Wonderlust King

[Note: Some of the names have been changed as a courtesy to those in question]

Oh we meet again my dear readers. Yes I am off on another adventure and this time into the unknown… okay it is Europe but still this trip is far less planned than any of my past endeavors. Why, you may be asking yourself, would I embark on another trip on the cusp of my last one? Well it boils down to two simple things, a girl and music.

Whilst studying in Australia I was thrown into a singularly unlikely event which has led me, not content with the humdrum life of suburban Florida, to meet new and exciting people abroad. One day, the day before my birthday no less, I received a friend request on the social networking site Facebook. The request came from an attractive young Israeli named Sadie. Sadie as it turned out was the childhood friend of my newly met Swiss friend Karin's sister. As I later found out Sadie had seen a picture of me taken by Karin and thought I just looked strange enough to start a dialogue with. I must admit that my first reaction to seeing her request was to be suspicious. I generally take random friend requests from attractive strangers in foreign lands as spam, but I took the bait and began a long and interesting conversation with her.

Sadie was joining the air force in two days and was not very enthusiastic about the situation. She had grown up in Switzerland till the age of five when she moved to Israel. Over the course of the rest of my time in Australia we occasionally conversed and I found everything she spoke of endlessly fascinating and absorbed it like a sponge. And so the friendship was formed. When I returned to the States it grew stronger and we began talking on the phone and via webcam.

It was on the second or third of these early phone conversations that we hatched out our ludicrous plan to travel to Ireland together. Sade had in passing invited me to a biker tattoo festival which had been canceled due to the unfortunate incarceration of its planners. So that fell to the wayside.

“Hmmm, I wish you could speak another language like me so that we could both not understand each other,” she said later in the conversation. “Yeah it would be cool if I could speak Gaelic like my forefathers,” I replied. “What is Gaelic?” “It is what they speak in Ireland besides English,” I explained. “Let’s go to Ireland!” she suggested. “Okay,” I said never one to miss an opportunity. “When?” I asked. “How about May?”

And so three months later, and after connecting with Sadie at an almost unnervingly deep level, I am preparing to leave. But it was not only her suggestion of Ireland which is bringing me to Europe. Georg had suggested me going to a music festival around the same time so I decided that the universe really wanted me to go to Europe and I would combine the two trips.

So now I am preparing to go to Ireland, than Switzerland to meet Sadie’s father, Austria (where I will go to the Novarock Music Festival), and will be leaving from Dusseldorf Germany. Yes, this is possibly very irresponsible as I am in school and will be blowing the last of my savings on this, BUT; I am young, I am a yesman, this is a once in a life time opportunity, I miss my European friends, and I am dying to meet Sadie, who is the most interesting person I have never met.
Yours truly,
Ryan Messer