When I moved to Canada, the first thing I did was go for a walk. It rained for the first few days, and the streets were almost completely empty. I loved it. After the endless crowds of Istanbul, an empty sidewalk felt like a luxury. I no longer had to weave through crowds, suck in my stomach to squeeze through a stream of people, or work out how to overtake slower pedestrians. I could just walk in a straight line. No one was honking or smoking beside me. There was space, and I didn’t have to compete for it.

I spent hours wandering around the city, looking at colourful houses, tidy yards, and streets climbing steep hills. Even the dampness and biting wind felt like part of the local atmosphere. They didn’t bother me. Everything was new to me and looked almost cinematic. At the time, I genuinely believed this was what a comfortable city was supposed to feel like.

A couple of months later, I was walking along those same streets when I realised I was no longer enjoying them. The strange thing was that nothing around me had changed. The weather had improved, and the rain had stopped. The houses were still colourful, the yards still tidy. But I kept wondering why I was going anywhere. The city had shops and cafés. Between them, though, were long stretches of empty streets, wide roads, and parking lots. I could walk for ten minutes, half an hour, even an hour without seeing another pedestrian. I often felt like the only person who had left the house simply to walk, rather than to get somewhere.

At first, having so much space had been a relief. Now I kept looking around and wondering where everyone was. An empty park or a deserted downtown sometimes made me think of those films where everyone has been evacuated and one person hasn’t received the message.

I still didn’t want the crowds back. I wanted to see people going about their day: someone having coffee outside, someone reading on a bench, children walking home from school. I wanted to hear fragments of other people’s conversations, notice the morning line outside a bakery, smile at passing strangers, walk past a street musician, or watch someone playing with a dog. I didn’t need to talk to anyone. Seeing them was enough to make me feel that I was out in a city, sharing it with other people. I could be on my own without feeling quite so alone.

That distinction hadn’t occurred to me before the move. I had thought about safety, housing, healthcare, and the cost of living. I wanted somewhere comfortable, somewhere daily life would take less effort. Enjoying a walk hadn’t made the list. It was so ordinary that I had taken it for granted. I had never thought to ask whether I would want to leave the house with no particular destination, whether I would find somewhere to sit for a while, something worth stopping to look at, or a reason to take a longer route home.

When my walks stopped being enjoyable, I realised how much they had contributed to feeling good about where I lived. The things I had considered before the move still mattered. But so did what it felt like to spend an ordinary afternoon outside.

I still wanted quiet streets and enough room to walk comfortably. I also wanted cafés with people sitting outside, parks being used, and signs of daily life along the way. Until then, I hadn’t understood that these were separate things, or that I wanted both. I don’t miss the crowds, the horns, or the cigarette smoke. But having a sidewalk to myself is no longer enough to make me enjoy a walk. I’m not particularly fond of feeling like the sole survivor in a film about the end of the world, either.