Carolina Isella class of '96, Milanese by birth and Turin by adoption. She does many jobs in life and has several passions, and in both cases there is no shortage of travel, creativity and nature. In fact, she works as a photographer and coordinates trips all over the world with sivola.it, by now she knows Iceland and Japan better than at home. When a trip is proposed to her, there better be some trekking and she will always say yes.

It's hard to say which one came first, because for both passions I think, unconsciously from an early age, I had them in me. But if I had to choose one, I would most probably say travel. Travel because I've experienced it for the longest time, consider that my very first trip was when I was 18 months old to the Maldives (yes, you read that right) and from there it's just been a crescendo, thank you ma, thank you pa. The breakthrough for travel was in 2017, when I took a solo trip to South East Asia with a backpack and not much organisation. But it was this going with the flow that made me realise so many things.

Yes, thinking about it, there are little behaviours that change depending on the trip I take. On group trips, being the point of reference for the girls and boys, I am very organised and often with the phone in my hand to figure out travel, bookings and everything else related to such a trip. On the contrary in my personal trips, I tend not to organise much, see trip to Hokkaido just below. I do this in order to experience the everyday life of the country more calmly and following the rhythms of my body and, as far as possible, I tend to forget the telephone. At the end, for social travel it's a bit of a mix, because I often don't organise the days myself but I still have work to do, so I know the timings and what I have to do.

As I mentioned a little earlier, the trip to Hokkaido was not too organised. Filippo and I found ourselves in Hokkaido after our business trips to Asia and for convenience we chose northern Japan to meet up. The choice was therefore dictated by proximity for both of us - I was in Vietnam and Filippo was already in Japan (Tokyo and surroundings) - and because we would have liked to go somewhere with snow. And what better place than Hokkaido where they say there is some of the most incredible snow in the world? We can confirm that it is so crazy. We stayed mainly in the south of the island, between Hakodate and Sapporo, going skiing in Niseko, one of the most popular places for winter sports enthusiasts. All this was done exclusively by local trains, which are of immense efficiency in Japan and we can confirm that this is also the case with snow.

Despite the efficiency of Japanese vehicles, one evening after days of skiing, due to too much snow, all the trains that would take us back to the city were cancelled. We were in the small station of Otaru, 1 hour from Sapporo, our final destination, and here our coordinator's sides came out, which we had put on hold for a while. We then started asking passers-by, in some peculiar way because the Japanese don't know English, if someone could drive us to town. Eventually, after we walked around the town for hours and teamed up with some Indian and Chinese guys, we managed to find a car to take us 'home'. So certainly travelling to big cities allows you to be more serene in these situations, as the roads are more passable and a bed can be found more easily. In more remote areas, however, the availability of accommodation is very limited and the Japanese, shy as they are, are unlikely to take you in or help you. But with a little tenacity, the exception can be found.