Imagine a line on a map tracing every road you’ve travelled in your life, from business trips to holidays to the repetitive loops of daily routine. At first it would spread wildly across the globe. Then, gradually, it would slow. As we age, we shrink into patterns.

If you’re like me, you occasionally fantasise about changing it all. Packing everything into boxes. Starting again somewhere new. The bigger question is whether you actually want to.

A friend once told me that change doesn’t require uprooting your life. You can begin by taking a different route to work. With that in mind, last Sunday I decided to walk a few roads in České Budějovice I had never been down before.

I headed towards Matice Školské, where last autumn I saw two Americans walking arm in arm, turning into a street I hadn’t noticed before. They kicked through yellow leaves like characters in a romantic film, the quiet suburban road framing them perfectly. I remember thinking I should come back and see where it led.

Walking along the river toward that street, I felt a disproportionate sense of excitement. I was about to visit somewhere I had never seen before. Not metaphorically. Literally never stood there in my life.

The road was called Pabláskova, wide and lined with detached pastel houses. Trees stood pink in bloom. In one garden I spotted what I assumed were seven dwarves, until I counted ten. Garden gnomes are rare in the Czech Republic, but in the British seaside town I grew up in they were everywhere. In the evenings we used to swap them between gardens, waiting to see if the owners would question their sanity. That was our version of teenage rebellion.

At the end of Pabláskova I discovered it is surprisingly difficult to get deliberately lost. When I’m not trying, it happens constantly. This time, every turn threatened to deposit me back on a main road. I backtracked, cut through Jánská, then emerged onto familiar territory.

So I crossed town toward the area behind the train station, somewhere I rarely visit. The sun disappeared behind grey clouds and a cold wind replaced it. My mood shifted with the weather. I found myself rushing, irritated. This isn’t part of it. This is just transit. A waste of time.

It’s strange how quickly we turn everything into a means to an end. Even when the goal is to get lost.

I stopped at the Mercury Centre for something to eat. Determined to notice what was new, I remembered the first time I came here. I had confidently gone downstairs instead of upstairs and ended up in the car park, staring at concrete and wondering how I’d misread the place so badly. Now I navigate it without thinking. The building hasn’t changed. I have.

Crossing the bridge over the tracks, the weather turned properly hostile. Snow whipped sideways. The wagons below were full of cut trees and the air smelled faintly of sulphur. For a moment it reminded me of backpacking through Russia, which felt absurd considering I was thirty minutes from home.

On the other side I found a row of bazaars crammed with fake watches, painted eggs, plastic flowers. Dogs barked behind garden gates, an irritated chorus shunting me forward. The houses looked half-finished, prioritising garden space over walls.

Under a brick tunnel I suddenly remembered I had once bought a second-hand bike here. To retrieve it from a balcony, the seller had climbed the side of the house like a squirrel. I half-joked about whether the house or the bike were actually his. To prove ownership, he invited me inside.

Three young children played in a cramped one-bedroom flat. There was almost no furniture, just a bed and a rickety table. On it sat a half-finished bag of sugar. The mother smiled and rattled the balcony door to show it no longer opened. I felt uneasy taking the bike. It looked like the only object of value in the room. But they wanted the cash.

As I cycled away I resolved never to complain about anything again. Five minutes later I realised both tires were punctured, so my resolution didn’t even last until I got home.

Later, walking along the old railway line, I stopped to look at the back end of the station: piles of cement, dilapidated sheds, crows picking at nothing. It struck me that people had once worked hard to build these tracks. Now it felt abandoned, as though effort eventually dissolves into rubble.

By then the snow was relentless and I was freezing. I had started the day searching for unfamiliar streets. Now all I wanted were the ones I knew.

Even so, I decided I would do it again. Not because it transforms your life. It doesn’t. But because walking somewhere new sharpens your senses. It loosens memory. It reminds you that even a small city contains multiple worlds, and that you’ve only ever occupied a fraction of them.

*First published in Milk & Honey České Budějovice