There is a specific kind of happiness I only experience in airports.
Not when I arrive somewhere. Not when I board the plane. The exact moment my suitcase wheels hit the airport floor and I realize I am about to leave.
That feeling is my personal drug of choice.
There is a sound on TikTok using a Life Is Worth Living lyric that people use whenever they are enjoying life a little too much, and honestly, that is exactly what plays in my head every time I walk through an airport terminal.
I become embarrassingly happy.
If my flight is at seven in the morning, I will wake up at four already dressed and dancing around my apartment because I know I am about to travel. It has nothing to do with the airport itself. Airports are stressful, crowded, and objectively unpleasant. But emotionally, they represent possibility.
A new beginning, even if only temporary.
Traveling makes me feel intensely alive in a way everyday life often cannot.
Hearing different languages around me, observing people I will never see again, navigating unfamiliar metro stations, accidentally discovering cafés or bookstores hidden on side streets, all of it makes the world feel larger and my own problems feel smaller.
For a few days, you are allowed to become a professional guest in someone else’s reality.
And after the visit, the city gives you a gift in return: new perspectives, new ideas, new references, new ways of understanding life.
I always come back home feeling richer somehow.
Not financially richer, unfortunately. Emotionally richer.
I carry small fragments of every place I visit long after I leave. A playlist. A perfume I wore there. A habit I picked up. A different way of dressing. A new artist I discovered in a museum gift shop. Even the coasters I collect from cafés become tiny emotional souvenirs of the versions of myself that existed there.
And maybe that is why I romanticize travel so intensely.
I do not simply plan vacations. I curate them.
I create playlists months in advance. I organize itineraries color-coded to perfection. I research museums, bookstores, restaurants, landmarks, cafés, and little hidden places only locals seem to know about. I carefully plan outfits for each day because, somehow, clothing feels more honest when nobody around you knows who you are professionally.
Traveling is the only time I fully rediscover my personal style.
At home, clothing often becomes practical. Appropriate. Professional. Efficient. But while traveling, everything becomes intentional again. One day I want monochrome neutrals, the next I want color and patterns and chaos. I dress entirely based on emotion and curiosity.
It feels less like performing femininity and more like reconnecting with it.
And honestly, I think that is part of why so many women love traveling together.
Women are constantly emotionally attuned to everything. Work. Relationships. Expectations. Safety. Time management. Future planning. Emotional labor. We rarely stop observing the world around us.
Travel does not necessarily silence that awareness, but it redirects it toward something softer and more beautiful.
Instead of focusing on deadlines, we focus on architecture.
Instead of stress, we focus on playlists.
Instead of survival, we focus on possibility.
That is why my yearly girls’ trips feel almost sacred to me. Nobody understands the joy of collective feminine excitement like other women do. The coordinated outfits, the overplanned itineraries, the emotional significance of coffee shops and bookstores, the discussions in hotel rooms at midnight, all of it matters far more than people realize.
And maybe no city represents that feeling for me better than Berlin.
Berlin feels like the city version of becoming yourself.
Not in a polished or perfect way. In a raw, unapologetic way.
It feels like a place for people actively working on themselves.
Of course, people often associate Berlin with its nightlife, but I think the city’s identity goes much deeper than that. Its history feels like a constant rejection of uniformity and depersonalization. Berlin carries this strange emotional atmosphere that quietly encourages individuality. It feels like a city telling you that reinvention is allowed.
That maybe you are allowed to become more yourself instead of less.
No trip feels complete to me without a carefully curated playlist attached to it. Music has a strange ability to preserve emotions more accurately than photographs sometimes can. Months after returning home, one song can instantly bring back an entire version of yourself: the outfit you wore, the metro station you got lost in, the café where you sat alone for two hours feeling unexpectedly hopeful.
My Berlin playlist feels exactly like the city itself to me: slightly nostalgic, effortlessly cool, emotionally chaotic in a beautiful way.
Berlin Playlist
Put Your Records On — Corinne Bailey Rae
When I imagine my perfect Berlin day, it is never particularly extravagant.
It starts slowly: coffee in Prenzlauer Berg, wandering through bookstores, listening to music while walking with no urgency whatsoever. Maybe visiting Museum Island and spending far too long staring at paintings I do not fully understand emotionally but somehow still feel connected to.
Then later, tired feet, messy hair, a rooftop at sunset, music playing softly in the background while the city lights begin turning on one by one.
Not a dramatic movie scene.
Just quiet happiness.
The kind where you suddenly realize:
I think I am slowly becoming a person I actually like.
And maybe that is the version of myself I am trying to meet while traveling.
Not a cooler version. Not a more successful version. Not a more productive version.
Just myself without the noise.
Without workplace anxiety, societal expectations, career panic, or constant pressure to optimize my existence into something impressive.
The most authentic version of me is probably still the same girl who gets excited about tiny details, creates playlists for imaginary scenarios, buys souvenirs nobody else would care about, and feels genuine joy sitting in foreign metros with music in her headphones.
That part of me exists at home too, but while traveling, she blooms completely.
Maybe that is why certain cities become emotionally important to us.
Not because they change who we are, but because they briefly remove the things preventing us from seeing ourselves clearly.
Some cities do not change you.
They reveal you.
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