Fancy a stroll? Across Europe, young people like me are finding friends by walking our cities | Viola Di Grado

WI went back to London from Rome before the second lock in 2020, and I found a city that is hardly welcomed, with the closure of stores and a atmosphere of silent anxiety. Singer young people, like me, were only social online communication with the current friends, and the opportunities to make new communications were rare.

When I met Irenka from Poland at a literary festival, she looked thirsty for new friends as I was. When we started complaining about the mixing difficulties I submitted to me to an application that allows people to find new friends in organized organizations. I quickly downloaded it.

In the first walk-a six-mile on the banks of the Lea River in East London-she met Harris from Greece. While we were exploring, she made it clear to me that since her grandmother had died (they were living together), she was staying on a friend’s sofa recently met on a picnic. This friend went to that walk after being encouraged by one of her friends, who also coincided with Irinka’s fight.

As a much better person in the cooked friendship that gains its flavor over time, I was surprised by how Irenka’s confidence from strangers and the speed of rearranging her life around them. However, it has also become a friend of Irenka’s with the amazing Alackity, and the same thing happened in the next walk. I made more new friends. This type of things did not happen to me in bars or parties; Those traditional social communication places. So I started wondering about the reason for this walk, and I realized that it is a balance between the exchange between people and the outside world.

In bars or clubs required to interact with people. On walking, you also pay attention to the environment around you, and it seems to me that this shift in focus is what makes it easier to make friendships in this way – specifically because there is less pressure to do so.

Lockdowns made us more aware of the line between self -sufficiency and our need for others, as well as between nesting and exploring the outside world. The apartment or the house that was always suddenly resorted to a prison, and it was not enough to fill it actually with video kidnappings with friends. We knew that something was missing, and it was not just people or outdoors: they were both at the same time.

It may explain why walking and psychological walks are now very common, not only in London but in Other European and American cities also. It seems as if, after we have become aware of the pulmonary annoying of the presence of many of our private company (who will forget how our fears were amplified by the four walls in our homes?) We needed to discover a new way to combine the conversation with the meditation that affects The need for it is equal: We have missed human contact as much as we missed the open air.

But this is not a new thing. Europe has a long history Psychological geographyIt is a concept that originated in the fifties of the last century between a group of radical artists and conceptual theorists named International position. In practice, this involves exploring urban environments with a focus on personal bonds to places.

It was originally psychological geography – with its strong and surreal effects – a messy focus on informal presentation and awareness. However, the contemporary version after birth from it tries to bring the system and accuracy to our overwhelming life. Where traditional psychological geography was rooted in DervLiterally, “Adrift” without a planned path, the favorite tactic of a lot of contemporary walking is to follow a good organized path.

I am now Hamimoun’s friends with Irenka and Haris. We would like to walk and talk, and never stick to our own apartments: instead, we enjoy exploring the city on foot. While there has been a lot of focus in recent years on mental meditation and other types of individual self -care, I find that converting the focus from myself to the outside world works better.

I am not alone. After all, Japanese practice Shinerin Yuko (Or forest bath) now It is practiced throughout Europe. There is also an area of ​​emerging science on how Nature can improve our healthwith Mental health practitioners around the world I started taking the open -air conversation treatments. But I think, besides nature’s ability to restore, we can also rely on the effect of urban areas. They can also serve as rich symbolic maps, with the ability to distract our attention from the usual daily and daily nervousness.

For this reason, instead of mind, the best performance of “Minderftyness”: This is what I call long with the new friends I make, during which I think mostly in the streets where I walk and the city I live in. We are in the postpartum stage: just like the romantic vehicles that the French poet and writer described in the nineteenth century Charles Bodler. Sometimes we make our opponent to walk a full destination, their goal, drifting with joy while deepening our friendships.

Flâneur has become non -modern with Disintegration In a crowded and modern work life. But now is the perfect time for a new birth. After all, Each city It is, in some way, “Traumascape”: space turned by the collective memory of the lock. By walking, we give it – ourselves – an opportunity to recover and restore innovation.

Some names have been changed