In the 1995 Hollywood movie, "Before Sunrise", a North American tourist in Europe played by Ethan Hawke falls for a French woman played by Julie Delpy. At the end of the movie, the audience is left wondering what happens to the couple. Here is the real-life version…
Mélanie and I met in Bruges, Belgium 15 years ago on June 28, 1995 while traveling in Europe for the summer. Originally, our paths were only meant to cross for two brief nights - two nights out of a romance novel spent talking next to the windmills along the canals. Since the itineraries for our trips would not find us in the same locations on the same dates, we both doubted that we would ever see each other again. Well, the romance novel was only meant to begin there. Arriving in Luxembourg the following day and yearning to see her again, I left a message for Mélanie at the only hotel that I knew in Amsterdam for her to meet me in Greece in a month. Perhaps destiny was smiling on us because even though Mélanie was not staying at that hotel, she somehow received the message and sent me a reply at a hotel in Paris. A month later, we met up on the Greek island of Corfu on the agreed upon date and then spent the next two and a half weeks traveling together throughout Greece, Spain, and France.
It took crossing an ocean to find each other and now we love travelling together with our “little backpackers”.
