backpackerStories | The Italian traveller, not a love story.

^{The perseverance of the waves shapes the shores of the world. By @cnandofer}

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Forty minutes of meditation in a Buddhist temple would be perfect after what he experienced in the last months. 'Concentrate on your breathing' said the monk of 17 years who he met just five days before…

He met her in Australia, working on a strawberry farm. From the first moment he saw her, he was crazy about her. They talked a little, but those moments were enough to convince him that he wanted to spend more time with her.

She moved to a different city, many kilometres away. Fly across Australia to spend a weekend with someone he met for only a few hours, seemed like the stupidest idea he'd had in his life. 'I hardly know her' he thought as he bought the plane tickets.

Their first weekend together was perfect. She was everything he wanted, she was pretty, intelligent and funny. They spent the weekend between laughs, hugs and kisses until it was Sunday, the day he had to go home. They promised to meet again two months later, they wanted to swim with sharks for her birthday.

He worked nonstop for the next two months to pay its second weekend with her, but their second weekend was not that perfect. She couldn't enjoy it, she was sick the whole time of the tour. It was not the same after the weekend with the sharks, they lost contact with each other until one day he decided to risk more and take a chance.

She would return to Japan in 30 days and he would be there waiting for her when she arrived. He got a job on a farm that was going to pay him with accommodation and food. He bought a plane ticket and flew to Japan.

The farm was an hour walk from the nearest town and 170 km from Fukushima, where two years before happened that accident at the nuclear plant. The work was hard and the food was bad, potatoes and rice every day. He had no phone, no Internet. The only sort of communication with the world he had, a radio that could only tune one radio station with 24 continuous hours of news in Japanese. He doesn't speak Japanese.

Five days in, 'is difficult but I can do it,' he thought. Ten days after, and he didn't understand what was happening around him, his bosses never really treated him very well. Walking to town was nearly impossible after a hard day of work. Fortnight, 'I hope she hasn't changed the date of her flight' he thought. Finally, on day number twenty he surrendered. He had no news from her in weeks and couldn't communicate with her, he didn't know where she lived and she didn't even know that he was in Japan.

He changed the date of his flight and went to China...

'Forty minutes of meditation will help me' he thought. Empty mind, trying to find calm and overcome what had happened. He concentrated on his breathing, that was when he saw her.

A fly!!! Flying around him, standing on their feet, flying at his face, his hands. The forty longest minutes of his life, but he didn't move, he resisted the urge to kill that annoying insect. He didn't enjoy it but he made it. A little win after a disastrous month.

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