“Fernweh” is an ache for distant places; a type of homesickness and longing to find or return to a place where one belongs, even if they have never been before. Fernweh is a wandering madness.

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“Weh tun” is a flexible term that covers physical and mental pain. If du tust dir weh, you do it to yourself. I chose the name Fern(weh)tun as a play on words by combining the two, as it perfectly describes embracing this wandering madness and turning it into something useful.

Fernweh is not just another German word for Wanderlust. Wanderlust is exciting, whimsical, fun, and energizing. It is the Zeitgeist of the social media economy that motivates everyone to make their Top Ten lists and “live their best life.”

Fernweh is not what someone who calls themselves a “g*psy” feels every time they go on vacation or on a road trip. It can feel devastating.

Roma people call this type of longing Lungo Drom, the Long Road. In Isabel Fonseca’s fascinating book Bury Me Standing: The [G*psies] and Their Journey, she shares a passage from her interviews with self-acknowledged historical “g*psies” in the Balkans about how they express these feelings through music:

“Like most [g*psy] songs, they were equally plangent in tone and in subject: they spoke of rootlessness and the lungo drom, or long road, of no particular place to go- and of no turning back. Nostalgia is the essence… and seems always to have been. But nostalgia for what? … Perhaps it is the yearning itself which is celebrated, even a yearning for a past one never had (the most powerful kind). Such yearning is the impetus to travel.”

This phenomenon similar to Fernweh is a common thread between other itinerant people around the world, further compounded where political climates and society pushes them on with force.

It isn’t that I am not grateful for my life or a case of “the Grass is Greener.” I am careful to practice mindfulness and speak gratitude over every area of my life. I am constantly searching for wonder and magic in the small things, wherever I may be.

Still, there is a vague disconnect between my mind, body, and Spirit that always makes me feel like I am somewhere else. Or that I should be.

Perhaps someday this will change when I find myself  in the right city or in some hobby, or with another human. If I am perfectly honest, I often wish that was the antidote.

Until then I will keep moving with the forces that pull me in all directions down this long road.

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