Messy hair, tired blue eyes, stone-cold sober and jet-lagged. It's 1 am and I'm crawling into a twin-sized bed decorated with a nubby balloon design fleece blanket in a strange city next to a strange man. How did I get here? Do read on...

My flight landed into San Sebastian hours earlier, 10:30 PM to be exact. The buses were no longer running, so I split a cab into town with a 24 year old Milano, named Mateo.

As we got settled into the back seat, he threw out his hands and said “I’m a pharmacist and a quirky guy.” I laughed. Mateo was 6’4,” and his body commanded a presence as big as his words. When he spoke, the energy sparked his delicate brown eyes, covered in part by a pair of reflective cat-eyed glasses. I could see his eyes growing and shrinking as he changed facial expressions. He read my ease as a good transition into talking about his heartbreak.

“My heart has been pulled straight out of my chest and ripped into two,” Mateo told me. He wallowed, “Julia, looked at me with the depths of her beautiful green eyes and said she was leaving me for her old boyfriend”. This ended what he considered to be one of the greatest love affairs of the century.

His English wasn’t great, so I’m not sure if the descriptions he used to describe his heartbreak reflected scenes he remembered from an American chick-flick or if his dramatic words came from his Italian heritage. To me, the whole thing sounded like a mix between a tragedy and a circus, but he didn’t see it that way.  He was completely sincere. He didn’t blame her but was done fighting a losing battle for her love. In a  fleeting decision to heal his first broken heart, he booked a plane ticket to Spain.

His hands were constantly moving. He swung them around to accentuate his favorite old-english proverbs or killer points. After he made the claim, he would need to push his short, side-parted, fluffy brown hair, roughly out of his face.

He then turned to me and said, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”, the words flew past his full-bodied, rosy, chapstick lips and each syllable was accentuated to the same degree as the last.

Mateo’s flamboyant and lovable demeanor made me laugh hard. He was an open book which made people feel comfortable and good about themselves through his stories and perspective on the world.

In fact, Mateo decided to begin healing his broken heart by traveling to San Sebastian so he could walk the Camino del Norte portion of the el Camino de Santiago. The Camino de Santiago is a network of ancient pilgrimage routes throughout Europe that is known for being filled with a mix of people wanting to make life changes, heartbroken wanderers, and exercise junkies. Mateo clearly fell into the middle category.  I felt bad for his heartbreak because he was a genuinely good person but I knew he would bounce back fast.

When traveling, Mateo planned even less than I did. I booked a room for one night. Mateo had booked nothing.  

He coolly explained to me that he was going to begin the trek when we arrived. In total, this was a 5 week, 808 kilometer trek. The first town to sleep was 25 kilometers away from San Sebastian. Beginning this intense of a hike at midnight, sounded like the  craziest plan I have every heard of, but there he was.  When the cab pulled up to the center of town, Mateo, being a gentleman, told me he would walk me to my hostel before grabbing a pastry and beginning his journey.

We bumbled around looking for the hostel--which had no sign, for an hour before arriving. When we got there, the owner said that he had overbooked the rooms so no longer had a bed for me.  However, he “kindly” offered me a spot on the floor for 40 Euro per night. Our voices rose as we bickered back and forth like two teenagers while I searched for a new hostel online.

Meanwhile, Mateo decided it was now too late to begin his journey, and that he needed a bed after all.

Bingo! Found a hostel. I sarcastically waved good-bye to the hostel owner.  We both silently prayed to never see one another again.

It was now 1 am. We knocked on the new hostel’s door and the owner let us up. She was overbooked as well but said we could stay in a room at her friend’s apartment.  

There I was. Either sleeping on the street or sharing a bed with someone that I had only known for two hours. It didn’t even cross my mind to take the bed for myself,  after all of our struggles and his selflessness in helping me find my hostel, we were in this together, and the bed was just as much his as mine. So while Benny said nothing, I could now imagine him saying, “Sleep in the bed you’ve made.”

I’ve had loads of bizarre experiences but there is something very personal about putting your PJ’s on, brushing your teeth, putting your frownie on and getting into bed with a complete stranger.

Women, listen closely, for those of you who don’t know, a frownie is a remarkable, all natural, wrinkle-defying, triangle shaped sticker that works better for your stubborn forehead lines than botox. While, this beauty marvel has the  power to transform you back 10 years in your sleep, it’s not the most fashionable sticker to slap on when sleeping with your husband of 50 years, let alone a stranger. But, as I put my frownie on, I said quietly to myself, “consistency is key.”

As I brushed my teeth, I contemplated my decision: would anyone hear me scream if Mateo decided to try and get frisky? Instead of addressing my concerns,  I changed and flipped off the light.

We layed down like two stiff logs next to each other, unsure of how to act. Mateo pulled me in, we snuggled all night and talked about first heartbreaks.  In the morning, I snapped photos like a mom leaving her child at the bus stop on the first day of school. I cried of happiness as he turned around, with a big smile and a huge wave, then off he went, walking stick and pastry in hand, on his way to walk the el Camino.

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