deartraveller

My dearest Sara,

BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!!! I had so much fun! The four of us together have no match! Everything was absolutely delightful! My handmade decorations, the Christmas tree you and Gabriel brought, Robert’s delicious cooking (thank God he knew how to cook so well or we would have starved to death! I mean: not trying to diminish our cooking skills… Remember that week we spent, just the two of us, in Porto? Well we found out that our hamburgers and pasta are delicious, but not for seven days in a row!).

Anyway, can you guess where I am? Back in the Old Continent, all cured from our New Year’s Eve party, once again with my bag pack, my sunglasses and a map of…. (drum roll please) Austria! You know how much I love these countries, filled with history on their streets, where you smell culture everywhere; so you must imagine how much fun I’m having!

We’ve been here for a week now and have spent most of our time in Vienna and Salzburg. The landscape is so beautiful, green meadows in the bottom and at the top mountains filled with snow! Can you imagine waking up everyday and see this trough the window? That’s the dream!

The museums are incredible but the thing I had most fun visiting were the salt mines in Salzburg and the lakes that, despite freezing cold, are amazing!

On our fourth night here, Robert encountered one of his friends from high school who went to Madrid to study fashion and design. He was in Austria to work as one of the hosts of a Chanel fashion show and after a couple of beers in one of the city’s beer gardens, he offered us two invitations. The show took place in one of the most ancient castles of the city. The decoration was just perfect: classy with just the right amount of boldness. There were candles and an orchestra playing as the models went on the runway.

Awesome right? But I haven’t even told you about the best part of the night! Later, at the after show party, you won’t believe who I met! Remember that book I read last summer about the life of a woman from Somalia who became a model? “Desert Flower”? I met her! I met Waris Dirie! I was so excited, I couldn’t hide it! She was there as a special guest, since she used to model for Chanel and she has Austrian citizenship since 2005.

She is so kind! I asked her a billion questions and she answered every single one with a smile. She has a really touching life story. She was born in Somalia in 1965 into a nomadic family but at the age of thirteen she fled to Mogadishu to escape an arranged marriage to a much older man. A few years later, she moved to London where she worked for an uncle who had been appointed Somali ambassador and then at a local McDonald’s. That was when she began evening classes to learn English. “I was so lucky. By chance, I was discovered by Terence Donovan, a photographer who helped me get my first job as a model” - she told me – “From that point on, my career took off. I started being hired by top designers like Levi’s, Chanel, Revlon and L’Óreal and went to London, Milan, Paris, New York! I was on Elle, Glamour, Vogue!” Did you know she also appeared in some movies like James Bond? In 1997, at the height of her modeling career, she was interviewed for Marie Claire’s magazine and spoke, for the first time, about the female genital mutilation that she had undergone as a child. “What I said spread so quickly all over the world Érica, I was amazed. That was when I realized my voice could be heard in every corner of the world, and by every little girl in Somalia or anywhere else: they could hear me saying they don’t have to suffer no more because I’ll do my best to change things for them!” I admit tears came to my eyes as she said this. That same year she became a UN ambassador for the abolition of FGM. In 2009, along with François Henri Pinault and his wife, Waris founded the PPR Foundation for Women’s Dignity and Rights’. A year later, she was appointed Peace Ambassador for the Year of Peace and Security by the African Union. The Desert Dawn Foundation was also founded by her: it raises money for schools and clinics in Somalia.

Her achievements as a human rights activist earned her several prizes: the Woman of the Year Award in 2000 by Glamour Magazine, Women's World Award (2004) from former President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (2007) from the former President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, among others.

Her work is truly an inspiration! I wish you had been here to meet her too. I told her all about you though, and of this journey of ours. She wished us both the best for the future. Well, I’ll write you next time something great happens! Don’t worry, you know me… That won’t take long.

Miss you a lot already,

Érica.

P.S.: Dear Sara,

Please start writing shorter (and more boring) letters to Érica. She gets so excited when she finds she has mail that she spends half the day reading and re-reading your letters (and writing and re-writing her answer). Meanwhile, I’m walking with a ghost all over Europe that only pretends to hear what I say. The days she gets your letters I’m like “Want some coffee?” and she answers “That shirt doesn’t look good with those shoes”! Just kidding (but keep this suggestion in mind!).

Love,

Robert.