Flirty foreign flings, intense vacationships, and delicious eye contact with attractive strangers at 30,000 feet: folks, we can’t make this sh*t up. There’s really nothing like falling for someone — whether for 6 hours or a lifetime — when you’re already jittery with excitement over being somewhere completely new. It’s pretty much the icing on an already adrenaline-filled cake, ya know?
When you’re a traveler, your love life is a little, uh, unconventional. Here’s what a few of our friends had to say when we asked about their weirdest and wildest international love stories:
Andrew Mahowald in Belgium
“I randomly met a Swedish girl on a dance floor at Tomorrowland in Belgium and six months later we traveled together in Sri Lanka. For five weeks we hiked, sat on cliff edges, lived in a snake charmer village, learned to surf, partied on the beach, and rode scooters off into sunsets. I had the time of my f*cking life. The goodbye at the airport was heartbreaking.”
Josh Cripps in New Zealand
“I met this woman in New Zealand — her English was poor and my French was even worse, but we started chatting nevertheless. We ended up traveling the next few weeks together, even getting stuck in a mountain hut for 3 days and later having to get rescued by a helicopter. We passed our time playing Scrabble, building forts, and just trying to stay dry and warm by making soup.”
Maeve Gimpl in Ireland
“I had a 6-hour love affair with a 20-something from Monterrey, Mexico on my last night in Ireland. From the second I met him at my hostel, I knew he was exactly my type. We both knew damn well that we had flights in the morning. So… we romanticized the f*ck out of those six hours. We went to the touristy parts of Dublin — the places where Dubliners would go to watch American make royal fools out of themselves — and danced all over. At one point he was carrying me on his back and we fantasized about building a house in Mexico. It was corny, but I’m swooning just thinking about it.”
Devon Boyd in the United States
“He was sleeping on the couch at my hostel, I was sitting there and no joke sent a Snapchat of him to my sister and said ‘this guy is cuuuuute’. He woke up and we started chatting. The conversation was effortless and everything was easy. By midnight, the neighbour of the hostel was having a birthday party on the rooftop — this is when we finally kissed! We stayed until about 5am, and watched the sunrise while watching a hilarious subtitled Korean sitcom about mermaids.
We spent the next 2 weeks together. Exploring NY and eventually buying tickets & flying to Quebec together, then heading up to Montreal. While we were on our flight to Canada he asked to switch seats with the lady I was sitting next to as we were ‘recently engaged’ and wanted nothing more than to hold his fiancé’s hand.”
Candice Deanna in England
“My tinder binge of looking for cute boys with cute accents while in London for 3 weeks turned into a 8 month long distance relationship and me moving to the UK (I was going to anyways, but the boy was a bonus). We’ve had 8 months traveling Southeast Asia, 10 months living in a van in Australia, another 10 months long distance because of covid, and now back together again.”
Cassy Martinez in Italy
“I met my most memorable travel love in Rome after waking up from a nap, and finding him in my hostel dorm room. My alarm started ringing to wake me up for happy hour on the roof, and before making my way up, I convinced this gorgeous Brazilian to join me.
As the night progressed, I was hesitant to let myself really go for it because we were literal roommates for the next couple of days. Hostel romance can be dicey, especially when you’re bunkmates. When he tried to kiss me that night on the dance floor, I explained my hesitation — to which he sweetly replied, “but how lucky we were to be placed together already.” That was something I really loved about our time together — his glass full perspective on anything and everything. He inspired me to think that way too.
Over the next few days, we were attached at the hip. Making out between bites of gelato, wandering into centuries old churches, and even seeing the Pope speak at the Vatican — I was a goner.
We stayed in touch here and there, eventually making plans to meet up again on the Italian island of Sardinia the following year when I was on my next adventure. While we had an amazing time together, I could feel the pressure get the best of our time together near the end. I found myself distracted by questions like “where do we go from here?” instead of staying present — which ultimately is travel love kryptonite. Not sure if we’ll meet again, but our time together made me feel like the world is small, so you never know.”
Josh Wicks in New Zealand
“I always wanted to be with an exotic artistic type. I finally met her at a traveler’s community in New Zealand. We fell in love almost instantly, right before she was leaving the country and traveling on to Australia. My journey in NZ had just begun so we communicated through social media and old school letter writing for 6 months before I flew to Australia to meet her in Melbourne. We spent a week together in a private room of a hostel, and after that we knew for sure we wanted to keep it going. But we were out of money. We both returned to our home countries- me to Canada and her to Chile to work, save and plan a trip together. It was the only time in my life where I had no doubts about a long distance relationship.
Another 6 months later, we met in Thailand and backpacked from north to south. After that we lived briefly in Patagonia before hitchhiking into Chile and making our way back to her family’s house in Santiago. A year later, with her family’s approval, we got married and had an epic backyard party to celebrate. Oh yeah and we’re having a baby! Travel love is real!”