“I was a young girl with a big dream: to see the world beyond its Romanian borders. Ever since I was 2-3 years old and first heard about America, Germany and England (yes, we used to call it England, not the UK), I wanted to be there, and not where I was at the time: in the lovely, but small Sibiu.

Maybe the fact that my parents moved to a different apartment every year or so, then divorced and I moved around with my father to different places when growing up, made me refuse the idea of a home. The closest thing I got to it was a place on the “River” street , which is a funny thing, considering that my blood flows rapidly, just like a tumultuous river whenever I get the chance to book a new trip.

Vienna is the second capital of a foreign country that I ever saw and the first one where I actually understood the language (my first one had been Budapest). The first time I ever went through the city, we wounded up in front of the University of Vienna, where I gazed at the ceilings of that incredible building and dreamed about becoming a student there.

With the money we had at the time and the difficulty of getting into an Austrian university for Romanians, who were not part of the EU back in 2006, it felt impossible. But nonetheless, impossible was nothing four years afterwards. Curiously enough, the Uni Wien was not my first stop in Vienna, but it definitely caught my eye with its Communication Studies after a semester in the wrong place for me. Now I can touch the sky and the wonderful golden ceiling.

At 23, I am EVERYWHERE (because I travel abroad at least once a month). Vienna is my home and it is the place I was born again, away from the pain of not being able to afford to see the world. No matter where I am (in New York, London, Paris or Tokyo), my heart is always in Vienna, traveling with my mind on a smaller scale, through the city.

You know how the Americans call their university the “Alma Mater”? That’s Vienna for me. Even without having a five-figure salary with a fancy car tied to it, I managed to explore the depths of the world and the depths of my soul these last 4,4 years with the help of my beautiful city and its infinite possibilities.

Of course, all this traveling is helping me become a better person and try to prove to other wanderlust-full people that the whole world is at the tip of their fingers. My curiosity has dragged me from Sibiu to Vienna and I hope it will take me to at least another 70 countries (to make a round sum with 30 I’ve already visited so far). ”

More info about Andra here: https://twitter.com/andramuresanu

@Andra Muresanu, author of the http://xpriment.com/ blog is a young Romanian who moved to Vienna 4,4 years ago