loanword
Fernweh
Standing at an airport departures board, reading out Windhoek and Montevideo, and aching to go somewhere you have never been.
Words for place
Feelings tied to where you are, where you were, or where you have never been.
loanword
hiraeth
A Welsh nurse in a London flat hears a male voice choir through the wall and grieves for a valley, and people, she cannot get back.
coined by John Koenig
kenopsia
The wrong-footed quiet of a stadium concourse the morning after a game, or any room built for a crowd and standing empty.
coined by John Koenig
monachopsis
The new hire, months in, who still does not know whose mug is whose: the slow, ongoing mismatch of a person and a place that never quite fits.
coined by John Koenig
onism
Dropping the little Street View figure onto a random road in Kazakhstan and knowing that this, a fence and a gas station, is as close as you will get.
loanword
Waldeinsamkeit
Two hours past the last marked trail in a beech wood, the road noise gone and nobody since the car park, and glad of it.
loanword
Wanderlust
Refreshing a page of cheap flights at midnight with a full week of work ahead, wanting to be on any road but this one.