Characters make the story

The greatest lesson I am learning this year (and one that I think I will continue to learn for the rest of my life) is that life is ALL about people and the relationships you have with the people in your life.  I almost feel like it is what makes life.  That without other people I as a person mean nothing.  I guess I had to come to Europe to discover what Ubuntu really means.

My previous post laid bare the disappointment that travelling was.  But that was not the full story.  The truth is that I did have magic moments on my travels – moments that I will treasure forever. 

It just was that those moments were not seeing the Coliseum totally by surprise one day when I turned a street in Rome nor was it seeing the Eiffel Tower glitter in the Paris skyline.  Those were special moments.  But they did not have the ‘magic’ factor.

The most magical moments I had were with people. The moments were magic because we were doing something kiff together like going up into the Austrian Alps or walking along the East Side Gallery. But honestly we could have been anywhere and it would still have been a magic moment.

People drive you crazy.  We misunderstand one another.  We say stupid things and we get grumpy and irritable.  We are selfish and like things our way.  We often have different ways of dealing with situations that piss people off but are totally normal to our way of thinking.  People are damn annoying.  Those closest to you hurt you the most.  But life is empty without people. All the beautiful places, all the good food, all the crazy experiences mean nothing without other people to share them with.  Doesn’t matter if you’re doing cool stuff or doing mundane stuff, you need people there for you.  God himself has his homies.  He did not create us to be alone. 

I have always been a loner and a bit of a control freak.  I want people on my terms and I want them to stay in the boxes that I put them in.  I don’t want them to hurt me or take up to much of my space.  But that is not what relationship is about.  You need the hurt to experience the love because we are human and if there is no hurt then the love cannot be real. 

So these are some of the magic moments I had with some freaking awesome people.

First off, these two crazy cats arrived: Stephie and Bru

I love this couple more than you can imagine. Awaiting their arrival was the most excitement I have ever experienced in my grown up life.  They literally made me come alive again after months of loneliness and isolation.  For the first time in months I laughed loudly and had someone who ‘got’ me and thought that men in dinner jackets with coiffed hair really are the most ridiculous sight ever. 

We barbecued illegally on this nifty little ‘braai’

stared at owls at Skansen, made fun of American tourists, went to Ikea for cheap food 

sad pandas at Ikea

and spent hours in the national park smelling flowers and throwing stones on the lake.

I made new friends along the way.  These crazy hippies almost convinced me to smoke weed and gave me a taste of the alternative life.  Cycling the streets of Copenhagen and swinging over the lake in Christiana were magic moments because of them.

My dear friend Magda, the perfect German host (she being the perfect German), left us nutella and good German bread for breakfast, gave us very exact directions and a list of German phrases so that we would not get lost and heaven forbid be late!!  We saw and did so much in Berlin yet the magic moment was a real ‘braai’ that she especially organized for us in her parents’ garden.

Alice, my chilled, easygoing Austrian friend who bought us lots of wine, tried to teach us to pop gum loudly and made us feel so at rest in her beautiful bungalow.  Walking through the alps and going up in the cable car were incredible.  However the magic moment was watching a stupid series with her one night and eating Mozart kugel on her red couch.

Steph and Bru left me (crying like a baby) to go home on a horrific 40 hour long trip and I continued on to Vienna. Lisa, a girl I met on a trip to Russia last year had offered to have me to stay.  We had only ever spoken for half an hour in person yet she invited me into her home and into her family. She even bought me a famous Sacher cake which we ate in a park with plastic white forks. She took me to the Blue Danube and as we lay on a jetty she played the Blue Danube Waltz off her phone.  

the fancy sacher cake and plastic forks 

In Munich, Manuela hosted me in her tiny little Olympic village flat.  She kindly did not take offence when I asked for something other than German bread to eat – she introduced me to pretzels - and got me to drink a litre of beer – before church!  We spent the evenings chatting on her balcony till late and wondering where we would be in ten years time. 

eating salted pickles at the market

From this point on in my travels I was alone and it was not the same.  Nothing means as much without people.  Bad hostel rooms, getting lost, expensive food and language barriers are not as easy to bear without someone to laugh (or cry) about it with. 

Faye, my fellow traveler and sister in this experience of living abroad, came like an angel out a Michelangelo fresco to see me in Rome.  The heat, the tourists, the sleazy Italian men all became a story and an adventure with her by my side.  The gelato tasted sweeter and the ancient beauty of Rome came alive just for having a dear friend to share it with.  We lay in a park and hated on Europe and let our longing for home totally romanticize everything in SA – even the car guards and petrol price. (check out her cool blog: http://findingbrightplaces.blogspot.it/)

When I arrived in Paris, after a delayed flight from Nice, my heavy suitcase bumping other pedestrians, my hair frizzing and my back wet with sweat under my backpack, I was seriously about to crack.  But God knew.  And He blessed me with a clean, decent hostel (I’d left a room in Nice which I had shared with four men who slept only in their jocks because of the lack of airconditioning) but more importantly, He blessed me with a new friend.  And not just anybody.  A South African friend.  Alison turned what would have been just another city full of tourists and famous sights into an adventure.  We only had one day together but got to walk up the Champs Elysees, shop for a ten euro item at a Gap store, have lunch at a sidewalk cafe, see the Eiffel Tower and of course take photos (I finally have photos with myself in them).  This chick is seriously cool - you should check out her travel blogs and food websites. (http://alisonwestwood.com/)

All stories need people in them to make them magical.  Because what is any story without its characters?