Home / Posts tagged 'goodbye'
Manu | 6 October 2012 | 9 comments

The Truck of Viking Across Africa

It’s less than 3 months left now!

It’s becoming exciting and also scary at the same time. I am leaving a place where I have been for four amazing years, I am leaving my friends and my daily life to pursue a dream of freedom and it cannot be more scary than this. The plan is: I am gonna spend the last 2 months and a half here in Amsterdam and then go to Italy for Christmas and just after New Years I will fly to Iceland, where I am planning to stay for a couple of days before the trip, so  that I can meet the others and do my last attempt to see the Northern Lights.

Yesterday I suddenly realized that after I leave to Italy, I am not going to come back to Amsterdam anymore. So far, I don’t know why but I always thought I would have been leaving from here, but the truth is that from London the ticket is much cheaper. So, in December I will have to say Goodbye to my friends here, and I think this will be the most difficult part. I have been living in Amsterdam for 4 years now, and I have strong links with a lot of amazing people. Yesterday, when I realized this, I really had to breath deeplyand start to think about it and accept it. That’s life, and this is one step further.

My friends will always be my friends anyway, it doesn’t matter where I am going to move, but loosing the daily amazing time I spend with them is tough to accept.

I know these feelings, I already experienced them so many times and I know how hard it can be. You never get used to goodbyes and these are the hardest of all the things you have to do when you leave a place. It’s almost like the end of a circle. I remember when I arrived here alone, knowing nobody, how small I felt, and now after 4 years the circle closes itself and I will leave this place with a lot of people and feelings to greet.

It’s great anyway, it’s part of life. As soon as I will be on the road again it will start to feel better again and I will only think about it like an amazing period of my life.

For the rest, I just gave notice for my house. I will leave it at the end of November. I will have to start selling the few things I own, small pieces of furniture and then I will have to ship a box to Italy with all my books. For my clothes, I count on my brother to come to Amsterdam before Christmas so that he can help me to carry some stuff to Rome in a couple of suitcases. It’s not a big deal, I don’t have a lot of stuff and I am not worried about this at all. I always said to my friends :“If you want to travel, you must travel light”, and I do travel light, I never carry  to much stuff with me and wherever I am I always make sure not to own too much. Now, here it’s a bit different as I have been living here for 4 years, but I can still proudly say that I have been very coherent with my thoughts.

The truck of Vikings Across Africa currently in Reykjavik

And then there is the real preparation to Africa.

Yes, Africa, the land I cannot even imagine at the moment.

I am not spending my time finding all kind of info about Africa, so far. I don’t even look for any photo or make any research about it. First of all, because we are going to cross 20 countries, that is really a lot, and it’s impossible to think about knowing everything about all of them. And second, I really want to arrive to those countries as much pure as I can and leave them the possibility to mesmerize me with their beauty and their real life. I don’t want to go there with any expectation or prejudice, Africa is a huge continent that Western people love to resume always with imagines of poverty. I am sure people, landscapes, nature, life, everything is amazing and different in Africa, and I really want to get the impressions from the field, and not from any story teller.

It’s weird to think that in 3 months this huge adventure will be finally started. I have been waiting for it all year, I am almost exhausted to be waiting and to talk about it with people. Now I just want to go, be on the road again and enjoy all those 200 days of amazing adventures and freedom.

Doing a travel like this, leaving everything behind and just go is a great way to clean up your life from a lot of rubbish that you keep collecting on the way and at the same time keep the good things that are forever. I see this trip as a great moment to really clean up my life, leaving the feelings and people who really count and deserve it, and having a change to discover something new either of the world and of myself.

I am thinking to keep notes of my feelings and of my journey not only on the net through this blog but also on the paper. I would love to write a book while there, so that I will have a great memory of such a lifetime experience forever. I will write it in Italian, as it’s my own language and my friend Kelly, who already helped me to translate the website at the very beginning, will translate it in English, so that when the trip will be over I can share it with everybody.

A lot of people are so worried to know what I am going to do when the trip is over. Well, I don’t know it, and that’s great. That’s one of the reasons why I decided to leave everything here in Amsterdam, because I don’t know what I am going to do, I will be on the other side of the planet, literally, in one of the most beautiful countries and cities in the world, and I don’t really imagine myself taking a plane the day after and come back to my boring 9-5 job in a office sitted in from of a computer, dreaming forever about the most amazing experience I ever had. I don’t know what’s gonna happen on the road, I don’t know what’s gonna happen once the trip will be finished, but I rather figure myself still in South Africa for a bit, exploring the rest, and not back to Europe for sure.

This trip is a big door that opens up under my eyes and that for sure it’s gonna change me and my future. I like to see it like this. That’s why it’s also scared. I think all this it’s just beautifully normal and amazing at the same time.

It makes me feel so alive and excited, scared and sure of my choices, happy and sad to leave, and incredibly free to feel all this and enjoy it at the fullest!