People We Meet Along the Way

a picture Matt took of Plovdiv, Bulgaria

People always are surprised when they hear that I travel alone. After they get over their initial shock that a) I've survived this long (fairly easy to do if you're careful) and b) my parents let me do it (they know it's useless to fight me), their third question is always c) how do I handle all that time alone? Sure, I'm comfortable being alone, I always tell them, but just because I don't travel with anyone doesn't mean I don't talk to people or make friends. In fact, I think it's easier to meet people as a solo traveler. But making friends while you’re traveling can be a very weird experience, I'm not going to lie, and it can look lots of different ways.

Sometimes it’s perfectly normal and natural, like my chat with Mariam from Georgia (the country, not the state) in a four-girl dorm room in a Thessaloniki hostel. “Oh, I really want to go to Georgia!” I told her from my seat on the floor, where I was plopped down in sweats with wet hair. She looked at me uncertainly. “I know you’re talking about the country, not the state,” I assured her.

I learned that Mariam had a dog named Dream because it was always her dream to have a dog of her own. She told me that she tended bar on the weekends in Tbilisi and gave me a long list of things I had to see if (when!) I come to Georgia. We exchanged Instagrams before she left the next day to go home. When I go to Tbilisi, I’ll have a friendly face and a free drink waiting for me.

pigeons in Thessaloniki, where I met a lot of people at the hostel

 In some situations, you become each other’s only friend in that city and so you’re each other’s lifeline. This happened with Suz, a girl from the Netherlands. One minute we were strangers sleeping in chairs across from each other on the ferry, and the next minute we were sharing a phone charger and trying to figure out which bus to take to get from the Port of Souda into Chania. We swapped travel stories over early morning coffee—although hers were much crazier than mine. One involved wolves in the Latvian wilderness.

With these kinds of friends, you pool your local knowledge and your resources and stick together out of necessity, and because it’s nice to have a buddy for a while and not have to figure out things alone. So, for a few hours, it becomes you two against the world. And then you part and never see each other again. Suz, if you’re reading this, I wish you well!

the sunrise in Crete after getting off the ferry where I met Suz

Sometimes, you make a friend and then spend an extended period of time with them not because you need help figuring things out but because you simply don’t know anyone else. I’d exchanged numbers with a guy in a hostel in Crete—Gabriel from Montreal—and promptly forgot about him until he texted me when we were both in Vienna a week later. We ended up spending two entire days together. We visited an art museum, climbed the North Tower of St. Stephen’s, and went to a symphony concert.

Because we were together for so long, and because we knew we’d likely never see each other again, we ended up sharing quite a bit about ourselves with each other—a kind of accelerated intimacy. When Gabriel left Vienna, I got emotional whiplash. It’s strange to go from strangers to best friends to out of each other’s lives forever.

I visited the ancient agora in Athens with Jake and Nik

Sometimes one or two friends lead to you meeting five or ten new people. A friendship with two American guys, Jake and Nik, led me to a billiards bar in Athens where I shot pool with Tom from Leipzig, Germany (we lost). A few days later, I ended up going on a six-hour hike with Erin, one of the girls I met at that bar.

Ayman, a UNC friend living in Paris, brought me to a party at one of his friends’ apartments and I ended up drunk on Beaujolais, talking with a group that included people from Argentina, Italy, and Puerto Rico.

Sometimes you make friends because you’re missing home. I was eating alone in a café in Rotterdam, next to a girl who was also eating alone. She didn’t speak Dutch with the waiter so I knew she wasn't a local, and I asked her where she was from. Berkeley, California. We discussed Cal's recent entry into the ACC and when I went to leave the café, she (her name was Ashley) said, “do you want to walk around a bit?” We ended up at a cool, but very weird, art museum and then had some beer in the Markthal before she had to catch her train to Berlin. I follow her pottery account on Instagram.

the view of Rotterdam Ashley and I had from the top of the art depot we visited

Sometimes a stranger steps in when you need a bit of help and although you never really get to know each other, you’ll always think fondly of them. I’d just arrived at the Vienna Hauptbahnhof from the airport and was trying to find the right U-Bahn line to get from the station to my apartment. I stopped a girl who looked about my age and asked her if she spoke English. She did, so I explained my predicament.

“I don’t know about that line in particular, but you can take the U1 with me, I’m headed in the same direction,” she said. We made small talk as she led me and all my stuff through the train station, got me on the train, and gave me her Instagram in case I needed any help in Vienna. Getting from the airport to your hotel in a new city is the worst part of travel, in my opinion, and I’ll always remember Barbara helping me out.

Sometimes there’s a language barrier. The Central Market in Riga is busy and I couldn’t find a table, so I asked a middle-aged woman if I could share hers. They’re big tables. After about ten minutes, we struck up a conversation in halting English. Agnieszka was Polish, there with her boyfriend—who only spoke Polish and Russian—and several times we resorted to Google Translate to talk. But some stuff needs no translation: make a wave above your head to indicate a certain hairstyle and everyone knows you’re talking about Donald Trump. That made them laugh.

Matt and I spent a day running around Istanbul at breakneck speed to see as much as we could

Sometimes you’re thrown together with someone and you make the most of it and discover that you’ve actually met a very lovely person. Matt from Australia was the only other person on my tour of Bulgaria who was under the age of thirty, so we became fast friends. I learned all about his job and soon-to-be-fiancée Hailey, and we rolled our eyes at each other when everybody in the group took approximately one thousand years to decide what they wanted to order for dinner. He looked out for me like I was his little sister.

I met Alex because she was sitting next to me in my German class in Vienna and because she was one of the only other people who showed up to the class “party” at one of the Christmas markets. Alex also treated me like a sister would: she made me chocolate-chip muffins for my birthday, gave me medicine when I got sick, and invited me to her apartment to visit her cat Roberto.

the lake where I broke my wrist with Norwegian Boy

And sometimes you meet a boy you go on two dates with who takes you to the emergency room after you break your wrist following him out onto some wet rocks on the second date. Fine, maybe you don't, but I did. He was sweet and kind at the hospital and in the time we spent together afterwards.

He broke “things” (whatever things were going on after I left Norway—not many) off with a text when I was in Estonia, and I cried in an empty park in front of a flock of ducks. I remember being on the phone with my mom and wailing that “even the ducks are in couples!” (It wasn’t funny then, but it’s hilarious now.)

I’ll always remember all the people I told you about here, and the many I didn’t tell you about. People from Spain, India, Argentina, the U.K., Canada, Australia. So many Australians. People on holidays or work trips or, believe it or not, fleeing conflict. Maybe I’ll see some of them again, in one year or in twenty years. I have all their contact information. Then again, maybe I won’t. But I’ll always remember the fun we had, the places we saw, and the kindness they showed me.

And I learned—don’t be afraid to say hello, to start conversations, to ask for help. Other travelers are usually looking to make friends too. Lots of interactions will be duds or won’t turn into anything, but some will turn into friendships. That friendship may last an hour or a lifetime, but either way, it’ll be worth it.