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Five days together on vacation equals 10 years of friendship

It seems crazy but you can become friends "for life" with people you spend a week with on vacation. Why this happens, I don't know.

I'm reminded of it because on Sunday, I had dinner with Barry and Viv from Tampa. We met years ago on a skating vacation. Shortly after that trip, I had business in Tampa and stayed at their house for two days. Viv and I lounged in the backyard pool and talked plants and gardening and other important topics.Netherlands_group_pictureellen_perl

When they visited Washington the next year, we went to an Ethiopian restaurant in Adams Morgan and pushed spongy bread around a huge platter of delectable spreads. Barry and I skated in Rock Creek Park.

Then we lost touch for several years. Out of the blue I get an email from Viv a couple of weeks ago: "We're coming to Washington. Are you around?"

I was.

We arranged to meet at La Tasca on 7th Street. On the phone, Viv asked if I'd recognize her and Barry. What a silly question. We spotted each other on the street and hugged hello. Inside we shared tapas and caught each other up on our lives.

The next day, I got an email from Viv, responding to
my "good seeing you" email. "You know," she wrote, "we feel that we really did
'bond' with you and that you are special to us. Sometimes people get to
know each other more in five days than they can in five years."

Exactly.

And that's all it was. Five days together. Five days
of skating, eating, making clog jokes, touring a skating museum, a
cheese factory, a tile factory. Eating pannekoeken. And here we are. Making plans for dinner and a show this Friday as if we were just hanging out last week.

They fly back to Florida the next day. After that, who knows? We may not see one another for years. Or we'll be emailing regularly again. Either way, the bond remains.

I'm not saying it happens on every trip. Nor that you even necessarily always like most of the people on a trip.

But I have three sets of friends in the Barry/Viv category. And maybe others I'm not thinking of at the moment. People I've spent just a few days or weeks with on vacation. People who, if I were ever
in Nova Scotia, Tampa or San Francisco, I could call and say, "Hey, are you around? I'm in town…"

Photo: "Class picture," Netherlands skating group. Barry and Viv, second and third from left, middle row.

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9 responses to “Five days together on vacation equals 10 years of friendship”

  1. Lou Avatar
    Lou

    I moved to the DC area when “Madam’s Organ” was a place to stay away from after dark. When I left ten years later it was the hot spot in DC. Can’t recall the name of the place, but I went to the first Ethiopian restaurant in Adams Morgan, which was, I think, also the first in the Balto-Wash area. Several other new restaurants opened along that same strip, most with sidewalk tables that the locals complained about. About a year after it opened, another opened in Balto, since the DC one had become so popular.

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  2. placeswegopeoplewesee Avatar
    placeswegopeoplewesee

    What I find fascinating are two sides of that story. On one side, travel groups almost always get a contact list, everyone vows to stay in touch, swap photos, etc., and it rarely hapens. On the flip side are those friendships we do make after a relatively short time together. That has happened twice with me, and both women I met on cycling trips remain close friends after a decade. Alice lives in Vermont, and Jill is in Arizona.

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  3. boldlygosolo Avatar
    boldlygosolo

    Lou,
    Washington has changed, and then changed again. It’s incredible how many neighborhoods have risen from the ashes of the rioting 40 years ago. A lot just recently, when real estate boomed. The newest area is the H Street corridor in Northeast. There’s also the 14th and U Street area and all the restaurants in and around Chinatown and the MCI Center – although a lot of them, sadly, are chains. Madam’s Organ is still alive and well in Adams Morgan. So are the Ethiopian restaurants. The three main ones are Meskerem, Fasika and Red Sea. Any sound familiar as the one you went to?

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  4. boldlygosolo Avatar
    boldlygosolo

    Placeswegopeoplewesee,
    Yup, most of the people you meet on trips are forgotten. And that’s okay. Usually they’re nice enough to spend a week with but that’s enough. So I love it when the “magic” happens with a person or a couple or a family. What I often wish is that I would finally meet a really cool person who lives in my home town! That would make it SO much easier to stay in touch and nurture a friendship. In a future post: vacation romance. Stay tuned.

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  5. Lou Avatar
    Lou

    Red Sea! That’s it. 14th Street was so bad when I was there that a single male stopped at a traffic light would suddenly have a passenger. Talk about bold. And the cops wouldn’t do anything about the hookers, of course. Then they began cleaning that up finally. Chinatown was indistinguishable from the rest of the area, except for one Chinese restaurant who stuck it out through the worst of it. Sorry, memory is faded completely on that. Main drag, bus stop right in front of it, a small needle park across the street. I get back to the area occasionally to visit. One friend in Silver Spring, another in Dunkirk, down in Southern MD. I used to know DC very well, particularly the best driving routes to avoid traffic. I avoided the Beltway as much as possible, and never drove it on Friday or Sunday evenings. Friday, everybody evacuates, Sunday they’re all coming back. I forgot on my last visit and hit the Beltway around three one Friday afternoon. And of course I didn’t remember the streets so didn’t want to risk getting off and getting lost. I was going from Dunkirk to SS that day. Got there eventually, but I’ll remember next time.

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  6. boldlygosolo Avatar
    boldlygosolo

    Lou,
    You really must return to DC. If you were around for the nasty 14th St. shenanigans days, you won’t even BELIEVE how much Washington has changed. All of Logan Circle, previously major hooker hangout, has turned into a place for million dollar town homes and trendy restaurants.
    14th Street is now one of the trendiest corridors we have.
    Most of the seediness along F Street has been cleaned up. The new Newseum, opening today, will bring pedestrians to an area close to the Capitol that used to be dead on weekends. It’s truly incredible how much this city has changed.

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  7. Lou Avatar
    Lou

    I am truly amazed in the little I’ve seen on my short visits back. Actually, I get a good picture of a lot of the changes when I read George Pelecanos’s books. If you haven’t, do read him. Start with his first and work through. He’s got a good eye and a talented pen. Silver Spring boy. I happened to stop in a local Milwaukee bookshop one day when he was making an appearance. We talked for quite a while about the changes. Reason I included the Pelecanos reference, I was watching “The Wire” for the first time not long ago. [I know it’s been on for yonks, but TV isn’t in my vocabulary.] I saw his name as one of the writers.
    I lived about halfway between DC & Balto, so I spent as much time in one as the other. I moved there in 1975, when Schaefer was mayor, kicking tail, making loads of enemies but doing a helluva job cleaning up and modernizing the city. The harbor area went from abandoned warehouses, needle parks, dive bars and slums to being the showpiece of the East Coast. Fells Point was a quaint place to drive through during the day, but not at night, Little Italy was another area that was very down at the heel. The Block was in its death throes. Within a couple of years that whole area had brightened so much. When I watched “The Wire,” I couldn’t believe some of the backdrop settings they’re using. There were always poor areas of Balto, but not like the scenery in the series. Looks like Southeast does now, or did when I moved away (the second time) in 1998.
    I came || that close to buying one of those $1 rowhouses that sit within home run distance of the new Oreo stadium. Place in Fells Point that I think is still there, always had good music and food, called The Horse You Rode In On. Small, kinda dumpy/seedy but cool. If you ever go to “Ballmer,” be sure to get a bumper sticker from them and an “Eat Bertha’s Mussels” one, too. Both places are traditional stops. There was an Italian market right on the bay, in a decrepit long, narrow building that was a relic from Balto’s seafaring days, a half-block from the Horse that made the best Italian sandwiches, but they closed early then, 4-5 in the afternoon. Your arteries started clogging whenever you neared the place. Can’t recall the name of the street, but the building divided it.

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  8. boldlygosolo Avatar
    boldlygosolo

    Well, Lou,
    You’re going to have to get back to Ballmer too. I did not recognize Fells Point when I went a couple of years ago. Those places you mention are still there, but there’s been a lot of “prettying up” of the place – or ruining it – depending on your viewpoint of gentrification. Where do you live now?

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  9. Lou Avatar
    Lou

    Mwoky … er, I mean Milwaukee. At times, it’s Mil-wacky.

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