Patrik – Auckland / Croatia
“What I would say to myself when I was 11? Don’t let anyone let you down – travel the world if you have opportunity.
If you don’t, make one for yourself, but don’t let anyone tell you that something’s not possible. Take every opportunity that you can take and make the most of it – life’s short, so whatever you can do, do.
I was never going to stay in one place for too long. Croatia was definitely not giving me enough opportunities of what I wanted in life. So I actually started travelling when I was 18 and never stopped. I’ve been to a few continents, a few countries – been living in a few countries. And this is the furtherest and the longest I’ve been from home. It gets tough sometimes and you miss your family, but you know it was a good decision when you put your whole life in the picture.
Home can be anywhere you go, but home’s a place where you were born and where you actually feel welcome whatever time, whatever happens, wherever you are, whoever you are with, and home can be anywhere you make it home. Home is where you have friends, work, life – home is actually where you like it, so you can make any place home.
I think Auckland’s pretty safe. I haven’t heard any bad things happening compared to Europe, and it is welcoming. I think it’s a very, very diverse city. I lived in New York for a few months, but I think Auckland’s smaller, but there’s more diversity here, and I mean, you can pretty much see by the people who just walk and see that more people have just actually moved in here than actually were born here.
I like to expand my views – not stick to one mentality. I think if you just end up hanging out with your own people from your own country, you just get narrow minded. You actually expand your horizons if you hang out with people from different parts of the world. So friends on my list are pretty much from everywhere. Croatians, I don’t think I even know maybe like two or three Croatians in New Zealand. There’s definitely more, but I’ve never actually tried to find them.
I think we just should actually respect everyone – respect their choices, and give everyone opportunity, at least at some point be equal and make everyone’s starting point equal. Give them opportunity if (they) don’t have. Community should help make one for them but I think everyone should start from the same point and then if you expand that’s fine. If you don’t want to work on your life that’s fine, but I think everybody should start from the same point.
If I had the opportunity to travel earlier I would do it, but my childhood was pretty good until the economy crashed in Croatia, which was in 2008, and since that point I was just like, okay there’s no point of being here and just doing nothing about the situation. I think Croatians are not willing to change anything, so instead of changing stuff I just went an easier way and actually find a place where those changes can happen and are happening. So I don’t have 20 extra years to wait for something to happen – if I can actually go where it’s already done, or where I can actually be what I want and do what I want.”
