Ekaterina Petrovna, BNT’s resident fortune teller, explores an abiding question of love on the road.
Photo by Konstantin Sutyagin
For single travelers, there is always an anticipation of meeting someone on the road. You wonder: maybe this special someone will be the love of your life?
My travel experiences have always been one big disaster in the love area. Some say planes are a good place to meet handsome men, but I either end up on a seat all alone, or next to a family packed with children.
On a few occasions I felt like asking the ticket agent, “Please, put me next to a handsome single guy.”
With trains, it’s the same story. Just the other day I was taking a train from London to Brussels and hoping to end up next to the most eligible bachelor on Europe. Instead I found myself next to a woman… with two kids sharing one seat…next to mine.
At the end the mother and I had to share the kids.
Love And The Law Of Attraction
When it comes to love, the law of attraction seems to promote that you get what you expect. Or to put it differently, your thoughts attract the outcome.
Well, I tend to disagree. My own experience shows that the law of attraction works differently where love on the road is concerned.
The two times I actually met someone with love potential while traveling, it came without a warning. It also came when I had a clear warning look on my face: not available.
The Man On The Train
On this day I was a student traveling in the train from Amsterdam to Brussels to study languages and recycle myself from a typical Russian into an advanced European.
My own experience shows that the law of attraction works differently where love on the road is concerned.
Meeting a man was really unexpected, because I was not what I call ‘wearing the most presentable appearance.’
I was sitting alone in a train compartment, wearing glasses (but no make-up) and feeling totally stressed out. I was trying to translate one political article from French into Russian.
The article was anti-Russian (in the field of politics) and so I was also feeling angry.
This combination of disheveled anger seemed to attract one particular guy. He simply opened the door, installed himself on the opposite bench and said: “I want to know you. I want to know all about you.”
The guy wasn’t a stalker. He was handsome, well-educated, totally cute, and studied medicine, also in Belgium. We talked for the whole two hours, until his station in Antwerp.
He asked for my phone number. He wanted to meet me again.
But here is where the law of attraction worked as expected – my thoughts attracted the outcome. At the time I wasn’t feeling ready. I was actually feeling awful without my make-up, and I didn’t believe that a guy like him would want to meet me again.
The story never continued.
From Russia With Love
Here’s the story of the other train meeting, when I stumbled upon the most handsome guy. At that time I was still at school in Russia, and was traveling in the Moscow metro.
I was young, blessed with pimples, in love with George Michael and totally sure that I wasn’t even pretty in the slightest.
This was probably the reason that I behaved like an idiot when the guy started to talk to me. He was older, a student, and spoke French – the language I was studying in school.
But his flirt came so unexpectedly that not only did I not understand a single word of what he said in French (he invited me for a dinner, as I understood later), I also didn’t give him any chance to translate.
I was so nervous, I simply jumped from the train on the next station.
Right Place, Right Time
These experiences have left me with a thought: maybe we meet someone on the road only when we are ready, sure of ourselves and believing that might actually happen?
I won’t give up on this hope.
Next time I’m taking a plane, I will simply ask the ticket agent to put me next to the most handsome guy.
What have you found about love laws on the road? Share in the comments!
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7 Comments... join the discussion!
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Throughout my travels, I have had the good luck to meet more than one great love. Oddly enough, I met them both in the same country, albeit in different situations and on different adventures. I met Andy at dawn, after a 24 hour bus trip that we both were on. I think I made him laugh and we walked across the northern Thai city together in search of a place he had heard of. We checked in and stayed up all day. We fell in love then. I left him on a train platform a week later. My heart ached all the way back to Bangkok. In the six years since hammocks at Julie’s Guesthouse, we’ve met around the globe for spurts of intensity. There was a delicious month in Japan. He made a quiet, 6 am departure from my life that time. There were boozy layovers in London and a New Years Eve in Africa. I Skyped him yesterday and read your article today. Thanks for reminding me how much love I found on the road.
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Thank you for your comment Cedric!
Well, things seem to have changed. It looks like I have met the most handsome guy…and yes, on the road. On the road of recovery of my own sould:) but more about it later:)
Kat
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Nice article. I’ve been wrestling with the problem of dating abroad (particularly Japan) for some time:
1. Some Japanese girls are unashamedly attracted to foreigners and to such a strange degree that it makes me feel uncomfortable. After all, from my perspective, they’re not interested in me, just my green eyes, tall stature, and light brown hair. Furthermore, how can you form a serious relationship with someone like that, if you know they’re just targeting foreigners, without consideration to anything else? They don’t even care if you speak Japanese, so long as you’re willing to play their games. If you want, I can point you towards two girls like around the clubs in Hiroshima, as well as two in Kagoshima; I’m sure they’re still there doing their thing – it’s hard to stay unnoticed when you like to hang off the arm of a different gaijin (this time, it’s appropriate) every weekend.
2. On the reverse, many normal Japanese girls believe all foreign men are only after sex, and have no intention of ever forming a serious relationship with them, let alone marrying them. There are some that do this, and muddy the waters for all of us seeking something more. Of course, many people are open-minded, but it’s one more hurdle to get across.
3. If you’re considering dating another foreigner over here, there are any number of things that can happen: many people come over, leaving significant others waiting back home; many only intend to stay a year or two, and don’t want to find anyone; many are so overwhelmed with living in Japan and adapting to life here that they simply can’t handle a relationship or even dating; after living so long in Japan and slowly meshing with Japanese culture, one finds that your personality may not be the same western one you used to know, may not be one compatible with foreigners anymore (by the same token, being saturated with charisma from the Japanese dating scene).
The main reason I’m not dating any Japanese girl right now is because I know I can’t come across as anything other than a charisma man with my broken Japanese sentences and half-hearted attempts at cultured conversation in a foreign tongue. As a result, I’d only feel comfortable seeing someone who could speak fluent English with me, so there wouldn’t be any confusion as to each of our intentions and feelings. Naturally, this is only temporary until my level of language proficiency rises, but it significantly reduces the eligibility pool. If I wanted to just act like a gaijin, I could head up to Fukuoka, barge into the nearest all-you-can-drink club, drink until someone starts to look attractive, and whisper five words of lighthearted Japanese (do you like Japan? Are you tired? Do you want to dance? Can I buy you a drink?) until her foreigner interest was peaked… shallow foreigner, shallow Japanese. Charisma men and gaijin magnets.
Ref: http://myso-calledjapaneselife.blogspot.com/2008/02/charisma-men.html
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My current travel partner and I met in Paris. I was on a 2 and a half week tour of Europe (not for the first time) with my best girlfriend. We were endeavoring to stay almost entirely with friends and acquaintances, and that's what led me to him. I had contacted a friend that I hadn't seen in about two years since our exchange year in Belgium. My girlfriend and I arranged to stay with him at his apartment in Paris where he was going to college. Lo and behold upon my arrival, I discovered that my friend had a completely adorable roommate. He was studying abroad from NYU in Paris. Needless to say, we also discovered that the boys only had two beds and that my girlfriend and I were just going to have to be troopers
There's just something about exploring Paris with a boy…
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Love on the road.. wow..
I met a very handsome guy when I did my first solo traveling, it was in August this year. And I just traveled to Bali, still in Indonesia.
Our met was completely like a story in a soap opera. I was covered with sadness at that time (it was midnight), so I decided to sat alone at the pool side in the hotel. Stared at the beautiful August full moon, thought about someone else out there, wanted to cry but it was hard to shed the tears down. Then I saw this guy at his porch on the second-floor. I didn’t know what he was doing and I didn’t even care though. But surprisingly, he came downstairs, sat next to me, and we started a conversation. He was an American. What a nice conversation and we really get along very well.
We spent our time together since, along with two other travelers we met there. I enjoyed my time a lot with them, especially with this American guy. Felt like he is the man that I’m searching for all this time, haha exaggerated.
But we still good friends ’till now, always have contact every day. It’s nice.
Maybe he really is the right guy for me whom I met on the road..
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Hello Hanny,
thank you for your comment. Interesting story! But if you are still in contact, – do you think of meeting again or trying to work things out (like settling down in one country)?
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