On loving a city, finding what you need, and Taylor Swift - In Rome

Photo Credit - Emil Garabey - instagram.com/emgarro

When you tell people you work in travel, one of their next questions is always: “so what’s your favorite place?” And my answer is the same as Audrey Hepburn’s in Roman Holiday — “Rome - by all means, Rome!”

Rome is my favorite city. The city I return to again and again, with no plans, no expectations.

But I’ve always had trouble explaining why it’s “my city”. I can talk about the food, the history the great friends I’ve made there over the years. But that’s a surface answer.

I love Rome because, more than any other place on Earth, I find what I need there.

On my first visit, in 2013, I was struggling with anxiety - specifically anxiety over dying. Existential anxiety. Every time I got in the car, I was sure I would die in a fiery crash. Brain aneurysm, stroke, a freak meteor - surely something was about to get me. And my life, all 24 years of it, would be a waste.

But you get humbled by the sheer scale of time in a place like Rome. The thousand-year-old buildings. The thought of the millions upon millions of people who’ve scratched out their lives on this little patch of land around a little bend in an inconsequential river. And then there’s the noise. The chaos of Rome. The lack of rules around driving. I felt unimportant. I was just one of the billions. And rather than make me feel worse, this feeling was freeing.

My subsequent trips have always come at milestones - the sudden death of a friend, my first spring as an entrepreneur, my divorce.

This summer I went to Rome - alone (unless you count a broken heart). And Rome again gave me what I needed. I rode the metro bus with no destination, listening to Taylor Swift’s “Speak Now” the morning it was re-released. It’s silly, I know. How typical. But I listened to these songs that were “our songs”, the songs that reminded me of such specific moments - so specific it was almost spooky.

But now I was hearing them - the new versions - while riding through Rome. Like it was a new version of me. Like I could feel the memories getting overwritten. Rome giving me, again, exactly what I didn’t know I needed.

Travel takes you away from yourself. Travel gives you time to step back and look inward. And sometimes letting yourself get carried off by new places and people - often that’s exactly what we need.