about Ola Smiles

& taking life one chai at a time.

Welcome & thank you for being here from the very start of Ola Smiles!

If you are reading this, it means that you are at the beginning of my journey of sharing stories, exploring different topics and beautiful places. Thank you for your time and support. It means the world.

I was born in Vienna, Austria and raised in Wrocław, Poland. So far I lived in four countries and I'm about to move to my fifth one by the beginning of the next year (2020). My life so far has been an exciting rollercoaster full of ups and downs, love, friendships, inspiring stories, doubts, beautiful places and lots of chai. I loooove chai on soy milk, any chai fans?

My first big move happened when I was seventeen years old. I decided to move for a high school year abroad to the United States of America to learn english and see what's the whole pursuit of American Dream is about. I ended up in Rockford, IL and lived my own American Dream. I spend there a year and during that time I met amazing people, explored America, fell in love, joined a choir, orchestra and played Elle in "Legally Blond" musical. It has been an amazing year full of challenges that made me stronger and wiser.

After the year has come to an end, I came back to my home city in Poland. Music has been in my life since I can remember. After coming back from the exchange I decided I wanted to pursue my dream of becoming an Opera singer. Since I needed a year of preparation for the Music School in Vienna I decided that I will study something in english in the meantime in order to further improve my language skills. Like in the "Legally Blond" musical, I ended in a law school doing my international and european law degree, while at the same time traveling every two weeks to Vienna to practice singing and learn music theory.

Additionally, me and my best friend, we launched a project called Creative Mornings in our hometown during our internship in a Marketing company in Wrocław. (I will do a separate post about the project itself, it's an amazing initiative. For the inpatient folks- go and visit www.creativemornings.com and check if there is a CM chapter in your city, you won't regret it! )

After a year of traveling back and forth, I decided to move to Vienna full time and continue my legal studies externally. After three months of being in the city, I have met the love of my life, now-my husband Udo.

Within the next two years my life has changed drastically. It turned out that due to nods on my throat I couldn't proceed with my Opera career. With big support of my family and Udo, I decided to do a Bachelor of Music Event Management at the University of West London. In the meantime Udo got an opportunity to move to Canada, which force me to do my legal and event management studies both in half time in order to be able to move away with him.

The idea of Canada, transformed into an idea to do an MBA in Madrid, Spain, where we moved in January 2019. 2017/2018 was a very intensive phase for us. Udo was getting ready for his admission exams, I was finishing my studies and planning our wedding, which happened in the summer of 2018.

It has been a crazy time and it thaught us a lot about commitment, how to compromise, time management and more.

Right now the year is coming to an end as well as the MBA program. It has been such an incredible year for us. (I will share more in a separate post)

Next step: move to Frankfurt am Main in Germany in January 2020. Adventure here we come!

What are you going to find on Ola Smiles are stories about love, traveling, food and much much more.

I would love to share with you my stories, stories about people that I had the chance to meet, things that I learned in my journey, things I am passionate about and beautiful places I discovered. I'm always happy about any topic suggestions. Feel free to message me.

Here is to more stories, travels and inspiring individuals!

If you made it until here I want to say THANK you again. Thank you for your time and patience.

I would love to know more about you and YOUR story, starting with where you come from.

Please don't hesitate to send me a message on Instagram or write me an email: olasmilesblog@gmail.com. I would love to hear about YOUR stories and have the ability to connect with you.

I'm very grateful about any feedback from you as well ;)

Your message would mean the world to me!

I hope to hear from you soon :)

Sending you many smiles,

Yours truly, O.S