Ten Years in Vienna Taught Me What Home Isn’t
Why leaving a beautiful city was the best decision of my life.
I lived in Vienna for ten years. On paper, it looked like success. In my body, it felt like weight. Part of me still carries that weight. But living there, feeling isolated for years, even though I had and still have wonderful friends from Vienna, showed me something essential: it showed me what home was not. I didn’t know who I was there. I felt fragmented, as if I had become a ghost. On paper, it seemed perfect: a beautiful apartment in the center of the city, friendships, glowing summers stretching toward sunset skies, lakes, rivers, and nature, couples smiling in the streets, kind cashiers at SPAR, the familiar warmth of my nearby Tabak Trafik, and cozy Christmas evenings wrapped in lights. But none of it felt real. Not to my spirit. It felt like I had to perform a version of myself that was never truly me just to fit into a city that looked luxurious on the surface, yet felt cold underneath. A city where many people seemed closed off to expats and foreigners. My soul wanted belonging. Maybe it wasn’t the right time. Maybe it wasn’t the right place. Or, maybe I had not yet become the version of myself I was always meant to be. Either way, I knew I had to leave. And after ten cold years, I did.
People often assume that if a city is beautiful, cultured, and safe, it must automatically feel like home. But cities are relationships too. And sometimes we all outgrow past friendships and relationships. Ten years ago, when I had arrived to live and study in Vienna, I thought this relationship with Vienna would last an entire lifetime. I was in love with the city, watching it through rose-colored glasses, I had no idea it would break me in the end. But that is what often happens, doesn’t it? Maybe I really was young, or maybe I was naïve, or maybe I had heard so many stories of this beautiful city, that I didn’t know how much it would end up costing me, had I stayed there. Just like some friendships in life end, and just like some relationships in life end, some of our relationships with cities end too.
I remember having visited Paris when I was 16, and my mom and I stayed at Montmartre, in a beautiful apartment of an artist friend of ours who let us stay in her apartment while she was on vacation. This was 2008. As someone who fell in love with French at a very young age, and as someone who spoke French and loved Paris at first glance, I was shocked to discover and hear that our friend was bored of living in Paris, that the city had become too cold and boring for her. Little did I know that 18 years later, I would end up having the same cold and distant and somewhat toxic relationship, with the city I ended up falling in love with when I was only 9 years old, my dear old Vienna.
Despite its luxury and grand architecture and history, the city had become a never-ending winter for me. The reason my relationship with Vienna turned toxic was because I felt chronic loneliness and feelings of being an outsider, pressure to be perfect at University and at my job and in relationships with others, emotional coldness from people, identity confusion, and a body that never could truly relax, a body that couldn’t fully exhale, knowing that it was safe. I felt so isolated, no family, no partner for the past few years, living alone, and not seeing my friends as much as I would have wanted to. I remember walking through beautiful parks and greenery feeling nothing, I remember Christmas holidays, watching couples smiling, people buying presents for their family, and I, I had no one there, only my friends who were already traveling visiting their families. I remember seeing Christmas lights, blankets, and cozy restaurants during gray winter days, where my soul felt coldness within. It was cold, an inner sadness. I remember crying at night, feeling so lonely, so isolated and so misunderstood. However, I also remember birthdays, happiness and love and gatherings I shared with my best friends. If it weren’t for them, I would have probably left or had the urge to leave years ago. I remember so much sadness, yet I didn’t truly, at the time know why I was so sad. Now I know, I missed my true home, Sarajevo, and my family.
The Moment I Knew it was Time
Get Nina Mutevelic’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
After having quit my job, because of the difficulties I was having with my former boss, I ended up spending a few months at home in Vienna, leaving only to get groceries or meet friends, which wasn’t as often as I would have liked because they all had their schedules filled up with work. I was at home one day, crying my heart out and I knew it was the end of it, the end of my life as I had known it until that point. I just knew I couldn’t do it for another decade here. I just couldn’t. That was when the decision to leave came about. At first, I called my mom to speak to her about an idea, that at the time seemed great, for me to leave Vienna and move to live in Zagreb. My mom arrived to Vienna, a few days later (from Sarajevo) knowing I was in distress for a month. My passport, at the time was about to expire soon, so we had to find a way to leave Vienna and return to Sarajevo. Which we did. We had our closest male cousin visit us in Vienna, stay the night and drive us in the cold from Vienna to Bosnia´s icy, blistering cold roads, back home. It was a difficult drive back, and even though I was crying, and in distress, followed by a panic attack I spontaneously had in the car, we did arrive at our destination.
The Best Decision in My Life
Now that it’s been months since I have been in Sarajevo, I look back and smile. Not only am I back in my hometown, but I hear laughter, I hear Bosnian humor and see the kindness in strangers´ eyes daily, on the street, from the street vendor, to the restaurant owner, to the old lady selling flowers on Ferhadija. The city feels cinematic, I love going on somewhat touristic walks either alone or with my friends, taking photos of the city, reminding myself that life truly is colorful and feels like a movie when you are happy and enjoying it. That is what Sarajevo, the city I grew up in, finally became; my safe haven. This was the city I left 10 years ago, only to return and find true inner peace here. The people here are warm, kind, generous, and I love the Bosnian humor. I feel safe knowing that I can sense my nervous system softening here, feeling happy, and my own humor and zest for life arriving again. I love dancing, music, yoga, art therapy, spending time with friends and just enjoying life. I feel truly grateful, maybe for the first time in my life, my own heart feels so full of gratitude.
Sarajevo is by no means a perfect city, and I don’t think any city is perfect, but it is my city, it is the city where happiness for me returned, where my health stabilized, where I found home in the arms of my family, and where I met wonderful new friends. For me, despite the political corruption, despite flaws that this city has (as does any city), I finally learned what home really is. It is a place where you feel your heart can sing again, smile again, and you do not have the need to fake authenticity, you just live it. Sarajevo has scars of three wars, World War I, which began here, WWII and the Yugoslav wars from the 1990s. However, its people have never lost their will to live, their kindness and generosity, and their true love for others remained real. Sarajevo does not fake authenticity, it just is. For me, Vienna was cold precisely because I felt its people did fake authenticity. That was the coldness, the distance, and the pandemic 6 years ago made it even worse. Sarajevo did not need to be perfect to feel like home.
What I Learned
I learned major life lessons in Vienna, and then again in Sarajevo. I learned that success without belonging is emptiness, that some cities fit your résumé, not your soul, and that one truly can outgrow places. Most importantly, Vienna gave me education, memories, and friendships. But it did not give me myself. That’s where Sarajevo stepped in, and thank you Sarajevo, my love.
