We began as strangers in Paris. I was on my way home, spending a last night in a hostel in the City of Lights. She was a backpacker, passing through.

Within 24 hours of meeting Christianne I had canceled my flight home, sent my luggage off with a stranger, and decided to spend the next 2 months backpacking with her. During those two months we went as far North as London, as far South as San Torini. We saw Paris. Barcelona. Nice. Naples. Praia a Mare. Rome. Cinque Terre. Florence. Milan. Athens. San Torini. Sofia. Bucharest. Budapest. Prague. London.

These were two months when we were never apart – not for sleeping, not for meals, not when sick, not when well, not in the face of crises (lost wallets, stolen passports), not even during surreally awkward sleeper trains involving us and two Australian boys who became important members of our traveling party.

Christianne saved me many times over. I don’t think I did much for her (except make her soup when we were homesick in Naples), but we became traveling sisters. We had each others’ backs. We counseled each other on love (those slippery Aussies), on homesickness, on financial issues (I lost my purse in the Cinque Terre, so my parents put money in her bank account and we used her credit card). We stayed up ‘til 4 am, having tea parties in Bulgaria. We shared precious clean laundry. We played endless hours of gin rummy on trains, with or without other passengers. She’s been in most of the best days of my life.

That fateful hostel in Paris had given us each other and two Aussie boys, who we kept in touch with and convinced to meet us in Athens. We spent about a month backpacking with them, all of us together like a band of gypsies. After this month were all still together and there were no secrets and no privacies left. It seems to me now that we were all in love with each other in various ways. We still are, and the Missing of Us is an activity that takes substantial time.

We said sad goodbyes in a flat in London, our Aussie boyfriends sleeping in their rooms. We left it that someday we would go to Australia together, once we had money, once we could really do it, and we would finish what we’d started.