After drinking her coffee one morning, Sedef sat down and looked out the window. Everything was in its place; the streets, the houses, the cars… Her entire life was the same view she saw every day. Something was missing, but she didn’t know exactly what it was. Every morning when she woke up, Sedef felt the same way, and every night when she went to bed, she felt something was missing.

One day, she looked at a travel ticket at the office on the advice of a friend. “No, don’t delay any more,” her friend said. “Go where you want to go. Discover some places.” Sedef smiled at first, but after a week, she realized she had started looking at tickets online for a few hours every day in the evening. “What would happen if we left this city?” she thought. Just one ticket, just one new beginning.

A week later, Sedef found herself at Istanbul Airport one morning. Her destination was not a train station, a flight, or any plan, but  just a conscious uncertainty. Going on a trip was like searching for your own identity, not a route. Going to a city she didn’t know was perhaps the only chance to find what was missing in her life.

The plane departing from Istanbul would open the doors to a completely different world for her. Her destination was to go to the north of Italy: Venice. Venice was once one of the largest port cities in Europe, and over time it became world famous for its history, canals and unique texture.

As the plane landed, Sedef realized how uncertain the things she was going through were. Perhaps traveling for so long without a destination made the anxieties inside a person a little clearer. She thought that she was just going on her own inner journey, not knowing what to do, who to talk to or what to discover.

When she started walking through the narrow streets of Venice, she got lost among the huge canals, tourists sailing on boats, colorful buildings and narrow bridges. A peace she had never felt before spread with every step. People were strangers to each other, but somehow everything was in its place. Understanding the city was like understanding her own inner journey in a way.

One evening, while Sedef was sitting at a café overlooking the Grand Canal for the night, she heard a group of local artists talking at the table next to her. One of them caught Sedef’s attention: “Traveling always means learning something new,” she said. “But sometimes, we need to remember the oldest things we know. The greatest journey is the inner journey.”

At that moment, Sedef realized that the feeling of incompleteness she had felt when she set off was actually a reflection. Traveling was as much about discovering the world outside as it was about discovering the world within herself. She spent a few more days in Venice. Every day, she explored the streets and bridges, and met new people. One evening, while riding a gondola on the canal and chatting with an old gondolier, she understood exactly how the meaning of the entire city, the entire journey, was interwoven.