One green backpack. More and more pins. And more memories than I'd like to forget.

I bought the first pin in Paphos in May 2023, on my first trip to Cyprus. After that, more started appearing, one by one, journey after journey.

There is no system behind it and I have no intention of turning it into a competition. I don't keep a spreadsheet of countries and I don't need a pin from every airport I pass through. I have to actually be there, experience something, and only then does the pin mean anything.

To someone else, it is just a small piece of metal attached to a backpack. To me, there is a specific trip behind every one of them. Sometimes a week, sometimes two nights. A harbour, a beach, one morning over coffee, an airport, a ferry, or a street whose name I may not remember ten years from now, but I will probably still remember how I felt there.

The backpack has become a slightly chaotic travel diary. You just can't flip through the pages.

Because I feel good there. There really doesn't need to be a more complicated explanation than that.

I like the sea, islands, ports, ferries, warm weather, small towns and mornings when half the place is still asleep and I am already sitting somewhere with my first coffee. I like that particular feeling of standing in a harbour knowing that in a little while I will get on a boat and by evening I will be somewhere completely different.

I probably also like the fact that life slows down a little there. At home, I am very good at planning, solving things and thinking about what still needs to be done. On an island, sometimes all I really need to know is where I can get a decent freddo espresso.

Maybe that is why I keep going back.

I am not a backpacker in the traditional sense. I don't sleep in train stations, I don't calculate every euro I spend, and I am certainly not going to tell you that the only "authentic" way to travel is by taking a local bus with three connections.

I like comfort. I just don't need five suitcases to have it.

Flights, accommodation and transfers are usually sorted in advance. If I am moving between islands, I know which ferry I am taking and where I will sleep that night. After that, the planning can quite happily stop.

I don't want a holiday scheduled by the hour. In the morning I might decide to cross the island. Or I might go nowhere. I might sit down for coffee, walk around the harbour and somehow still be there two hours later. And that is completely fine.

That is what places over plans means to me. Not travelling without a plan. Just not allowing the plan to become more important than the place I travelled to see.

Sometimes I travel alone. Sometimes with someone. Both have their advantages. Solo travel, to me, is not the sad version of a holiday you take while waiting for someone to come along. If I want to go somewhere, I go. If someone comes with me and we enjoy being there together, even better.

The more I travel, the more I notice one slightly unpleasant thing. People forget.

The big things usually stay. The island, the view, the hotel, the ferry, maybe a particular beach. But then there are the smaller things. What the first coffee of the day tasted like. What I thought when a plane passed just a few metres above the beach. Which harbour surprised me. Where I got bored. Where I told myself I definitely wanted to come back.

Those are the things that slowly begin to disappear.

ONE GREEN BACKPACK exists mainly so they don't. I want to be able to open a story from a trip ten years ago and remember the details that would otherwise have long since slipped out of my head.

If, along the way, something here helps someone planning the same trip – a photo, a ferry tip, or simply an honest sentence saying that something really wasn't worth it – that is a nice bonus. But this website was not created because I want to become a travel influencer.

I have no particular desire to travel for free in exchange for a hotel collaboration and then explain to you that everything was absolutely amazing.

I want to be able to open this site years from now and think: yes, that is exactly how it was.

I won't be writing "10 Things You MUST See in Mykonos". Mostly because the word must bothers me a little when it comes to travel.

You don't have to do anything.

Maybe your favourite place will be somewhere that never appears on a list. Maybe you will spend the whole day sitting by the sea. Maybe you will visit the attraction everyone recommends and wonder why you bothered going. That is travel too.

I won't recommend a restaurant I haven't eaten in, describe a beach I haven't visited, or pretend everything was perfectly photogenic and flawless. If something was overpriced, boring or completely different from what Instagram suggested, I will say so.

And I will say the same when I was the problem. When I planned the day badly, missed something, or simply threw the plan away because I couldn't be bothered.

This is not an encyclopedia of the Mediterranean. It is not a destination catalogue. It is my version of the places I have passed through.

The name is not important. Not because there is some great mystery behind it. I simply don't want this project to be about my face, my name or my everyday life.

It is about the journeys. The places. The small things that happen along the way. And the green backpack that was there for most of them.

So this is enough:

The One with the Green Backpack.

ONE GREEN BACKPACK is not about seeing the whole world. It is about not forgetting the part of it I have already seen.