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thought my arrival in Europe, my own bloody continent, would be far more—how shall I
put it?— kind .
Sadly, after hours of hearing the word “no” from locals and tourists alike, I sat down on
a park bench and accepted the fact that Europe was not being very nice.
The only “maybe” I had received all day was from a pregnant woman who told me that
she would have to go home and ask her husband if I could stay with them. After waiting
for hours, day turning into night, I began debating whether I should just sleep on the park
bench I was sitting on.
I hadn't eaten since late morning. The sun was gone. And now I was being stood up by
a pregnant woman who clearly was not coming back.
I remembered when I first told Lina my plan, she asked me, “Well, what happens if you
don't find anyone to help you?”
At the time I had scoffed—what a ridiculous and yet absolutely rational question.
I believed as anyone who is about to embark on a trip around the world with no money
and no gas that things would inevitably work out. But as I sat there on that park bench, I
began to wonder: What if they don't? What if no one offers me a place to stay, a meal to
eat, a tank of gas? What happens if my trip ends on this park bench in Barcelona, and I
have to go back to the shipping company and beg for them to pay for a flight back home?
I looked over at Kindness One and couldn't imagine abandoning her to such a fate. After
crossing the Atlantic Ocean, I had to find at least one person in all of Barcelona who would
help me in my moment of crisis.
And then I saw him. Hercules was in his mid-twenties. And yes, his name was really
Hercules. He looked like a student, but more than that, he looked like he was the kind of
free spirit who wouldn't ignore my cause.
I opened with the only truth I could think of: “I'm stuck, man.”
And that's how I found a place to stay for the night, and a meal, and a tank of gas, and
more than all of that combined, that's how my faith was restored in the European Union.
I left Barcelona with the same joy I had felt driving out of Los Angeles. It was once
again just Kindness One, the open road, and me. All it took was one person. All it ever
really takes is one person to say, “I hear you, brother, and I'm willing to help.”
Hercules was my one person, and he had given me the fuel to cross the rest of the
world—or at least the better part of Northern Spain.
On the way into France I met an assortment of characters: a retired clown who put me
up for the night, a single mother of six who thought I was a celebrity of some sort (blame
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