About barbieriwayfarer
Being half-Italian, a quarter Ukrainian and a quarter Polish I have always been particularly sensitive to the value of each culture. In this sense, to me travelling has always represented a sort of metaphor of what I am as well as a means to understanding what you could be or what others might decide to be. Travelling is the besy way to question who you are.
I am 22. So far I have visited about 20 countries and each time it was striking to realise the cultural heritage and social potential of each specific reality.
One of the reasons why I studied Philosophy is that I believe it is capable of teaching you how to see things in a diachronic perspective as well as how to critically address questions from different viewpoints at the same time. This is a crucial skill you need wherever you come across new cultural realities. In particular, I am interested in the branches of political and social philosophy: I am convinced that our ideas should be articulated in such a way that they should have an impact on real life and change those things we wish to see happen in a different way.
I have always loved writing, since it represents somehow the only dimension of my sensibility I could describe as being stable. Also, my Ukrainian grandmother has been an active dissident writer against the Soviet regime. Her biography has taught me how writing can be used as a weapon to convey important messages as well as to protect a human's right to stand for his ideas and his identity whenever third forces expect him/her to erase who you are.
As far as travel writing is concerned, what I appreciate the most is its capacity to link intellectual curiosity toward realities that collide with our everyday impressions to emotional levels that can make us think about the common features of the human being beyond any socio-cultural gap.
Having an identity on the straddle of several cultures, since I was a child I started to believe that to me borders are not a question of juridical hindrance but rather an existential state of being. In this sense, I am used to living quite a hectic lifestyle, living in between different countries in such a waw that it became a natural state of the mind and the body.
Being used to living in between different countries, I have discovered within myself a peculiar perception of what a frontier can mean. Writing about this feeling is the best way I have found to express what I am and what other people can discover to be, especially now that we live in a globalised world.
My Travel Map:
