Learn Russian: После напряжённого дня мне хочется вырваться из города. - After a tense day, I want to break free from the city.

While я хочу means a direct, active "I want," the impersonal construction мне хочется (literally "it wants to me") expresses a spontaneous feeling or craving—more like "I feel like" or "I have an urge to." It perfectly matches the emotional, exhaustion-driven desire to escape described in this sentence.

How does the verb вырваться get the meaning of "to break free"?

It's built from the root рвать, which means "to tear." The prefix вы- adds the direction "out," and the reflexive suffix -ся applies the action to the subject ("oneself"). Literally, it means "to tear oneself out," which creates the strong metaphorical meaning of escaping or breaking free.

Напряжённого translates here as "tense." Can I use this word to describe a person feeling tense, too?

Yes. While here it describes a stressful, intense, or busy day (напряжённый день), you can absolutely use it for a person who is tense, anxious, or on edge (e.g., он был очень напряжённый — he was very tense). It derives from the verb напрягать, meaning "to strain."

Since the sentence is about breaking "away" from the city, why use из instead of от?