Which country is your favourite ?

Travelling through new countries with mixed feelings.

What makes you love or dislike a country? What is it that makes you feel safe and comfortable out in the unknown and why do you feel uneasy and threatened in other regions? Or how do you choose a place to stay in for ever?

Since weeks I am crossing one country after another, slowly making my way to Istanbul by bike. And I can not get around to think: “Isn’t it funny how you can feel safe and inspired in one country and really bad in the next one?”

How come? What happened?

Meanwhile some points might be obvious, for you to point at. The food, the architecture, the cities, landscapes… Others are completely out of your control. Who you will meet, whose path you’ll cross, the

energy of a place, how you will feel there.
The first is important, but the second crucial for the impression a new place is going to leave in you. Or at least it is, to me.

When I entered one country, I had no expectations and I got surprised many times for the good and for the worst. Overall, my experience of the country was nothing but intense. Mixed with a bit of nostalgia now, that I left, it makes me think back as a place I loved to visit and that I want to visit again.

The next border crossing, my expectations where to find even better than ever before. Cheaper food, friendlier people, new landscapes and crazy adventures. Maybe I just set the expectations too high.

I got disappointed many times, and soon my own mood changed to fear instead of excitement. Anyone I look at seems to be angry or sad. Dogs barking everywhere, dry fields burned out by the sun. I didn’t feel welcome.

Every day I hope to be proven wrong; I want my picture of this area to change. But I am already too far into fear and uncomfort to attract otherwise.

Does that mean the country isn’t nice?

Not at all.

But I have probably chosen the wrong route. Maybe I was too many times in the wrong place or at the wrong time. Maybe the person that

looked at me angry would have smiled just one instance later. Or maybe it was my angry face, that provoked their cold reaction.

Nevertheless, I might be back one day and see the country in a different light.

Because maybe you can choose where and when to visit a place, but what you are going to see of it are all the chances and all the unforeseeable incidents that will happen during your time spend there. It might have been better later, or worst. Maybe you were in the right place at the right time. Who did you meet? Who was with you? Even your personal emotional stage, free, happy, worried matters in any perception of a new place.

One thing is for sure, any place visited twice, is never the same again. You are not the same!

Which parts are the ones that make you appreciate a place or country more or less? Can you point at them or is it rather an intuition, a feeling?

I wrote down those thoughts a few weeks back on this journey, but still wanted to share them. And if you feel like sharing your own experience about it, I would love to hear it!