Maybe wanderlust is just homesickness for a different version of ourselves

There's this one moment, in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday, when everyday life briefly falters. A photo appears. A smell. A playlist that coincidentally plays that one song. And suddenly, we're back: on the beach in Ibiza, in the morning light of Ubud, on a rooftop terrace in Athens – in a place that is long gone. Spatially. And temporally.

We call this yearning "Fernweh" (wanderlust). This quiet, persistent longing for a place where we perhaps haven't been for a long time.

But what if it's not the place we miss?

What if, in truth, we miss someone – and that someone is ourselves? Just a version of us that was left behind there. Barefoot, unshowered, happy, with no appointments on our mind.

Perhaps that's why wanderlust is rarely just a longing for faraway places. Perhaps it's homesickness for a different version of ourselves.

What wanderlust really means

Wanderlust is generally considered the opposite of homesickness. While homesickness draws us home, wanderlust draws us out – into the distance, into the unknown, away from the familiar.

At least at first glance.

Because if you look closer, we rarely long for "the distance" in general. We long for something surprisingly specific. Not for the sea, but for exactly that beach. Not for Italy, but for that one alley in Rome where it smelled of espresso and warm stone. Not for Bali, but for that one morning in Ubud when the day was still completely open before us.

And then it's suddenly no longer about the distance.

Then it's about memory.

We don't miss Bali – we miss the feeling of being in Bali

When we say "I miss Bali," we rarely mean the complete reality of a place. Do we really miss the traffic? The muggy midday heat? The jet lag, the mosquitoes, the Wi-Fi that went out just when we needed it most?

Probably not.

We miss a selection. The first coffee when the air was still cool. The drive through the rice fields with the windows open. The light just before sunset that bathed everything in gold. The fact that we didn't have to be anywhere urgently that day.

Our memory is a remarkably talented curator. It removes waiting times, bad nights, and small disasters from the archive and presents us months later with a carefully edited best-of version of our own trip.

And frankly, it looks excellent.

Why our everyday life dissolves abroad

At home, we usually know pretty well who we are. We have routines, obligations, roles. We are colleagues, partners, daughters, bosses, neighbors. People know us – and with this familiarity come expectations.

When traveling, this tangle loosens.

In the cafe, no one knows what we do for a living. No one knows our past. No one asks if we usually get up at six or have claimed for three years that we'll finally do more exercise.

For a while, we can simply be someone who is just there. Without a backstory. Without explanation.

That can be surprisingly liberating.

The people we become on vacation

At home, twenty minutes of walking is sometimes too far. On vacation, we walk eighteen kilometers through a foreign city – and call it exploring.

At home, we can barely open our eyes in the morning. In Bali, we voluntarily get up at five because a sunrise awaits somewhere that we don't want to miss.

We try dishes whose names we can't pronounce. We talk to strangers at the next table. We spontaneously board a boat to an island we knew nothing about that morning.

Why is that, anyway?

Perhaps because travel gives us silent permission not to take our own habits so seriously for a few days. No one demands that we be braver or more curious.

But suddenly, we can be.

Open time – the real luxury of traveling

Perhaps after a trip, we don't miss free time in the classical sense at all. Perhaps we miss time that hasn't yet been assigned a task.

That's a subtle but crucial difference.

Even at home, there are free evenings, free weekends. But they are often planned long before they even begin: shopping, sports, meeting friends, taking care of everything that got left behind during the week.

When traveling, there are those rarer hours when the answer to "What are we doing later?" is actually: No idea.

And that, if you think about it for a while, feels like the greatest luxury of all. A day that doesn't yet know what it will become.

Why everything stays brighter in our memory when we're traveling

We barely remember an ordinary Tuesday four months ago. But a certain evening on Mykonos, a scooter ride through Canggu, or a random conversation in Istanbul – we might remember those years later.

New environments demand more attention. We look more closely because we don't know what awaits around the next corner. Smells are unfamiliar, sounds are new, even breakfast feels different when there are palm trees instead of trams outside.

At home, a lot runs on autopilot.

When traveling, we are awake.

Perhaps that's why we don't just miss other places. Perhaps we miss the intensity with which we were present there.

The trap of perfect memory

Of course, there's a catch to this story.

The version of ourselves we miss while traveling existed under special conditions. She didn't have to do her taxes, tackle a pile of laundry, or sit in a meeting at nine on Monday morning.

It's easy to be spontaneous when your calendar is empty. It's easy to enjoy life when you've consciously taken a break from it.

The comparison between our travel self and our everyday self is therefore sometimes simply unfair.

The person on the beach didn't automatically understand life better. She simply had a vacation, to be sober about it.

What wanderlust really tells us

And that's where it gets interesting.

Because if we strongly miss a particular trip, it's worth asking an honest question: What exactly do I miss?

Is it really the place? Or was I slower there? More curious? More outdoors, less reachable, more often in conversation with strangers? Did I sleep better, read more, forget my phone more often?

Wanderlust is sometimes a pretty good indicator of what's missing in our everyday lives. Not all of it can be taken home.

But a lot of it can.

What we can take home with us

This may sound trivial at first, but it is perhaps the most difficult exercise after every trip: not just bringing souvenirs, but habits.

Perhaps it wasn't the beach club we missed, but the long breakfast. Perhaps not Ibiza, but the dancing. Not Ubud, but the silence in the early morning. Not Mykonos, but the feeling of having dressed up nicely every evening and looking forward to the day.

Suddenly, wanderlust turns into a completely different, much more interesting question:

Which version of myself do I actually want to take home with me?

Maybe in the end, we don't miss a place at all

Of course, we'll continue to say, "I miss Bali." "I want to go back to Ibiza." "I'd really love Italy right now."

That's easier.

But behind some of these sentences, there might be something else. We miss long breakfasts. Warm nights. The feeling of not having to be constantly available. We miss curiosity, lightness, and days where every hour wasn't already planned.

And sometimes, we simply miss the person we were in exactly those moments.

Then wanderlust is suddenly no longer just the longing for as many kilometers as possible between us and home.

Then wanderlust is actually homesickness for a different version of ourselves.

And the most beautiful journey after that might not be to book another flight right away. But to take a small piece of that person home with you.