I spend a lot of time saying that you should travel while you’re young; while you can. For the most part, I really think this is one of the best times to travel. However, for some people, it just isn’t possible.
I was backpacking through Europe, staying in clean-but-cheap hostels, and it was my second time through Poland. I was determined to spend several weeks in the country and take my time. One morning at breakfast, I saw what most people could only describe as a ‘grandmother’, sitting across from me, looking just a little lost.
Being the friendly person I am, and seriously wondering why she was staying in a hostel, I said hello.
Within 10 minutes we were friends. She had made plans to travel to a few countries with a friend of hers. When the friend backed out, she decided to go anyway, and make new friends along the way.
As it turned out, we were traveling an identical route for about the next ten days, and we decided to travel and sightsee a little bit together.
Looking back on it, I have no idea how it worked, traveling with a 73 year old woman. I tend to go a little crazy busy while travelling, wanting to see it all, do it all, never missing anything.
While she stuck that out with me for two days, she insisted we slow down. And it had to be we. She had told her children back home about me and now we were stuck with each other. (Hahah. I still don’t know if she was serious about it…)
But in the week that followed, I sat in more parks. Ate more at restaurants (she said frequently ‘I cooked my whole life. I’m on vacation. I don’t want to cook!’) Went to church more often (in fact, every church we ducked inside, if there was a mass, a funeral, or in one case, a wedding, we stayed and celebrated and made ourselves at home…) drank more tea (she had a ‘time for tea’ alert on her phone…- three times a day we stopped whatever we were doing to get a cup), and in general, slowed my whole pace down. I took less pictures (she insisted that you shouldn’t waste a perfect moment trying to capture it. Just let it happen and enjoy it with your whole being), but I probably made even more memories.
She told me about growing up first in England, and then immigrating to Canada, where she had a family, and then more grandchildren than she could count. (Turns out the magic number is 6…)
We were exploring on our first night in Warsaw and we’d gone into a mall beside the hostel. I needed some toiletries and she came along for ‘fun’.
Somehow, in between browsing through the stores and stopped to look at things, we got separated. At this point, Id known her less than 72 hours, but I was instantly worried, that somehow I felt responsible for this sweet old lady.
I looked around for her, frantically searching the mall, retracing steps, cursing myself for not having a picture of her in my phone.
Finally, I saw her sitting beside an information booth with a security guard beside her. When she saw me, she beamed and when I got closer, told the guard that she was sure her adoptive granddaughter would come looking for her.
Several days and countries later, we separated. She was catching a flight home, and it was time for me to continue my adventure. Though we exchanged addresses, (’email is for the young! I don’t need to be that in touch with people!’) it was weird to think that we wouldn’t be talking and sharing everything anymore.
Fast forward 4 months. I finally arrive home, my adoptive-grandmother experience in my mind as a fond travel memory, and sadly, probably nothing else. I begin the process of restarting life after a 7-month period away.
Within a week, I finally got around to checking the mail pile. I had 10 beautifully handwritten letters from Norma. She had written to me nearly every two weeks, filling me in on her summer, her visits with her family, her trip to the lake; complete with pictures. She always told me at the end of the letters that she knew I wasn’t home yet, but that she was thinking about me, and hoped that I would write when I had time.
Needless to say, I wrote back right away, and like clockwork, her reply came quickly.
While these days, we don’t write with as much frequency, we’re still in touch several times a year, and every year, she sends me a Christmas letter about the past year. She regularly includes information about her family members. The year after we met, I was shocked to find out that I had been given my own little section in her ‘annual family newsletter’. I was refered to usually as ‘my travel friend Jen’, but eventually, it was replaced by the far-more accurate term: ‘my adoptive-granddaughter, Jen’.
Have you ever met someone traveling that you instantly felt a bond with? Tell me your story in the comments 🙂
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