Ireland

The year that changed everything. Nine months in Dublin on the Erasmus programme, the first true experience of living abroad — a journey that wasn't a journey, but a chapter of life.

Dublin in the 2000s was still the "Celtic Tiger" — a young, lively city in full economic expansion. The music scene in the Temple Bar pubs was legendary: live bands every evening, beer flowing and an energy only university cities possess. The bustling Grafton Street, the buskers playing, the bookshops, the cafés. Trinity College with the Book of Kells, Phoenix Park with its deer, St Stephen's Green on a Saturday afternoon. A city on a human scale, where in a few months you become "local".

The long stay allowed a discovery of real Ireland, the one tourists don't see. Athlone, in the heart of the country on the River Shannon — a quiet town where time flows slowly and the pub is the centre of social life. Clonmacnoise, the medieval monastery on the Shannon banks, among church ruins and Celtic crosses.

The most memorable excursion: the Aran Islands, reachable by ferry from the Galway coast. Inis Mór, the largest, is a limestone plateau battered by the Atlantic wind, with dry-stone walls dividing the fields and Dún Aonghasa — the semicircular prehistoric fort overlooking the ocean from a sheer three-hundred-metre cliff. The Connemara National Park straight after: peat bogs, black lakes, purple mountains (the Twelve Bens) and a light that changes every five minutes.

The Northern Ireland trip: Belfast, still marked by the conflict — the Falls Road and Shankill Road murals, the peace walls, the tense but evolving atmosphere. Derry with its walls. And then the Giant's Causeway at Bushmills — the 40,000 hexagonal basalt columns created by volcanic activity 60 million years ago, which legend says the giant Finn McCool built as a bridge to Scotland.

Chinese New Year 2005 in Dublin, on 9 February — an explosion of colour and fireworks in the heart of the city, an unexpected and unforgettable celebration.

The language learned in the field, friends from all over the world, the daily rain becoming normal, the evening Guinness at the local bar, the Celtic traditions, the house parties, the weekends on the road: a unique formative experience that paved the way for every journey that followed.