And that was it?

That's what I kept repeating to myself as the bus rolled out of Turin station on April 5, 2025 - exactly one year after the day I moved to Turin - and the 16-hour journey began. The destination was none other than Budapest, my home. It was strange to leave behind the city, the people, my everyday life there, which after a while was no longer about 'successfully' integrating into another culture or getting to know the city. After a while, the new habits I had developed became natural, and the people and flatmates, who were at first strangers, slowly gave me a sense of safety, and I knew I was in the right place.

Since the end of the volunteer programme, I have often thought about what the concept of "home" means to me, and I have come to realise that it is more a feeling than a geographical entity, a country, a house, a visible, tangible thing. 

I discovered that home could not only be where you grew up, where you are bound by memories, but that many times in life you can be struck by a feeling, a feeling of being in the right place, of being safe, of being surrounded by people you have dared to open up to, and that this trust was mutual.

I spent a year abroad in Turin, a beautiful city with rich history and many arcaded boulevards, situated close to the border with France and Switzerland, under the Alps. The programme provided accommodation, so I shared an apartment with seven other volunteers. We all came from different countries, with diverse cultural backgrounds and varied life paths. Some were university graduates, others decided to participate in a one-year long-term volunteering programme right after high school.

As part of the volunteer programme, I worked for a year in the social field in a refugee home and in two day-care centres providing therapeutic and personalised developmental activities for adults with intellectual disabilities. I had never worked in a similar field before, so naturally I needed my mentors and colleagues to provide me with instructions and good tips in the first weeks in order to successfully engage with the residents of the home. Fortunately, everyone was very helpful and I can now confidently say that the conversations and activities I had with the residents all prove that I was able to build a trusting relationship with them.

I started my own project in one of the homes for disabled, processing the story of The Little Prince with the residents. The aim was to promote self-reflection, express emotions and develop creativity and imagination.

Together with a Swedish volunteer, we held weekly workshops on sustainability and environmental awareness at the refugee shelter. The participants were from different ethnic backgrounds, so the first session focused on their individual experiences: what environmental issues they had faced in their home countries, what rules they had to follow, and what they had experienced in Italy.

We worked five days a week, and in addition we attended several training sessions organised by the Italian National Agency in Rome. These trainings were great to get to know other young people volunteering in Italy and to learn about each other's experiences.

Of course, like most experiences of moving abroad, this year has had its difficulties and challenges. For some, this year helped to get to know themselves better and to realise that what they studied before did not match their vision for the future. Some found the challenges of culture shock and language barriers more difficult. Some were very sensitive to the crisis situations they had seen and experienced in the residential homes. These challenges were easier to live through and survive with a lot of support from our hosting organisation and from each other.

We owe a lot to Turin, to the programme, to the experience of being a volunteer and of giving, and of course we also received a lot: friendships, experiences, language skills, courage.