Diego Trivulzio - Milan, Italy

I first met Diego in Brasov, Romania at a Brad's house. He was traveling to Romania to see a few friends he had met on previous travels. Diego is a great example of a person who takes advantage of his resources. One of my favorite memories of Diego, is hiking a Romania mountain with him in the heat of summer in Brasov. The three of us bonded over travel stories, our next adventurers and more. Diego is the type of person you want to meet while traveling. 

What improvements do you want to see Italy make in the next 5 years? 
Well I can say a lot of improvements to see Italy make in the next few years about politic, economic, social laws, etc  but I think the most important thing that must be change is the mentality of the most of Italians. Once I heard a man on his 60’s saying: “When I was a kid here in Milano you there were only Milanesi (natives from Milano) now there are people from Sardinia, Campania, Sicily, etc but for me it’s nice to have people from everywhere because a mix of dialects, cultures, different life-styles is a good thing”. Come on guys he was speaking about people from the same country just from different regions..  So how a country can look at the future if the citizens thinking with a mentality back of fifty years and if they think people from other region of the same country are foreigners???

What aspirations do you want to achieve in life?
My goal is to run my own hostel somewhere. A hostel not only for accommodate people but a place where travels can feel like their home, having fun, sharing experiences, making plans for future trips..

Is money important or is the power of knowledge more crucial to you?
For sure the power of knowledge is more crucial for me. Travelling, meeting new people, learning about new culture and life-style, gain and sharing experiences is something that the money can’t replace.

What's your craziest story you'd like to share in terms of travel or in your country?
Two summers ago I was in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. In the hostel where I was I met Mark an English guy from London and we decided to travel together around Armenia. One day we went to Dilijan a village three hours away from the capital near a Natural Park with a famous monastery on the top of a hill. We started to walk up in a road along the river in hopes to get a ride from a car but no one car around so after a couple of kilometers I looked up and saw on the right side a kind of long wall and a military pointing a huge rifle to us so I said to Mark let’s don’t stop let’s walk fast someone pointing a gun to us and he said please don’t feel scare and continuing walking without accelerate if not we will die.. I looked on my left and saw one stray dog walking on our side and other three coming running from behind. Anyway we kept going walking for a couple of minutes with the dogs following us and then at some point we heard like an explosion – we didn’t know what’s going on, maybe was the military shooting of us or what??- then we saw on our right side along the river a couple of men saying something to us and the sign with the hands to join them – we didn’t know what do in the meanwhile the dogs runaway and we saw near the river a wooden house with a bunch of people and kids eating and drinking so we followed that two men and they invited us to join the family picnic. They explained us in a broken English that it was a military base there and they saw us followed by the dogs and they hit a cracker so the dog could runaway. Then they offered us some meat, bread and vodka and they gave us a lift till the top and back and had a great time afterwords!

What would you want to tell a fellow traveller about your home country?
Well Italy is the country of contradiction. It’s one of the oldest countries but in fact is one of the newest. Every region is different from each others and everyone is proud to be belong the region they are born. In Italy you can find beautiful beaches, historical places, great museums, good food, the economic dream from people from NorthAfrica and EastEurope. But besides that the number of youth unemployments is 40%, lots of corruption, politicians that look only for their interests. Anyway Italy is still a great place to live and especially to visit!