Strangely this tale starts not in France but in Singapore. I had just flown into this large Asian city – the first stop on my backpacking tour around the world – and I felt very green. My backpack was huge, heavy and uncomfortable. I had never been away from home before and, silly as this sounds, everything felt really foreign. I had been wandering the streets for hours, searching for a suitably cheap place to stay with no success. I finally found a backpacker hostel called Uncle Loons and struggled into the foyer goggle-eyed with exhaustion. All the dormitories were full but he had one double room left for 50 bucks a night. Would I like it? I had budgeted 10 bucks a night for accommodation but couldn’t have cared if this room was 500 bucks a night. Yes, I wanted it.
Uncle Loon handed me a key and I stood in the foyer wondering if I had the strength to lift this ridiculous backpack. Had I mistakenly packed a dismantled car engine in there? As I gently swayed in the foyer an Australian girl strode up to the desk. In an accent as flat as week old lemonade she asked if there were any vacancies. Uncle Loon pointed at me and told her I had taken the last room. She looked at me and smiled.
“G’day”, she said. “I’m Sarah.”
“Hi,” I answered. “I’m Peter.”
“Listen, mate, I won’t beat around the bush, can I share that room with you?”
“Umm,” I said. I was a little surprised by her forward nature but I really liked that smile she had given me earlier. Who knows, this might even lead to something more.
“Sure,” I said.
“Thanks, and by the way, you’re not getting a shag.”
Sarah was true to her word and I didn’t get a shag. I did, however, learn that she had been travelling around South East Asia for 6 months and was leaving for a kibbutz in Israel the next day. She loaded up my address book with places to stay and emptied half of the stuff out of my backpack. We took it all to an orphanage.
We ate at a steamboat restaurant that night and got pleasantly drunk. With each passing hour I found myself more and more fascinated by this amazing woman. I was going to write “in love with her” but that’s not possible, is it? Later that night we slept chastely in a large double bed. Sarah was up at dawn to go to the airport.
“I have to see you again,” I said.
“Okay, meet me on the top of the Eiffel Tower in six months time. What about November 22?”
“I’ll see you there,” I said.
Sarah leaned over and kissed me lightly on the lips and was gone.
So our tale finally
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