Ferienliebe: My Tale of Naïvety, Solo-Travel, and Summer Love

By Cat Caie

When I arrived in Budapest on a gentle summer morning, it was still dark. I was on my own; I didn’t speak the language and feared the loud streets of a bustling city. On the walk to my hostel, I stayed on the phone with the guy I had been talking to at the time. Once I’d arrived safely, I went straight to sleep in my six-bed mixed-gender room. 

Waking up disoriented, I made sure that all my belongings were still where I left them. Then I locked all the most important ones in my designated locker – I wasn’t going to have them get stolen again. Shy and feeling a little silly, I avoided the free breakfast and set off to explore. With no idea of where I was going, I ended up going backwards and forwards and getting lost. 

When it started to get dark, I decided to venture back to my hostel. There was a message on the whiteboard, inviting me and others to meet in the dining area for some drinking games. This was when I met the people that I would spend the next week or so with: a girl who called herself Princess, lots of Italians, an Indian man, and two men who would become my friends. Somehow. 

That night we went bar crawling. I got kicked out for throwing up. Then I blacked out. Luckily, my two new male friends were there to carry me home. I didn’t learn my lesson and repeated this process another four times.

During the day, I had become close friends with this strange little group of people. The two swiss men would talk and laugh about me in German thinking I didn’t understand what they were saying. She’s probably riddled with STDs. Do you think she has showered yet? Bet I can get her to kiss me next. I would walk ahead with everyone else instead. 

During the night, we ate carrots in ruin bars. Slowly, I began to realise that I had kissed the same guy a couple of nights in a row. I doubted my integrity. Was I really this person? Or was I just trying to prove that I wasn’t just a naïve 18-year-old? I was as cool and adult as all these people at least seven years older than me. At least, I thought so at the time.

When I went to the thermal spas with one of my male friends after that string of wild nights, I made it clear that I would from then on only be a wingman. Yet, at some point, I found myself following the same man I had kissed across Europe. We took different trains but ended up in the same countries. The same cities. Always finding each other again. 

The next thing I knew, we were walking side by side down a street in Berlin. I was taking photos of him. He was telling me about this girl he had a crush on back home. She had a boyfriend. He was sad. 

I was staying at the same hostel as him. When we had taken a seat on Museum Island, he stroked my leg and said, “It’s alright not shaving at your age but when you become a woman, you should consider it. Men don’t like this.” I bought him dinner to show him that I was the man. He was a good guy, the little voice in my head tells me still. But was he? 

I still remember walking down the Vltava and him telling me that this was only Ferienliebe, summer love. I laughed, how romantic. Still, the word floated around my head for a little while. Why should ‘love’ have to be permanent? The answer, I learned, is that it doesn’t. I’m quite happy to have the memory of him untarnished by the things he would have later said to ruin it all. Happy that it only lasted three weeks on and off. Happy that it remains a Ferienliebe.