Mirage
Katia's travels
A life spent in Italy, Germany and Ireland, a love for the latter and for every place where you can see the sea Mirage is the blog where Katia talks about herself, and today we have the pleasure of interviewing her.
Welcome to Easy Travel hosting! Graduated in Art History, Personal Travel Agent for Travel Stories, author of the blog "Mirage". Could you tell us a little about yourself and how your site was born?
I have always had a passion for art and history and this is how after a professional high school diploma I decided to enroll at university, choosing the course in Cultural Heritage where I gave vent to my personal interests..
This has affected the way I travel: I always went in search of everything that told the story of the place I was visiting. Museums, Events or simply outdoor itineraries that took me to the streets of the neighborhoods where the story passed.
My travel blog was born a little by chance and smile at the first reason why I opened it: I was looking for a way to keep myself in writing! For me it has always been a huge rock but during my year of Erasmus in Germany, where written relationships are daily bread during the university, I began to appreciate and love writing.
I thought of a travel blog because it was a way to keep a diary of my travels, of my impressions and what I saw. On the other hand, I realized how much the Germans loved Italy, as well as the many foreigners I met during my Erasmus.
But speaking with them, the Italian stereotypes were always the same: Milan for fashion, Rome for archaeology, Venice and Florence for art in general, Naples and Sicily by the sea.
Why not tell everything except what people expect?
We read that you don't like mass tourism and that Italy has few destinations known abroad and always overcrowded, while others "perle" they are left abandoned. What do you think can be done to help us rediscover a different Italy and rebalance the factors in play?
I think the first thing is to talk about it! Several people have told me that they have discovered places or museums by reading my blog. They are important to me 3 things to be able to do it:
- It is important to create strong collaborations with local tourist-cultural institutions and journalists and bloggers: often people don't know the area enough and don't know about the existence of these historical-cultural pearls.
- Networking between public institutions but also between private individuals and between private individuals and public institutions. In my interviews for the column "Italy that will restart" the lack of networking among local promoters was often highlighted. If we get together (I'm speaking above all for small businesses), it's easier to make yourself known, create interesting projects and distribute them across the territory. And people are then encouraged to visit that particular destination.
- Sometimes it is the institutions themselves that do not make themselves known. It happened to me with a museum in Verona, discovered by chance. I studied for two years in the capital of Verona and I have never seen a road sign that led to this museum, both offline and online advertising, the entrance was anonymous (I may have passed by it who knows how many times but I never noticed the existence of the museum). Yet this museum is in the historic center and contains important collections of various kinds.
Germany and Dublin have a very deep and important connection for you. Would you like to explain to us why?
I admit it: With Germany it wasn't love at first sight. And to think that at school I delivered my themes in white and I was subscribed to an infinite series of inclassable that led me punctually to the September exams. Then came the love at first sight for this language when I decided to be the girl on a par for Kassel.
I discovered that German was an interesting language and since then I have never stopped traveling through Germany.
This country also offers so much art and history and the Germans have a long tradition about it. The greatest archaeologists and historians of art come from the Germanophona area: They were the ones who "invented" art, Archeology and history as a science to be analyzed and studied between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Then I have a weakness for twentieth-century German history and every opportunity is a good one to go on a rediscovery of the places where the events happened.
I arrived in Ireland by pure chance: I was planning to leave for London to study English and suddenly I found myself in Dublin working as an au pair. And I left my heart there because it was among the most beautiful periods of my life.
What do I still carry with me now afterwards 20 years? The philosophy of the Irish: there is no rush in doing things, their human warmth, their lightness in living. I still dream of the Irish landscape now. I have never seen clouds move so fast, I admired the largest moon of my life and the morning I left Dublin forever I admired it well 5 rainbows as I taxied across the River Liffey.
What do you do to make your travels more ecological?
I don't have a car because I live in a small city where getting around on foot or by public transport is quite easy. My jobs have always been in the historic center and I could reach them in half an hour. The same thing happens abroad: the cities where I lived offered good transport services that never made me miss not having a car.
So my trips are organized primarily based on how much I can travel by public transport: trains and buses once on site (or by train to reach nearby places). For me, it is very important to try to pollute as little as possible: all trips I talk about on my blog, I did them by public transport. The ones done by car I can count on one hand but only one was not feasible without a car!
Frequently visiting smaller locations, it is not always easy to reach them: I often had to cancel or change my destination because it was impossible to get there without a car.
And this is a real shame: it would be really nice to be able to move the institutions on the one hand and raise awareness among people on the other to strengthen rail connections and increase public buses. Especially in central and southern Italy.
As Easy Travel Hosting will know, use renewable and eco-sustainable energy to power your servers. A tree is also planted for each new hosting, actively helping the reforestation and absorption of CO2. What do you think of this project and in general, Do you think it is important to search for a more sustainable lifestyle?
Even if it's not easy, I always try to do something in favor of a more sustainable life. But honestly I had never thought about a greener web and the topic is new to me.
Now that the internet is an integral part of our lives (especially with the ongoing pandemic), it is important to think about its conscious use. As soon as I discovered the Easy Travel Hosting projects and the use of renewable and eco-sustainable energy, I thought it would be a new step towards greater environmental sustainability.
By now my blog has become an integral part of me: if on the one hand I try to pollute less during my travels, why not do it later when I tell them?
Easy Travel Hosting Thanks a lot Katia for participating in our interview.
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