Pizza talks / OPEN YOUR MIND

Series of conversations with inspiring people. I admire people and their diversity. I love talking with them, opening and broadening my mind for things that I haven’t known before. This is how my idea was born – to make interviews with young people living temporary in Florence. Thanks to the  programme “Erasmus” and studying abroad I had an opportunity to meet people from all over the world – I had a chance to learn more about their culture, country and why they decided to go abroad. Of course pizza is  our company in these special moments. 

My first guest was Beyza, who comes from Izmir, but she leaves in Istanbul. I am always amazed of her, because she is so young (20 years old), yet very mature, intelligent (she loves microeconomics!) and cute!

In our first conversation we definitely focused more on the wine that the point of meeting. It was quite funny, because we were sitting in Santa Croce, in front of the church, just talking. Suddenly a man  stopped and praised our conversation. He told that it’s not so common to hear these kind of talks between two young girls in that place (Santa Croce are is a very party area), so he had to stop and just say it to us. In the end it turned out that he is a famous artist from Miami (INSTAGRAM), who studied in Florence 10 years ago and now he came back to teach young students about art. It was a really nice meeting. Hovewer we had to meet again to finish our conversation. Below you can see the outcome.

Pizzagirl: So first of all I must ask you the most important question: do you like pizza?

Beyza: My answer is like everyone living in Italy – I love pizza.

Pizzagirl: I am glad of it – now we can continue the conversation! Tell my what you study and why you decided to study abroad.

Beyza: I study economics. The first moment was when I realized that world is not as it seems to be when you stay in the same country all the time. There is much more to see and to learn. I felt like it would help me develop myself as a person in general and I really wanted to gain more more and more experience. Then I thought that Erasmus is the best opportunity to do it.

Pizzagirl: You come from Turkey. Was it difficult for you to organise all stuff connected with moving to European country?

Beyza: Because Turkey is non-european country, if you visit European country exceeding 90 days, you have to apply for a special kind of Visa and for that reason you have to gather a lot of documents what takes a lot of time. Then I had to apply for a permission to stay. I felt being non-european imposed some difficulties on me living in Italy.

Pizzagirl: Why have you chosen Italy?

Beyza: I would say the first reason is it is the Mediterranean country as is where I come from (the Mideterranean side of Turkey), so I really felt the cultural similarities. I always liked Italian culture, cuisine, the way people live their life, more extroverted. It would be much more harder for me to assimilate to a totally different country.

Pizzagirl: Do you like living here? What do you like at your stay in Italy the most?

Beyza: So far I definitely love being here. I would describe it as one of the best periods in my life. The best thing here for me is meeting new people, almost every day. In Istanbul it always happen, but not so often like here. Meeting new people always learn you a lot, yet when you meet people who come from different countries, have different cultures, that effect multiplies.

Pizzagirl: Have you travelled a lot during your stay in Italy? Which part of Italy did you like the most?

Beyza: Yes, I definitely travelled a lot in comparison to when I was in Turkey, because travelling within Europe is very easy. I’ve been to Budapest, Bruges, Brussels and Amsterdam.

Inside Italy I think my favourite city is Rome, as many others could say. However I really enjoy living in Florence, so I could put a Florence at a second place. In general I love the small cities in the Tuscan area. I would say I love the South of Italy too, it has more Italian way of living, yet is also more chaotic, so for me the perfect balance is the Tuscan area.

Pizzagirl: What have you learnt from Erasmus? Has it changed your personality in some way?

Beyza: I think that the most important change is how I think now. This is because every day I spend a lot of time with different people, experiencing different points of view all the time. It changed the way I was thinking about my future as well. I would say in general it just made me a more open-minded person.

Pizzagirl: What can you say about Istanbul. Do you recommend this city to visit?

Beyza: I would definitely recommend the city to anyone, because geographically I cannot imagine a better city to see. I don’t want to be a snob, but as Napoleon said:

“If the Earth was a single state, Istanbul would be its capital”.

I really love that quote. I recommend visiting Istanbul, because it’s at a crossing of so much different cultures. It’s a crossing point of the West and East, so not only geographically but also culturally you can feel that. The landscape is amazing and in the city live 15 million people. It means you can learn there a lot about people, history.

Pizzagirl: Do you have any plans for the future, some dreams maybe?

Beyza: I think living abroad contributes very much to your personality so that’s the one thing I am sure- I’m interested in countries development, which basically means helping for the less developed countries. I hope to live and study abroad at my Master’s Degree, but after that I would like to travel to someplace even more different – like very poor countries in Africa. I would like to experience living there and understand how to help people to develop the economy. I just really want to keep on my way of thinking and help people.

Pizzagirl: What is the most important to you?

Beyza: My family.

Beyza – thank you for the conversation and photos!

Faruk – thank you and your friend for sharing amazing photos of Istanbul with me!

Let me know in comments if you liked the conversation and the conception of pizza talks!

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By the way, we have eaten many pizzas together! Pizza connect people. :))