I don’t remember their faces, their names or their national origins.
I remember we were all staying at a hostel in Malin Head, Ireland, and shared insomnia like an infection.
We talked about anything and nothing at all, until the wee hours of the morning when the lady that ran the hostel told us that we could get a drink from a local pub that stayed open late, or opened early – either way, we all trooped outside and ambled into the village nearby, where we discovered we’d been lied to in order to get rid of us.
We weren’t even mad. We were young and on an adventure and we hadn’t been thinking about the fact that our conversation in the common room might be keeping our proprietors awake.
This was before the advent of social media, so there was no exchange of twitter handles or facebook monikers. We swirled together into a clump of debris for just that one night, then drifted apart to float back to our own shores.
I hope they remember that night fondly, too.