on trust

Not in your hands, not
Something you control. Believe
In the good we do.

Traveling gives one a perspective on life that is vastly different from anything to be learned any other way. By coming to Germany, this place where I don't speak the language and know next to nothing about the social structure or customs, I am really at the mercy of human kindness. If someone told me to get on a bus that was going to Italy, there's a good chance I wouldn't know any better. But I don't think people are that way.

I've already had to throw myself at the mercies of fate a few times: that woman who happened to be sitting next to me on the train ride back to Darmstadt? If she had been leading me anywhere else, how could I have known? I couldn't even understand the announcement about the train station closing; it was only presented in German. There's a feeling that you learn to trust about people you meet. I felt it with Mathieu, even just through email, which is why I thought it was okay to spend $650 on a computer for him and that it was okay to cross my fingers and head to Berlin in my rainbow socks.

Sometimes the news can make us doubt the basic good of people, but it's there. For every serial killer we read about, just thing about the things we aren't reading about: every little American girl traveling abroad who makes it to her destination through extra efforts of people who don't even know her.