WHO AM I?
Hi
I’m Leonie
In high school, they asked me:
“What do you want to be until you retire?”
Suddenly I had to choose one passion between all my interests for the rest of my life.
An absurd question, especially for a teenager, don’t you think?
The pressure to choose made me miserable. Why settle for one passion when you have so many?
Why should you choose one passion,
if you can have several?
Raised bilingually by my Austrian mom, Austria has always felt more like home than the Netherlands.
After working in hospitality, I felt a strong need to reconnect—with myself and my roots. It led me to a biological farm in Carinthia, where the rhythm of farm life brought a sense of fulfillment I’d never known—and a hunger for more
Somewhere between the towering Austrian Alps, I realized this was just the beginning. After spending the summer in Austria, I joined the Breekjaar program in Amsterdam and later traveled to Indonesia.
Through WorkAway, I stayed with a local host family and taught English in village schools. Being part of their daily life—seeing the challenges they faced, yet still experiencing their generosity and joy—shifted my perspective for the better.
That hunger for self-discovery only expanded when solo travel led me across South America, further deepening my understanding of the world and myself.
By writing about my experiences I began to see that it wasn’t the question that had a hold on me, but rather, it was myself. That I had the power to change it into whatever I wanted.
I’m also currently working
on my first novel.
