Spontaneous Planning

Strangely enough my story ends where it first started, in Spain. As life may have it my adult life started with my first boyfriend, my first true love, who was Spanish. I was sixteen years old when I met him. This was more or less the first time I was exposed to foreign cultures, and with it a start of my international life (even though I did not know it at the time). I will never forget the first time we met. It was in Warsaw, Poland almost 20 years ago during a sports tournament.

I started playing volleyball when I was 11 for the most famous club in Croatia: Mladost. I was tall and slim so volleyball was a natural choice. However, the mean and ruthless competition between the girls in the club as well as prioritisation of my education made me quit the dream of pro volleyball world at the age of 15, after which I decided to continue playing volleyball for fun in a local club called Don Bosco. Don Bosco is an international catholic youth organisation which connects young people around the world through different interests and activities, the biggest one being sports. As it turns out this was a great move. I started truly enjoying playing volleyball, I travelled around Croatia and Europe playing in leagues and tournaments, and met many wonderful people (some of who are still very close friends of mine). Don Bosco played a key role in what is to be a very interesting future.

I went to Warsaw one year after joining the team to participate in an international youth sports tournament. This was an amazing experience where we got a chance to meet a lot of interesting young people from all around Europe, represent Croatia, and play competitive yet fun volleyball. We ended up second at the tournament, losing against the Italian team. After a bit of crying over the loss we moved on to partying, during which my best friend from the team Matea (also one of my best friends today) and I decided to pass by the very handsome Spanish basketball team we caught sight of during the tournament and try to get their attention. When I was a young girl there were a lot of Mexican soap-operas on TV which tattooed romanic stories involving latino lovers into our female brains. Of course I did not see much difference between Mexican and Spanish people at the time (just like some people today do not understand the difference between say Croatians and Russians). Anyway, after such brainwashing who could resist the hot tanned Spaniards playing basketball? So my friend and I decided to go and check out team España. Of course the guys noticed us (for those of you who have visited Croatia, you will know that tall Croatian women are never left unnoticed) and we started talking to a few of them (two tall, dark and handsome ones of course). Their English was not that great and we spoke little to no Spanish so conversation was a bit difficult. Then out of nowhere appeared this guy, extremely funny and with very good English, and he started translating for us in parallel with making us all laugh. He was a basketball referee at the tournament and was part of the Spanish gang. He was not the most handsome one in the team and you could see he was a bit older, but something just clicked and I started talking to him more than my intended bachelor. I think it was the humour, I just love to laugh. Anyway, at the end of the evening we all exchanged e-mails (there were no cell phones back then) and said our goodbyes.

Meeting my new Spanish friends coincided with my decision to start learning Spanish. This was, believe or not, not related. For some reason during high school I really wanted to learn Spanish. Maybe because I already spoke perfect English (I was learning it since I was 6 years old) and in my school the second foreign language was German which was not as exciting to learn (no offence to the Germans, they have a lot of great qualities, but a melodic language is not one of them). Anyway, due to my great academic and sports record, the city of Zagreb granted me a scholarship which I used to pay for Spanish language school. At the same time I started exchanging e-mails with my new Spanish friend, Enrique the interpreter. Our talks started with e-mails in English, then moved on to SMS (when I got my first cell phone, yay) and very long (and extremely expensive, almost-got-killed-by-my-parents) long-distance telephone calls in Spanglish, and then ended up with Skype video conferencing, trips around Spain and Croatia, and a very romantic relationship in Spanish. Being a telecommunications engineer I can see that this relationship was not only a journey through a new culture, language and first love but also a journey through the modern history of telecommunications. The relationship itself ended after several years, however what stayed is my fluent Spanish language and an increasing interest in engaging with different cultures.

After my (first) Spanish adventure I learned two more languages (Italian and French), finished my Electrical Engineering Degree and got my first job at Ericsson Nikola Tesla in Zagreb. During the past ten years I have lived and worked in Canada, USA, Sweden, Japan, Egypt and now Spain, traveled to numerous other countries, seen many amazing places, met many amazing people, grown both personally and professionally to an incredible extent, and gathered experiences for several lifetimes.

This professional and personal journey around the world will be the topic of my first attempt at writing. I believe certain stories and experiences are worth sharing with the world so I hope you will enjoy reading mine as much as I will enjoy writing them. And who knows, maybe it inspires you to try something similar, whether it is travelling or writing.

Let the literary journey begin!