All Posts

All Posts

Full Circle in New York

October 2025 Everyone has a city that they idealize in their heads. In my childhood bedroom, for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate, I had a retro poster of New York City on my wall. At that age, I didn’t know what the city truly entailed - I didn’t even know how to pronounce it properly - but I knew it pulled me in. I knew it represented something big, something bright, something I wanted to be part of. Naturally, on my Google Keep, I saved a note that said, “Open this in t

Ahona Anjum

Nov 263 min read

The Hill That Felt Like Home

August 2025 As I geared up to return from my study abroad adventures in Milan, I had a summer in Washington D.C. waiting for me. Finding short-term housing in D.C. is notoriously difficult, but somehow, I stumbled upon the perfect intern housing in the heart of Capitol Hill - ready for a summer of finding my rhythm and making the city my own. I had one goal in mind - to make the neighborhood mine. Capitol Hill is an interesting place. On the surface, it’s the center of Americ

Ahona Anjum

Nov 64 min read

The Energy of Possibility

March 2024 For spring break sophomore year, a bunch of my friends and I found ourselves on a school-funded trip to San Francisco, California. Given the nature of the city, naturally, the trip was an entrepreneurship trip - and it was also my first time in California. I’d always heard that San Francisco was the place for big ideas, but what I didn’t realize was how those ideas seem to float in the air there - how creativity feels less like something people do and more like som

Ahona Anjum

Nov 63 min read

The City Was the Runway

March 2025 What’s the first thing you think of when you think of Milan? Maybe the Duomo, the gelato, or - if you’re like most people - Milan being the fashion capital of the world. I’d heard plenty of tales about Milanese chic, but when Fashion Week rolled around from February 25 to March 3, 2025, and I happened to be living in the city - I knew I had to make Milan my runway. This, unlike most things in my life, was completely unplanned. Piri and I were hanging out when she c

Ahona Anjum

Nov 53 min read

All Those Nights at Airports

June 2025 People often say it’s not the journey that matters, it’s the destination. I used to take that quite literally - which is probably why I traveled every single weekend for five months when I lived in Milan. Out of all those weekends, I took the 6 a.m. Ryanair flight a grand total of seven times - which also means I spent seven nights sleeping in either Milan Bergamo or Milan Malpensa airport. Now, the question everyone asks: why? Well, Milan’s airports were clearly no

Ahona Anjum

Nov 52 min read

The First Gateway

May 2023 No one in my family has ever been to Europe. So naturally, Europe always felt like a distant dream. While I knew families who immigrated to the U.S. or the U.K., I didn’t know anyone who raved about Parisian lights or Italian summers. Europe felt like something that belonged in postcards, not in reach. Until Prague opened a door for me. Prague, Czech Republic The summer after my freshman year, I was determined - I was going to crack open the doors of Europe. I applie

Ahona Anjum

Nov 53 min read

Better than the Movies

June 2023 Everyone has that one place that’s lived in their imagination forever. For some of my friends, it’s Paris, or maybe Italy, or Japan. For me, it’s always been Switzerland. Ever since I was a baby, I’d hear my parents and relatives rave about the “most beautiful place on Earth.” It was like Switzerland had cast a spell on them. So when I planned a trip there after my study abroad program in Prague, my mom didn’t care about the other five countries on my itinerary - al

Ahona Anjum

Nov 23 min read

When Everything Was Golden

April 2025 Colors often carry emotions. For me, golden means joy, warmth, and that rare feeling when everything aligns so perfectly it almost glows. It’s not easy to feel golden - those moments in life where you stop and think, this is it, this is perfect. My Easter break trip to the Amalfi Coast with my dear friends Coni and Nicole was one of those moments. I remember being ecstatic when I heard that Coni - my number one travel buddy - was planning an Amalfi tour during her

Ahona Anjum

Oct 293 min read

Getting Lost in Coastal Portugal

April 2025 I am your resident Type A - in fact, I would challenge you to find someone more Type A than me. I love lists and structure and to-dos and making plans. Usually, it’s fantastic - it’s how I was able to travel every single weekend when I was in Bocconi. But sometimes, even the most Type A person needs a break. And maybe the place to take that break is Portugal. The Portuguese chaos started before I even got there. Whereas all my other trips were carefully slotted int

Ahona Anjum

Oct 293 min read

The Roman Multiverse

March 2025 Having moved around places and schools so much, I’ve built different groups of friends - almost like parallel worlds that never quite collide. One thing I had never experienced, though, was when those worlds overlapped. For my trip to Rome, that changed. Rome became the meeting point of my multiverse - where two of my best friends from Bocconi, Piri and Diya, met one of my closest UR friends, Will. Before the trip began, I was nervous. Would my worlds get along? W

Ahona Anjum

Oct 293 min read

Inches Wide, Miles Deep

March 2025 The thing about studying abroad is how quickly connections form — strangers one week, travel partners the next. For me, one of the trips that cemented those early friendships was our whirlwind journey through Tuscany. My main partner on the trip was Coni, and together we spent a weekend in Florence. Everyone always said Florence was the favorite Italian city, and it lived up to every bit of the hype. The Duomo, the art tucked in every alley, the way the whole city

Ahona Anjum

Oct 243 min read