tales from the trip

76 ▶ fall 2013

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Lost in TokyoOnly my sheer terror could distract me from the excruciating pain I was experiencing. I was only six years old, was alone on a train, and was hardly able to breathe because I was sur-rounded by strangers. And my fingers were stuck in the train door—the result of my impulse to reach for my father when I realized he wasn’t going to make it onto the train with me. Looking out the window, I could see that he was getting further and fur-ther away.

In my mind, the Japanese pas-sengers had no reason to care how this played out for me. These fears were confirmed as I helplessly tried to remove my fingers from the door of the train and the swarm of bodies prevented me from accomplishing anything. But suddenly three men pried open the doors of the moving

train. I was immediately yanked away from the door as it quickly slammed shut again. Strong arms were firmly grasping me from all directions. Gentle hands lightly touched my bruised hands to inspect them for damage.

The train stopped, and I heard the doors swoop open. Several peo-ple pulled me off the train, and then they shuffled back on—all except one middle-aged, average-sized man. Placing his arm on my shoulder, he looked intensely into my eyes. He was speaking so fast and obviously wanted me to understand what he was saying, but I couldn’t. I tried to get back on the train, but he pulled me away from the door. The doors shut, and the train sped away.

The man just stood there on the platform. I stood there too, thinking that if he wouldn’t let me get back on

the train, he probably wasn’t going to let me walk away either. What did this man want from me? Where was my father? How on earth was he going to find me in this crowded city? It felt like hours to me then, but it probably took only about five minutes for the next train to show up.

After the train arrived, the man stood there, looking like he was wait-ing for something, so I waited too. Suddenly the man smiled, appar-ently assuming that the one white man hurrying off of the train was my father. He was right. I ran to my father, and my father ran to me. Then my father shook the man’s hand and thanked him. The man gave a slight bow and got on the train my father had just exited.

—Sarah AndrewsYorktown, Virginia

www.stowawaymag.com ◀ 77

field notes

Fumbling with the LingoBy the time we got to Haworth, England, it had been 10 days since I had done laundry. Washing machines were scarce, and finding the time to hand wash anything was hard since our stay in each hostel was so short. I had two pairs of jeans, both caked in dirt from our daily hikes, and my situation was getting dire: I needed to wash my clothes, and I needed to do it now.

Almost crying with gratitude upon hearing that there was a wash-room in the basement of the Haworth Hostel, I lugged my bag of smelly, muddy clothes down the rickety staircase to the creepy concrete base-ment. I poured in a more-than-ample amount of detergent, stuffed as many clothes as would fit into the machine, and reached for the washer’s dial only to find that there wasn’t one.

I searched frantically for some way to start it, but I was stumped until I saw a tiny slit just big enough for a coin. Laughing softly at my pathetic desperation, I dug into my bag for a pound coin. It didn’t fit. None of my foreign coins fit. Panic overtook me, and I raced up the rick-ety old stairs again, rushing to the front desk.

“The washer won’t start,” I gasped, startling the young clerk.

“Oh,” he said, “Right. That’s because you need a token. I’ll grab you one.”

As he reached toward a drawer to get me a life-saving token, how-ever, one of the more attractive and flirty of my traveling companions approached. The clerk immediately forgot all about me and stepped forward to help her. When he

disappeared into the back room to get her something, I snarled to myself in frustration, “I haven’t washed my pants in 10 days. Give me a stupid token!”

It wasn’t until I looked up and saw the front desk clerk staring at me in horrified repulsion that I real-ized that not only had I been far from quiet in my outburst, but I had also failed to remember that pants to a Brit means underwear. Without mov-ing his disgusted gaze from me, he slowly reached into the drawer and slid a washing machine token across the counter.

In defeat, I took it and said softly, “I meant trousers,” before skulking back to the dreary basement and my disgusting clothes.

—Leah Robinson Provo, Utah

Painted in YorkIt was the day before my twentieth birthday, and I was in York, England, on a study abroad. I was standing with three other students and one of our professors, looking up at Clifford’s Tower, the keep of York’s medieval castle. It looked down at us, round, beige, and heavy from the top of a green hill. We were trying to decide where to go next. We had spent our morning walking on the walls of the city, and now we were looking for something else to see, something that we hoped wouldn’t come with a hefty price tag.

We eventually drifted into the museum near the tower, discov-ered its daunting entrance fee, and drifted right back out. As we left the museum, we passed a painter stand-ing behind his easel and looking out

over the square toward the tower. Our professor stopped and asked if we could take a look at the man’s painting. We were surprised when the painter seemed embarrassed. He held up his arm as if he didn’t want us to see his work, but eventually we persuaded him to let us step behind his easel.

The painting was a Monet-esque image of the tower on the green hill and the people walking below. The people were daubs of different-colored clothing with heads and arms, walking right and left in the street below the tower. And there we were. It took us sev-eral seconds to notice, but the art-ist had captured all five of us there in his painting. Although we had been reduced to a few smudges of

paint, we recognized elements of ourselves. I recognized myself by my height and the silver stripe on my blue backpack. I was glad to see myself there.

It’s interesting that somewhere on the other side of the ocean there’s a painting with me in it on the last day I was 19. Travel allows me to broaden my life, to see the world, and to be a greater part of the world. Sometimes it’s easy for me to forget, as I move around from place to place and from site to site. But what’s most important isn’t where we’ve been—it’s that we’ve made an appearance.

—Sarah SyphusWest Jordan, Utah