Sarah

In the summer of 1992, twenty-two-year-old Sarah booked a youth tour across Europe through Contiki, stepping onto the bus in London with her heavy canvas backpack and high-top sneakers, ready to experience life outside her small hometown. While waiting to board for the drive across the English Channel toward Paris, she struck up a conversation with Bill, a Canadian fellow traveler who had saved up for months to take a trip abroad before starting his career back home. As they boarded the coach decorated with bold colorful bars along its side, Bill offered to help carry her heavy duffel bag, and the two immediately bonded over shared excitement, travel mix tapes, and cheap instant coffee. Throughout the three-week journey across France, Italy, and Germany, they became inseparable travel companions, spending long highway drives swapping stories about their futures, taking candid film photos outside historic landmarks, and navigating cobblestone streets together in matching nineties fashion. Though the bond felt unbreakable during those magical weeks abroad, the post-tour reality of long distance quickly set in, and after a few months of exchanged letters, their friendship gradually faded as life took them in different directions.