International Rendezvous

One of my favorite aspects of traveling solo is it affords you the opportunity to make new friends. Not that traveling with people eliminates that possibility, but solo travel almost forces you to do so. You are out of your comfort zone of safe places with safe faces, and being alone is magnified when in a foreign country.

Upon my somewhat recent travels to Brasil, I spent a week in Barra da Lagoa on the island of Florianopolis. It was here that I forged some great friendships. I am one of those people who is really good about maintaining contact with friends made on the road...I collect and exchange emails and follow up every few weeks to see how these new friends are doing. It is not only a great way to live vicariously through others travels, but great to keep in touch with people you often share a lot with in short periods of time. Not to mention having a couch to crash on in many countries around the world. In Lagoa I made friends with an Australian lawyer named Steve. He stopped practicing law after about a year at the Supreme Court after earning his J.D. He decided to take some time to travel the world on a year, round-the-world ticket. This past weekend he landed for the New York City portion of his trip. Having known about this for some time combined with the manageable 5.5 hour drive, I made plans to meet him in the city.

It was great to actually reconnect with an international friend on somewhat home-turf. Steve had been traveling in mostly 3rd world countries for the past 6 months so was intoxicated by the Big Apple. We ventured the streets, laid out in Central Park as he strummed away on his guitar, viewed NYC at night from the Empire State Building, showed him some nightlife and caught up on life. It was extremely interesting hearing his point of view on the world after spending so much time amidst poverty and now comparing it to the excessive lifestyle of New York. Even from when I first met him a few months ago, there has been a shift...something I could tell was gained from time on the road solo, bouncing from hostel to hostel, bartering his way through visa offices, hopping on rickety buses and avoiding incidents on the streets, surviving bad illnesses and loss of bags, money and pride.

I have to say that being in the Big Apple with someone who was appreciating every minute detail of it was something that gave me a different appreciation for it. I found myself noticing all the various street artists and colors of shirts in a window, children playing music in a park, groups of people taking excessive amounts of photos, seemingly oblivious to the other hundreds of people laying nearby, children in their "I Love NY" tshirts. In a way, it was like going to Disneyworld with a young child...it is like truly seeing it for the first time. As we grow up, it seems our ability to pick up on the most beautiful, perfect nuances of something is diminished...until you see it through the eyes of a child or first-timer.