Korea is the fourth country after Greece, England and Ghana, where I have arrived as an immigrant — a proud traveler who is prepared for everything to happen along the way and usually suffers quietly at the end of the line, hiding fears, concerns and hardships behind a fulgent smile. Immigration is physically and mentally exhausting: from meteorological conditions and air pollution to smells, sounds and … toilets and beds that are not as you are used them to be. The one way to go through immigration without losing your passions, loves and inspirations is to adapt (i.e. to compromise) and to accept. My level of adaptation has totally shifted my standards and my expectations from people — I dislike bellyachers.

But merely traveling as having a child or a career is not the pattern for a fulfilling life; it’s just my way to a mental settlement that will one day lead me back home. And I look forward to finding out where home is.