Tania's Narrative

In 2005, a very beautiful, but very shy young girl of just twenty-two, who did not realize how her always present smile and her smooth ways enchanted everyone, decided she was fed up with her job, her home, her country, everything. Those who knew her had always seen her as a good girl, very responsible and polite. At home, she always did her chores. At school she always did her homework. At work, she always stayed late, to finish whatever senseless task her boss gave her.

She had always seen herself as a happy, well-off young woman. But one morning she woke up and she felt she wasn’t the same. She was not that compliant girl anymore. She looked out the window and saw a green and yellow bird flying around. The bird flew into an oak tree, where two others were comfortably sitting, in the branches, as if at home. These birds were free. They could fly off anywhere they wanted. They could go to lively, sunny Seville. They could go to the colder cities of the north. Or they could fly off to Barcelona and stand calmly, looking at the blue Mediterranean sea, bringing new hopes and taking new dreams with it.

She wasn’t free. She wasn’t as free as those lovely small birds in the backyard. She couldn’t just leave, go to some distant place, where no one knew her, where she could be anything she wanted: irreverent, bold, adventurous, a free-spirit. And as she chose her clothes for the day (which would be like any other day, colourless) she started thinking about a trip, to a South-American country maybe. No, she hadn’t enough money. In Europe then. To France. She would go to the south of France.

And so, throughout the day, she started making the necessary arrangements. She went on the internet (how she loved the new technologies, fast and efficient, as she liked it) and she looked up a city in the south of France, a small town, in the countryside, with green pastures.

She went home that evening and told her mother all about her marvellous travelling plans. Her mother listened carefully and simply replied: “But honey, there’s no place like home, don’t you agree?”.