The kindness of strangers

I'm pretty stand offish towards strangers...or people in general.  I don't like to accept help most times.  I travel alone and have to be pretty guarded.  And I often don't get along with females that well.  A few stories highlighting parts of this.

First, the bad side of being open.  I was in London, on my first real solo trip, first city.  There was a tall American guy there, very open, positive, knew a few words in a few languages and was always quick to try them on any natives he met.  We hung out for a few days and he suggested I try to be more open to people.  Ok, I'll try...  I went to Brighton on the bus.  Wandered around, went to the pavilion (AMAZING) and then wandered down the pier.  Where I met some Sri Lankan guys about my age.  I decided to hang out and chat.  Then the smaller one suggested we go down to the beach.  I'm bigger than him and I'm being open to meeting new people, so ok.  We're there for about 10 minutes before he tries to put his tongue in my mouth and I had to excuse myself.  I walked to a tiny sandwich shop where I was the only customer.  The guy behind the counter took my order and when he was done, came around the counter to try to get me to kiss him.  These two incidents happened in the span of about 20 minutes.  During the day, sober.  Brighton has a bit of a gay scene, so perhaps these guys were excited to see a female, but it was completely unnerving.

A few years later, after a long time of bargaining in French with a Moroccan over some trinkets, I was so flustered that I actually ended up paying more than I was meant to at the beginning of the bargaining.  And then he tried to kiss me.  Dude totally ripped me off, and then wanted a kiss to seal the deal.  Different situation, but seemed an appropriate place to put the story.

Some examples of the kindness of strangers:

I was on the train in Belgium, en route to the airport, I believe on my way to my spring break trip (Spain, Morocco, Portugal).  The train stopped and there were some staticky messages in French over the intercom.  I asked a woman if she spoke English and if she could tell me what was going on.  Basically, the train was majorly delayed.  I told her I was on my way to the airport, and asked did she think I would miss my flight.  She immediately offered to drive me there, as her stop would be sooner.  We got off at her stop with plenty of time to spare, so we stopped by her house where I met her mother and daughter.  They then packed me some snacks for my trip and she took me to the airport.  Nothing expected, just being nice for niceness sake (though I don't really believe that, and neither did Abraham Lincoln, but that's not for here.)


After Morocco, I was in Seville.  Sort of.  I booked a hostel/guesthouse in Carmona.  Not realizing it was nearly an hour from Seville.  But it turned out to be a great idea.  I was in Spain for Semana Santa so I got to see how a smaller town celebrated.  Such a gorgeous town with stone fortifications surrounding it.  The hostel part was new and clean and there was a small pool.  Just lovely.  On my last day, I took the bus to Seville to buy a ticket to Portugal.  But they were all booked up.  So I bought a ticket for the next day and then took the bus back to Carmona to get a bed for the night.  Easier said than done.  After the hour long bus back, I found they had no beds for the night.  There was a snippy Dutch girl at the desk.  She said I could wait till midnight and if someone didn't show up, she'd give me their bed.  What else could I do.  I wandered a bit, but mostly just sat on a bench waiting till midnight.  It came, and there were no beds.  The snippy Dutch girl then offered her own bed.  She closed up shop, and we walked to her house.  There I helped her put the duvet cover on and we had some wine and snacks and then we went to bed.  Early the next morning I snuck out.  I can still see it in my head.  The sun was just coming up, she lived in a curve on a cobblestone street at the bottom of a hill.  I closed the huge door and made my way to the bus stop at the edge of town.  Some strong coffee from a cafe and I was on my way to Portugal, refreshed and with a new faith in humanity.