This summer, I went to three new countries. Here are a few of my favorite international interactions from my trip. All full of kindness. Heart. Connection. Courage.
And language was the least important part.
In London…
I saw a couple lying in Regent’s Park under a blanket, with a guy reading a book held in front of a girl, his arms wrapped around her, him leaning them against a tree.
I spoke with my Harry Potter tour guide, who, when I said I was from New Jersey (after having him guess, of course) eagerly asked about my recommendations for his winter trip to Freehold, New Jersey, to see all things Bruce Springsteen. With a huge, surprised smile, I told him he picked the wrong month and gave him all the travel tips I could as someone who has, all my life, lived 30 minutes away from the spots he will be flying across the Atlantic to see.
In Paris…
I looked in a store window and saw a man holding a woman’s face with a gaze as powerful as if she just agreed to marry him.
My friend and I were photobombed at Moulin Rouge by strangers in what became some of our favorite pictures from the trip.
A proud father and his daughter asked us to take a photo of them with a smile, handing us their phone and pouring us some of their wine as a thank you— no English was exchanged.
In Venice…
I saw a kid who must have been in middle school walk back toward his family from the opposite direction, shaking his head and emphatically motioning, declaring “there is no Ice Cream down this street! No Ice Cream!”
My friend and I started dying of laughter at the weight of his message. It seemed like we witnessed the middle of an argument on directions from a fellow American who, like me, does not mess around about his Ice Cream (or *Gelato).
A lifelong Venetian painter asked where I was from, and then asked if I knew Perth Amboy. I said “Of course,” surprised at the specificity of his question. He said he’d bought a car there once. “Why?” I laughed. He replied the sales tax in New York made buying a car in New Jersey a better option.
He told me about driving around America in his 20s. He told me about his family and the room he paints with his palette knife. This stranger who I’d known for 5 minutes told me he was proud I had a full time job out of school. Trying to translate in his head, he said, “Are you… alone… are you… married?” I told him I was “single” and his face lit up with all the types of adventures I should take in America, as if he was writing me into a Tom Petty song. As much as he loves his kids, he said, he looked at me with knowing eyes and said this was my time.
At Passport Control in Newark, New Jersey…
I overheard an exhausted and playful family with some good comebacks to each other. “You’re a troll. None of us have had enough sleep to be roasting each other’s passports.”
In the same line, strangers across generations exchanged an “I LOVE your dress” and an ecstatic “Oh, thank you!”
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