More than three years after I began my around-the-world trip I'm still in contact with many of the people I met on the road and featured in "A Map for Saturday," here's what some of them are up to...
Sabrina, my German girlfriend in Australia, ended up staying in Sydney and going to university there. She eventually moved to Amsterdam with her Australian boyfriend.
For some reason I'm asked most often about Kate, the Canadian I met in Madrid. She visited me in New York on her way home and we still chat often. Vancouver and New York are very far apart though so that flame has gone out too.
Bill, who was crying in his beer when last we saw him, has gotten over the pains of being home. In fact he's bought a house and moved in with his girlfriend so I guess anything is possible.
Kym, who counted expenses with me in Laos, has been living in Vietnam ever since but is back home in Australia at the moment causing some sort of trouble I'm sure.
Robert, The Irish guy who didn't like going to the Opera House by himself isn't alone now either, he's married and back living in Dublin last I knew.
I'm also still in touch with Ella, the tall blonde whose dad wouldn't let her go back home in the first week of her trip. She is finishing university in Rotterdam, Holland and spent much of last year in Spain.
Jens, who bought that old, yellow campervan, spent months driving around Australia before continuing on to Asia. He eventually took the Trans-Siberian railroad all the way across Russia on his way back to Berlin. I met him there in fall '06 and he didn't know what to do with himself. By the next spring he had figured it out though and he's now training to be a pilot.
Rebeccca, who you may remember sitting on the beach in Brazil (and riding that buggy to the ATM), made a headlong return to the working world. She's probably the only person I know who didn't have major re-entry issues when she came back home.
For me the measure of whether I'm really still in touch with these people is if I would try to crash on their couch if I was in their city. Just last week I was in Lisbon, Portugal and crashed with Amber, a Dutch friend I met in Stockholm more than two years ago. But it gets harder as time goes by and to be honest it's harder for me to remember now why I should care about people I spent a few days with a couple of years ago.
But when you see them again you remember that a friendship of convenience and chance can also be one formed out of mutual need and common experience and they often end up being connections that are stronger than you can explain, even to yourself.
-Brook
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