The Smiling Girl On The Tube In London - United Kingdom Travel Story

Title: The Smiling Girl On The Tube In London
Website:
WHERE: London, England.
WHEN: December 2005
WHO: a 23 year old Australian male

This is one of my most amazing coincidental love travel stories. 

After another day as a secondary school supply teacher, I headed home on the trusty London Underground toward home in Cricklewood. As my connecting train slowed at my platform, I quickly scanned the carriage to choose the door that looked to have the least number of passengers behind it. I would be out of luck, because this train was one where there would be no room to move.

So I squeezed on wherever I could. In fact, it was so tight that I was jammed against the door with my neck pushed forward by the curve of the carriage wall arcing towards the roof. As the sliding doors shut I felt myself break out into a smile  to myself - one that acknowledged the ridiculous position my body was placed in. Then as I took my beanie off to give my cranium some air, I happened to look up through the heads across the aisle to find a girl smiling at me. 

I was a little taken aback. It was clear that she had watched me step on to the train and into this cramped corner. But wow. What I was more intrigued by was her beauty. She was easily one of the cutest I had seen to that stage in London. I had lived in Copenhagen for 5 months the year before, and so had become accustomed to having my breath taken away by the sheer beauty of girls in the Danish capital. There, that had happened almost daily. But that hadn't happened too often during my 7 London months to that stage. London is not Copenhagen.

But this was one of those genuine times when my jaw dropped. She had the classic wavy blonde hair that I was a sucker for. And just a cute face, amazing smile. I couldn't have guessed her nationality. In London, one could be from any corner of the planet. I thought she was so good that at the next stop, when there was a mass exodus of passengers, I craned my neck to find her and get a closer look. But she was gone. 

Aah, but she wasn't.


A week later I was dragged along to a going away party at a bar in South London suburb I hadn't heard of then and can't remember now. The people were friends of my best friend's older brother. But at this party, a girl came up to me and said the following words: "I saw you on the tube the other day." I didn't recognise her, until she mentioned the smile. When it clicked, I found myself unable to fathom the coincidence. 

She was from New Zealand and had lived with one of these friends of my friend's older brother. Scarily, I later found out another of her housemates was the Perth guy whose van I had hitchhiked a ride with 6 months earlier from Barcelona to Rome. 

Of all the London trainlines to be coming home on that day, of all the times to be at that platform, all the doors to get on that train, all the people, and of all the parties in London that night... and of all the possible finishes to the stories even after meeting again.

That night I spent the night with the smiling girl from the tube in London.