My Chocolate

   To organize, to decide a trip, is first of all a feeling, a sensation. It has been months since I started dreaming anytime I hear "South America". The first time I open my travel book, it is my feelings that guide me.
It is such a feeling that, if can't be lived, needs be described.

   Before the trip itself, when I see this South America guide on the table in front of me, this big colorful book of more than 400 pages, the need to open it is unbearable. And once open, all the magic comes to life. Reading the first few pages makes thousands of little ants walk in my stomach and my legs are unnerved... You know that feeling when you are so stressed out that you can't stay put ? Here it is. All the stress that life brings to me, when I open this big book, is transformed into a positive impulse. The ants in my tummy, this feeling of hunger although I just ate: I am hungry for travel, for those beautiful countries and people that I will meet. The unnerved muscles of my legs, the impossibility to stay put on my couch and read more than two pages at a time: I want to run across continents.

My whole body is asking me to move, but to move far. Far from known habits, far from known people, far from known landscapes.
My whole body wants to get on planes and buses to seek another world, because mine isn't enough.
My heart is pounding on the long wait to the departure.
   The closer the departure, the restless my body. Traveling is my drug, literally. A strong drug from which a few months of abstinence between two doses brings this magical stress.
If my addiction is harder to detect than from a real drug, it is probably closer to the addiction that athletes suffer from when they run. A good drug, the one that delivers so much endorphins in your body.

   Traveling is to me what dark chocolate is to sadness. 

Two small pieces of my chocolate from the Dutch sky