You can never go back if you never leave.

I was having a Facebook chat conversation with my friend about some seemingly deep stuff and he asked me what I consider to be the best decision I have made in my life.

Now I don't know whether this usually is the kind of a question where a simple answer exists, but for me, it was so blatantly obvious it surprised even myself. The moment I decided to go and spend an exchange year abroad.

When thinking about that later on, I must have been barking mad. I was 16 years old, living with my parents when I filled out the application form. I didn't speak English properly, and I wasn't particularly good at making friends. My grandparents took me to London a year before I was supposed to leave in order to to convince me that I seriously wouldn't want to go to the UK for 11 months. They failed miserably. My dad was convinced I was never going to make it, and that I would be coming back before the year ended.

I was seventeen that summer I was taken to the airport of Helsinki-Vantaa. I stepped on the plane, knowing that I wouldn't be back in a year. And I was dead excited. Arriving to Edinburgh, they had a sign with my name on it. And on that rainy day in August 2007, my life as it is now, began.

If I said it was all easy I would be a liar. It definitely wasn't. I stayed with lovely people, but on my first day, I couldn't understand when they asked me if I wanted a cup of tea. My first day at school I got lost several times among the 1000 fellow students and had no idea where my lessons were supposed to be held. On my second day at school a bee stung me on my finger which swelled so that it was double the size. It's not a big thing, but when you are seventeen, unable to actually properly talk to anybody and located on an island a thousand miles away from home, it can feel like an end of the world. It hurt, and I cried.


After I couple of moths I started to understand what people were saying to me. I didn't get lost on the school corridors anymore and I had people I could talk to. What was remarkably weird in my mind was the fact that I didn't actually miss home. Not really. I was there, I had a new life and I knew I was going to go back eventually.

I managed to make friends. I even enjoyed most of my classes. I travelled to places and I bought things. I learned to love haggis. I learned to understand the Scottish accent aswell. Me, by myself. And it made me happy to be able to do all that. I was capable.

The worst crisis I faced was coming back to Finland. I had turned 18 and it was a sunny July. I didn't actually want to leave. I had started over a new life, build it all by myself on nothing. And it was like the plane ticket I held was tearing me away from who I had become. I didn't face a great cultural shock when coming to UK, but arriving back to Finland I just felt like a piece of puzzle that didn't fit in. I wasn't the same, but the surroundings were. I accidentally spoke some words of my native language with an accent, I missed baked beans and gosh, I longed to go back every single second I was awake.

Now almost five years later I have grown up a lot. I have understood how greatly it actually changed me to leave. And I seriously don't know who I would be if I never left as I see my life as pre-Edinburgh and post-Edinburgh phases. And still I don't think there's a better way to understand who you are and what matters to you than to start all over. You know, sometimes you have to go really far to see what's close to you.

I've gone back probably over ten times since. And it is what I always long to do. I'm Finnish, but the way I learned to live and see during the year will always keep me feeling a wee bit Scottish at heart. I am not torn apart anymore by being here and not being there. When I travel, I'm not torn apart by being away from Finland, not even on my month-long trips. I understood that my feeling of longing comes only from having something great out there - and that is not a shame, not something to cry over. I am just sincerely glad that I have two places I can call home.

So if you ever get the chance, go. Step out of the way and fall to the unknown. It was the best year of my life, and the best journey I ever chose to make.

Backpacking is more like a way of thinking and experiencing than something we do to save the money.

I suppose most of the people want to travel quite comfortably. They want to pay money for fancy hotels in city centres that serve breakfast free of extra charge and have a room service and a swimming pool. And you get fresh towels brought to you room instead of having to rent them from the receptions. And those sort of things.

Well, my idea of a good trip is quite different and I'd rather spend my money on something else. I've seen loads of hostels where you can actually get a bed for 8 euros a night, in a central location. So why would I pay hundreds of pounds/euros for my accommodation?

Hostels, B&B's and guesthouses are exciting. There are other people who might have decided to go backpacking for a month, and there are people who are looking for work. Everybody's coming from somewhere exciting and going to somewhere exciting. Maybe. If they even have plans on their supposed next destination.

They will tell you stories about worthwhile not-so-typical non-touristy attractions. And they'll tell you where to get the best pizza in the area. Of course you might get some funny people who walk around carrying knives on the common areas, staring at you funnily and falling asleep in random places such as a spare bed that happens to be in your dormitory, but hey, I suppose that's what too much good Guinness in Dublin does to you... But yeah, generally people are just lovely.

My relative has been to London over 200 times. He knows all the fancy overly-priced restaurants in the Soho area. But he doesn't know that you can actually get two chicken burger meals for £2.5 in Willesden. He's been to Tower Of London, The Houses of Parliament, HMS Belfast and The London Eye (okay, fair enough, so have I), but he's never ice-skated in an underground ice rink, taken a night bus to Kingston, been to Asda at 4 am or sat on the ground reafing a book in a randomly-appeared-from-somewhere-and-never-found-it-since-park in Southern London. He probably doesn't even know that if you manage to get in to the Tube around midnight when it's New Year, the journey is likely to be free of charge (though you're not likely to fit in or even be allowed to the stations)

Point being made: Did you know that if you save £60 a night on your accommodation each night for 7 nights a week, you can actually buy 840 pairs of black pants in Primark? And most importantly, you are likely to learn more, to see more and to live a bit more. At least if you value the same things as I do.