I left Austin expecting to spend eleven months alone. Somewhere between an unfinished chess game in Spain and a rented car in Albania, the plan changed.
I had lost my job in tech, sold nearly everything I owned, cashed out my 401(k), took the severance and left for a trip through twenty-seven countries. It was not the most conservative response to unemployment. I wanted the mountains, the strange buses, the long stretches where nobody knew me and the chance to find out who I was without the usual structure around me.
About three months in, I arrived in Xabia, a small coastal town in Spain, to meet an old friend from my years in Australia. She introduced me to her fiancé’s sister, Espoir, who was visiting from Vienna.
Espoir and I spent the afternoon swimming, eating fruit and playing chess by the water. We split the first two games. The third was unfinished because I had to catch a night bus to Alicante for an early flight to Paris. She appeared to be winning, although I remain open to a formal review of the board.
I continued moving through Europe. Paris, Belgium, Berlin, Poland and several countries farther south all passed through the itinerary, but I kept thinking about the afternoon in Spain and the woman on the other side of the chessboard. When I knew I would be in Vienna, I reached out. Espoir invited me to visit and, presumably, finish losing the game.
She met me at the station and showed me her city over the next three days. We rode scooters through Vienna, ate ice cream, swam in the river and lived largely on fresh fruit and hummus. What stood out was not a list of things we did. It was how naturally we moved through the days together. She was curious, adventurous and deeply present. She did not need every moment to be impressive in order to enjoy it.
I was still early in a year-long trip and had no intention of starting a relationship. So naturally, I invited her to meet me in Albania a few weeks later.
We met again in Tirana, rented a car and spent twelve days traveling through the country. We drove into the Albanian Alps around Theth, followed the coast through Vlore and Himare, found quiet beaches and ended among the stone streets of Gjirokaster. Travel has a way of revealing someone quickly. You see how they respond when the road is wrong, the plan changes, the food takes too long or both of you are tired. There is not much room to maintain a polished version of yourself inside a small car for twelve days.
What I saw in Espoir was someone whose values felt familiar even though her life had been very different from mine. She had grown up in Austria as one of twelve siblings. Her parents ran Vienna’s oldest gym, and her family had spent years living on a catamaran through Central and South America. She understood movement, health and adventure as parts of life rather than things to schedule around it. She also understood that a strong life needs stillness, community and people willing to show up for one another.
Somewhere in Albania, what had begun as a chance meeting became something neither of us could pretend was casual. There was no dramatic speech or perfectly timed cinematic moment. We simply kept choosing more time together.
Espoir later met me in Thailand, where we spent two months living and traveling side by side. By then, the conversation had shifted from whether this connection could survive the trip to what kind of life we wanted to build when the trip ended. We eventually moved to Austin, started building Gevity together and got married.
Looking back, the part that stays with me is how easily I could have missed all of it. I could have treated Spain as another stop, left the chess game unfinished in every sense and protected the solo plan because it was the plan. Being open did not mean abandoning who I was or chasing every passing connection. It meant recognizing when something real had entered my life and having enough courage to make room for it.
I left Austin to see how far I could go on my own. The trip introduced me to the person with whom I would build a life.