Her calloused fingers were firmly holding the wooden fence of her garden, while her glance was searching the summits. I had introduced Old Jeanne to my colleague, who, I had said, was living in that flat country, far north. Old Jeanne's previously calm face had suddenly shown a form of childish incomprehension, when she asked for confirmation whether mountains were really absent in that land. “It must be boring there,” she had said. And half-indignant, half-curious, my grand-aunt had turned back to the Alpine landscape she had always lived in.

The feeling of unconditional freedom had rapidly overwhelmed me. I just got on my bike for the first time and was riding on Utrecht's large and empty cycling tracks, in the late hours of the morning. I was riding too fast, and I knew it. But I wanted to feel the speed I could attain on this flat surface in my hair, before the road would eventually get steeper. I was expecting slopes, which never appeared. I was expecting to reach, at some point, the other side of the valley, where the mountains begin their rise. There was no valley, and there were no mountains. I could not prevent the laughter in my chest from emerging, in its simple and honest form.

I cycled far, until the only limit encountered was the one of my own free time. My return seemed to coincide with the end of office hours, which forced me to master the art of back pedal braking, in just a couple of minutes. The next evening, I would pretend to have been close to dying seven times on the road. I was dazzled by the traffic jungle, seemingly inspired by straight-line trajectories and optimal time saving, at the expense of basic traffic rules. I was humiliated to stand alone at the red light, overtaken by the pack. The absence of hierarchy between the different types of vehicles paralyzed me. I was using my brakes excessively, as if to notify each participant in traffic how their behavior could cause anguish.