Not answered calls, unread letters and any Instagram …

When I watch old movies, I cannot stop thinking about drama subject turns which are simply excluded today. He called on its phone, but she was not at home. So she never found out that he called her.

    And today the missed call hangs on the screen of your smartphone, and you can always call back. They fell in love with each other, but their tracks were lost. Today your love has a profile on Twitter.

It is almost impossible to be lost in love! I love the Russian novel about doctor Zhivago. You remember the moment – Yury’s heart is broken when Lara disappears it is unknown where. If the Internet existed at the time of Bolshevist revolution, Yury and Lara would never be lost, they would be friends in Facebook.

If just to consider simple subject turns of our usual life, clearly how many until recently in them there were uncertainty what amount of information just was not available to us. Modern technologies narrowed our world, sites like icamming.com made life much more simple, reduced quantity of secrets, and … in it there was much less romanticism.

The columnist of New York Times decided to share the love story and to tell what were a relationship before the messaging apps and live video chats.

Summer of 1991. There are no social networks yet. There is no WhatsApp, Viber, Skype and cell phones. But there is a huge thirst to see darling! Huge fear to lose her and to embrace nevermore. And then, when I did not know where I she, went crazy from uncertainty, I understood how I strongly love her, could see depth of the feeling.

We got acquainted with Joel in March when I studied in college. She finished study recently and reflected on the future. We twice accidentally faced in the company and after that began to meet. We spent much less time with our friends, and nobody knew about us. The outside world disappeared. We became only for each other, revealing each other the treasured secrets and secrets, and thoughts which were not signed up on a wall in social networks, and were only for us two.

    Nobody could thumb through our history a mouse wheel; she was living and imperceptible as time.

Time which flowed away through fingers. And soon the time of our separation came. Prior to a meeting with Joel I planned a summer adventure travel across Europe. And Joel suddenly mentioned a time the moving to Chicago. I thoughtlessly told her that I will write the letter, and gave her the friend’s address in Wales where planned to be with parents in the middle of my trip.

The travel to Europe began remarkably. I landed in Frankfurt in Germany, and from there went to Rome to study ancient ruins, met a summer solstice in Strasbourg and watched a rock concert at the football stadium filled 50,000 German motorcyclists in Basel. In Budapest, house of my ancestors, I listened to church choirs and examined art masterpieces. It was fine!

But along with it I was very unhappy. I felt scary alone! I could think only of Joel. Sitting alone on a bench near Saint Stephen’s cathedral in Vienna and eating street schnitzel, I dreamed to appear in Peoria and to sit before her. I wrote her letters, long and sincere messages. And when I arrived to London to meet parents, I was already absolutely inconsolable. The distance between us became incomprehensible, and I lost courage so as far as I could not even present to myself! I cried, sat having inflated, went alone across London and to anybody did not want to talk.

    After all, my father suggested to call her on a long-distance call though it and is expensive.

From our hotel room in London I called Peoria. But it turned out that Joel was not in Peoria for a long time. Her mother told me that she packed the things and moved to Chicago. And my letters, according to her, and lie on a table not open.

Later I called Chicago, but could not phone. There is no answer, there is no device, there is no answering machine, there is no number calling to show the missed call.

Just stationary phone in the empty apartment calls. There was no way to learn where it or when she returns. I was captured by jealousy; I was in panic from a thought that she met someone another. And I was here, in Europe, sobbed before great relics for the reason that my darling, has to be, has fun somewhere in Chicago, meets other people, but does not grieve for me, wandering a pale shadow about Peoria in an anticipation of my letters. It turned out that I expected such scenario.

Next day we with parents went to Wales, and there I finally plunged into a condition of chaos. My body was in Wales, in an environment of steep green hills and the bleating sheep, but my heart and thoughts were in Chicago.

    Parents were tired to look at my sufferings and put me in the train that I returned to London to sit down on the next return flight.

However, at Heathrow it turned out that the ticket for a departure home – from Paris. I got on the ferry. There I met my fellow students who went to Paris too. Together we took the night train from Calais, and there I told them the tragic story of love and about the troubles.

– Forget you about it – they told.

One of them told that he meets friends in Pamplona to run with bulls and that I am simply obliged to join them. And another girl went to France to sunbathe on the beach. Also suggested me to go with her.

– No, no! – I told. – If I do not return to Joel, I will lose her.

    They derided me and told me that I all life will regret that interrupted this unique travel and hesitated on such adventures.

In Paris I went directly to the airport. I will be in Chicago soon. Everything that I needed to make, it to get on the plane.

But I could not get on the plane. In the terminal there was utter chaos, huge crowd of people behind a rack, persons interested to depart. I would not get also on the following plane.

I was completely exhausted! I dragged the backpack towards trains with tears in the eyes. What disorder! To get stuck in Paris for three weeks when most of all it dreams to appear in Chicago. Unless can be worse than a thing this? – I thought.

At the exit from the terminal I faced three smiling agents on sale of tickets of British Airways.

“We have places – told one – but the plane departs in 20 minutes”.

The one-way ticket was twice more expensive, than my parents paid for my round-trip tickets. I looked at the credit card “only for the emergency use”.

    Also bought the ticket. It was a part which I did not tell the parents. I admitted it only four years later, in the solemn evening before our wedding with Joel.

It was cherry on cake after my father told our friends and relatives history of the discouraged boy who preferred love to bleating of the European sheep, the Roman ruins and all Parisian wine.