After graduating college with a BA in English and Italian in 1997, I worked in London for six months and then backpacked alone through Europe, Turkey, and Israel for the rest of the year. My parents were amused—I could hardly find my way around my own city, Chicago.

At the train station in Italy, the ticket-taker asked me if I wanted to go to Disenzano or Pescaria. My three-second pause was much too long for him. "Disenzano," he decided. That sounded good to me.

After finding a window seat, my next goal was to figure out which stop in Disenzano was mine. Eager to practice Italian, I asked the thin bald man in the seat across from me for directions. He looked at my ticket, but didn’t know. So he passed it to the older woman in the seat to my left. She wasn’t sure either, but I enjoyed her black hat. The dark-haired woman a couple rows down told me in Italian that I should get off at the main station. My ticket had been passed around, studied, and discussed among five Italians on the train. The thin bald man handed it back to me. "So brave to be traveling by yourself!" When the conductor came by to collect tickets, we asked him where I should get off, how I should transfer, and when my next train leaves. I showed him my yellow orario (train schedule) and he checked off the stop and times with his red pen.

When I arrived, it was raining, Sunday, everything was closed, and I couldn’t find a reasonably priced youth hostel. After walking around under my backpack for what seemed like an hour, I returned drenched, miserable, and lost to the train station.

I found two other backpackers. "You look lost," one of the women said. No kidding. "Want to tag along?" One was British and the other was Australian. Sure! During the four-hour wait for the next train, we found the cafe and drank cappuccino. After the rain cleared, we locked our bags at the station and walked around. We took pictures of the lake, of one of us sitting on the bench over the bright green grass and smiling.

The ride was beautiful. For an hour and a half, we traveled through mountains, witnessing houses with red roofs among the trees. We passed under a tunnel beneath a mountain. Beyond the tunnel to my right was a big lake, then our stop. The three of us found a hostel and ate dinner together. Getting lost, feeling miserable, and stumbling into this unplanned adventure faded behind me while I broke bread with wonderful new friends I’d wander away from before too long.