I remember when I got my first email with an invitation to write for VOICES. I was still at home, in Poland, impatiently waiting for my visa. Now I’m on the other side of the screen, a few published articles later. What about my home? Well, it’s been 3 months since I started to call Macedonia like that.

Moving here didn’t come without surprises. I quickly learnt that opening hours exist only in theory, you can get run over by a car while peacefully walking on the pavement, and burgers often come without buns. Oh, and let’s not forget the fact I’m going to see more monuments in Skopje’s city center than in my whole life before.

I wanted to move abroad for a while now, but I never thought it’d be Macedonia. To be honest, I didn’t really care – the only thing I knew was that I needed to go somewhere far away from home. I needed a challenge. Or, as a German person would say, I felt painfully Fernweh, longing for the unknown. At one of the Erasmus+ projects I’ve gone to before, I saw a sticker on someone’s suitcase saying “I want to go somewhere where nobody knows my name”, and I think this quote really stuck with me. I’m not sure what kind of coincidence brought me to Skopje, but I don’t think it could’ve turned out any better than this. Sometimes the most random decisions are truly the best ones.

Ania Wojdziak