Reflections of a Twenty-Something International Nomad

My journey through Europe, America, Russia and Canada in search of Home

I have traveled extensively. From an early age, my family would regularly embark on different journeys across Europe. One of the reasons for that was the simple desire to explore and break free of our ordinary life, but I suspect that the major reason came from my father: as a Swiss native who was forced to leave his home country at a very young age and was transplanted in a land he knew nothing of — including the language — it always felt as though our many trips to Northern Europe, including our many trips to Switzerland, were a way for him to break free of the environment he had been forced into and reclaim something that was more familiar. Or, perhaps, I’m projecting a bit.

From an early age, I felt as though my many stays in different countries were somehow more truthful to me and my real self than what I ought to perceive as “home”: the country and the city where I was born and raised. Because my real “home” never quite felt like it to me.

I wasn’t happy where I was. Sure, I liked the people that surrounded me — some of them, at least — and I liked learning, and reading, and listening to music, and watching films. But I never felt grounded in the place I was from in the same way that many people normally are. I have met people who could never fathom leaving the country where they were born and raised. For me, it was the opposite. I couldn’t wait to leave, to explore, and, far from being the whimsical dream of a bored teenager, this hunger remains a primal desire of mine to this day.

I grew up in Italy during the years that marked the birth of the European Union. Even now, I distinctly remember TV ads from the early 2000s introducing us to our new, universal currency: the Euro. I even remember the very specific type of coin purses that were being sold to collect our brand-new Euro coins. Somebody gifted me one that was light blue, the same color as the sky on a summer day.

The idea of unity and communion was in the air: we were taught that we were part of a big family, the family of Europe, and that we shared so much with our brothers and sisters from our neighboring countries. We were taught to sing the Official Anthem of the European Union, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, in elementary school.

My identity was not just that of Italian, and not just that of Swiss: it was that of European. We were taught about the War, something that seemed to belong to a past so remote I could hardly conjure it up in my mind: our people were One, our borders open to each other, our languages — for the most part — very closely resembling each other, our values the same. Therefore, as I traveled from one part of our continent to another, what I saw were different facets of the same beautiful unity. All of it was Home.

I grew up in Italy during the years that marked the birth of the European Union […] My identity was not just that of Italian, and not just that of Swiss: it was that of European. […] Our people were One, our borders open to each other, our languages — for the most part — very closely resembling each other, our values the same. Therefore, as I traveled from one part of our continent to another, what I saw were different facets of the same beautiful unity. All of it was Home.

…or was it?

Another aspect that set my generation apart from the ones that preceded it was the rapid advance in technology and, naturally, the even more rapid advance in globalization.

One consequence of both those factors was that people of my generation were de facto raised by American television.

No, this is not a joke.

The United States, or, as it is most iconically known, America, felt like a land that was far, far away — so far away it might as well have been on a different planet — and yet, at the same time, strangely familiar.

Its specific look, general culture, sense of humor, beauty standards, music, pop culture, all of it was familiar to us all, even though only a few people I personally knew had ever set foot in America. When I first visited the US, at the age of eighteen, my immediate reaction was the same that I was to hear from so many other young immigrants in the years to come: “It’s just like you see it in the movies!”.

After little more than a year after my first, brief visit to America, I permanently moved there, at the tender age of nineteen, all on my own.

However, I should probably specify that what I mean by that is that I moved to New York. First, Tarrytown, in New York State. Then, one year later, and from then until I moved out in 2021, New York City.

I would later learn at my own expense that New York City is in no way America. As I once heard someone say: “New York is but an island between Europe and America”.

I spent the next six years of my life in New York, leaving only, if ever, once or twice a year, and never for more than a few weeks. I very quickly came to accept the fact that New York was my new Home, and I had no trouble accepting it.

My first year in New York was one of the happiest of my life. Looking back, though, I have to admit that much of that happiness came from naivety — oh, blessed young naivety!— and hope for the future. But, at the time, and even now, as I reminisce about those times, it doesn’t matter, because I was happy, and, perhaps even more importantly, I was liberated. I had been freed from my “cage” — the country that I had been transplanted in — and transported to a new land, where a completely different world awaited me. And the best part was that it was a world that, in some mystical way, I already knew. As I said before, American culture felt familiar to people of my generation. In a way, the experience of moving to the US was like uncovering a myth whose legend I had heard so much of. It was like finally meeting face-to-face with a specter whose shadow had haunted my entire life. Now it was here, in front of my eyes, real, tangible, and it was mine. My new Home.

In a way, the experience of moving to the US was like uncovering a myth whose legend I had heard so much of. It was like finally meeting face-to-face with a specter whose shadow had haunted my entire life.

I could spend hours dissecting my life in the US. Much happened. Some of it was inspiring and life-changing. But a lot of it was tragic. Marked by many traumatic events. Nevertheless, when I finally left, it was very much against my will. By that point, America was, undeniably, my Home. And to be told that I had to leave my home because I somehow did not qualify for a work VISA felt like a slap in the face and an affront to my persona, the one that had embraced this country and grown into an adult while she was in it.

But let me take a step back…

Because there’s yet another adventure to mention before my final departure from New York.

I first visited Russia in 2016, and instantly fell in love with it. One year later, I spent a summer semester living and studying in Moscow, the city with whom I fell in love at first sight.

Aside from my first year in New York, and perhaps even more than it, the time I spent in Moscow was the happiest of my life.

I’m not sure I can describe why I loved the city as much as I did. I just know that it made me happy. That I found it beautiful, beyond any other city I had ever seen — and I had seen a lot of them. I was constantly exploring every corner of the city and feeling enchanted by its colors, architecture, culture, music, history, people, by its very soul.

I only ever found a piece of writing that came close to conveying my feelings for Moscow, and it is the following:

Я ведь любил [Москву] бесконечно. Возвращаясь из других мест, испытывал острое счастье. [Её] гармония противостояла в моих глазах хаосу, который пугал и расстраивал меня с детства. Я сейчас не могу как следует восстановить событий моей жизни, помню лишь, что, когда меня захлестывали волны этого хаоса, спасала мысль о [Москве] — острове, о который они разбиваются…

My love for [Moscow] knew no boundaries. Upon returning from other places, I would experience an intense happiness. In my mind, [its] harmony opposed the chaos that had frightened and tormented me since my childhood. As of now, I cannot properly restore the memory of the events of my life, but I do remember that, when the waves of that chaos overwhelmed me, what saved me was the thought of [Moscow] — of the island, upon whose contact they shattered.

I kept going back to Moscow every year, whenever my breaks from school and my personal budget allowed me. It was always the happiest of times.

And there’s no need for me to explain to you why the love story with what was probably the most beloved of all my Homes had to end, and end, yet again, tragically.

In the end, two of my Homes were taken from me. There was nothing I could do about it. And for very long, the grief inherent to both those losses was unbearable. Truth be told, it still is.

And, finally, the fourth and most recent destination of my nomadic journey: Canada.

My journey in Canada was a surprising one for many reasons. My expectations about Canada and the Canadian life were almost instantly shattered upon moving here in 2022.

I wasn’t disappointed, per se. But Canada — and Toronto in particular, which is where I settled — proved to be something completely different from all my previous Homes. So much so that, more than a year later, I still cannot bring myself to call it or even think of it as Home.

I thought Canada would be similar to the US. In a way, it is. In other ways, it is absolutely not. Toronto felt like a city whose soul was simply not strong enough, or well-defined enough, for me to observe it, dissect it, and understand it the same way that I had learned to observe, dissect and understand the soul of Rome, New York City, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Paris, Vienna, Amsterdam, Dublin, Bern, Copenhagen, Prague, Barcelona, or any other city I had visited before. If anything, its true “soul” remains something of a nebulous, ill-defined shadow to me. And that brings a sense of emptiness and loss there, where, in other cities, I had experienced a sense of fulfillment and richness.

At the present moment, I am “stuck” in Toronto. At least for a while. The hope of returning to one of my beloved Homes — New York City or Moscow — seems virtually impossible. And the chance of finding yet another one, of moving to yet another country, adjusting to yet another lifestyle, and starting all over yet again, seems very likely. Both titillating and, at once, intimidating.

Because, while my love for traveling continues, the need for Home remains unfulfilled. When I thought I had found my true Home, a place that looked and felt like it, it ended up slipping through my fingers like water, and nothing in the world will ever make me forget the sensation of having something as precious as your own, chosen Home taken away from you, leaving you staring wide-eyed as it fades away in the distance, unable to do anything about it.

While my love for traveling continues, the need for Home remains unfulfilled.

I don’t know how many people can relate to this, but then again, I also don’t know how many people can share the feeling of having never felt truly at home in the place that was their home. I suspect some of you will even dismiss me as a privileged, wealthy young woman — neither of which I am — who’s whining about not being able to live in “the city of her dreams”. That is far from what I’m talking about.

At the present moment, I am a twenty-seven-year-old living in Canada. I have traveled far and wide and I carry within myself both the joy and the grief that came from all those experiences. And the many years I spent doing that brought me to the conclusion that my desire to travel and explore new realities was, in fact, a desire to find a place that I could call Home. So far, I have yet to accomplish that task: to find Home and to be able to permanently settle in it, to find and have my own Home, once and for all.

I have traveled far and wide and I carry within myself both the joy and the grief that came from all those experiences.

In the meantime, I keep being a nomad, moving and exploring, sacrificing what I have to sacrifice to maintain this lifestyle and still thrive, all because of the “mystical”, unfathomable “call Home”. Perhaps I’m chasing a phantom. But I know that every country I ever visited or lived in for an extended period of time added something to my soul and to my true self, and that is something that I cherish with all my heart, even in those moments when I grieve over some very painful losses, or feel like a perpetual stranger in a strange land, a no land’s woman with no true place to call Home.

Martine Nyx is a filmmaker, writer, and educator. She was born and raised in Europe, and moved to the United States at the age of 19. She spent six years living and studying in the US, before moving to Canada in 2022. She is currently based in Toronto, Ontario.

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