Travelers Heart

As I sat there listening to Mantas spill out his life story to me I couldn’t stop laughing; partly because of his accent and the continuous flow of silly sounding curses and partly because of the fact that I had just met a total stranger for coffee.

Mantas is 23, originally from Lithuania but grew up in Ireland. He’s an artist who has been hitchhiking and couchsurfing his way through Europe for the past 6 months. He walked into the café wearing a Russian hat that now looked like a wet puppy from the drizzle of rain outside and he sported a thin little mustache. He immediately gave me a hug and within five minutes he asked if I was on laughing gas, saying, “Our lungs are going to break!”

After we ordered cioccolata calda (thick hot chocolate) and he insisted we share he told me how his journey began and how he ended up in Italy.

With the intention of only being gone for 2 weeks he hitchhiked to Greece to meet up with some friends to go bungee jumping. Then hopped over to Gavdos Island, the most southern point in Europe, where you can see the sun rise on one horizon and set on the opposite at the same time. After spending 2 months there he caught a boat to Turkey on his 3rd attempt. From there he was on his way to Lithuania to meet his parents for holiday but he got "held up by the epicness of Bulgaria for a month". Then, Romania, Hungry, a little bot of Austria and Poland where his cousins found him on the road and picked him up, which he said was a "legendarily emotional moment" for him!

I wanted to know more but he insisted I share my story before he continued. He listened intently until I finished my unimpressive adventures in comparison and then said, “Yes, you have a travelers heart.”

We walked around Vicenza in the rain sharing my umbrella. “Sheize, you’re terrible at holding the umbrella,” he told me so I hit him with the umbrella and ran away. We joked back and forth like old friends. He told me about his family and his art. We stopped to take a picture and he asked a random girl to take it for us. He wanted a good picture so he proceeded to show the girl exactly how to take it, making her bend down to get an artsy angle. He laughed at me for smiling in the picture.

He walked me to the train station so I could catch my train back to Thiene and we said our goodbyes. He gave me a hug and I wished him luck on the rest of his adventure. It was a rather emotional departure considering we had only met a few hours ago. He opened his arms for another hug, picked me up and swung me around telling me to lift my feet up like they do in the movies.

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When we’re little we are all taught “stranger danger” and to stay away from them. But at what age does that wear off? When are we taught to go outside of our comfort zone to meet the other people around us? I feel like I’ve always been hesitant of people I didn’t know and always assumed the worst but The Lord is changing my heart and opening my eyes to see that every person has such a cool story to tell if we’re willing to listen. We should realize that the world isn’t such a scary place. I believe more and more that the good far outweighs the bad.

Part of trusting God is trusting him to keep you safe and being faithful to follow that small voice in your head urging you to smile or say something to the person sitting next to you on the train. They may be rude or mean but at least you tried. Or they may be crazy, Mantas’ kind of crazy that teaches you more about life and inspires you. I don’t want to miss out on those crazy people. 

Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives is the perfect preparation for a future that only He can see. _ Corrie ten Boom