When Juan Carlos Bautista was 17 years old, he went to visit his cousin at the Luminaria festivities in Socuéllamos, Ciudad Real. One night, in the middle of the bonfires and the alcohol, Bautista met Teresa G. Many years passed without being together, but they never lost touch. There was no Facetime, no social networks, no WhatsApp. "We were talking about what is called messaging, a free SMS promotion, and by Messenger (the old and original, not the Facebook one)," Bautista told Verne by phone.
After many laps, they finally became a couple. Shortly after the relationship began, she was offered a job as a nurse in the UK and decided to move there. Bautista was working in Toledo at that time and wanted to visit her, but the planes scared him. Her love was stronger than her fear and she decided to go from Toledo to Northampton by bus. "My brother says that I didn't do 29 hours of the bus for love, that I did it for a fool," Bautista, 31, explains with laughter. Do not regret anything. They have been together for six years now.
Villarrobledo (Albacete) - Northampton (United Kingdom).
29 hours. https://t.co/PfapnhRAz7
Bautista decided to tell his story in response to a tweet that a user posted: "If you haven't taken an Alsa for love, have you really lived?" What started as a prank comment has caused hundreds of users to remember their love stories distance and trips to meet again, some of them with many hours of travel behind them. Now, the author has decided to make her account private, but in the time that it was public there were more than 2,800 responses, many of them telling their own story of love. "Someone should compile all the love stories that have come to light," says the user to Verne .
"I shared my story because I was amused by a boy who said that he had gone from León to Jaén and that cannot be compared to my 29 hours without sleeping until the United Kingdom," says Bautista. That boy is Carlos Gomez, whom his parents sent to a summer camp in Ireland when he was 16 years old. There he met Lisy P. They fell in love and a month later they returned to their respective homes in Spain. They were very young and the only way they had to keep their love alive was the landline phone. “It was 2007, there was no WhatsApp, he was from Jaén and I was from León, but I didn't care. I was willing to cross Spain from end to end in order to see it again ”, recalls this aeronautical technical engineer. With the savings he had, he managed to buy the bus tickets to get to his girlfriend's house and surprise her.
Amateurs ... Pueblo de León - Pueblo de Jaén. 5 buses and walking sections. 18 hours. 2007. 16 years, without telling my parents or her. At 15 minutes she had already left me😂
- Carlos Gomez Aneto 🌀 (@ Carlos1973s) July 25, 2020One summer day in the early morning he left his house, backpack in hand, without warning anyone with only one objective: to see Lisy again. She traveled from León to Madrid, from Madrid to Granada and from Granada to Jaén. "When my parents found out, I was already halfway there and I was not going to come back, they were very angry," says Gómez. When he finally arrived at his girlfriend's house, after 17 hours by bus, her parents were not at all happy with the surprise. They let her sleep that night at her house, but they told her that the next day she had to return to León.
They paid him the ticket back to Madrid and there in a bar near the station crying with a broken heart his parents found him. "They didn't punish me, because of how sad they saw me," recalls Gómez. They tried to stay together, but in the end the distance separated them. Now they are followed on Instagram and they have the memory of their beautiful summer love. "I am proud of what I did, I was blind with love and I fought for what I felt," says Gómez.
At 47, Arancha Jerez still sighs when she remembers her summer love from when she was a teenager. She met Gonzalo R. in a camp in the north and from there they fought to be together. She lived in Barcelona and he in Madrid. They promised to see each other on weekends, and that's how it was during their five-year relationship. Every 15 days, Arancha Jerez would take Alsa —which in 1993 was called Enatcar— to arrive in Madrid at midnight on Friday. He was always at the Palos de la Frontera station waiting for her. There were no direct routes, so the trip lasted between eight and ten hours due to intermediate stops.
5 years taking it on alternate weekends. 600 km. 9-10 hours, it arrived ground but there she was waiting on the platform. A thousand times more it would.
- Calliope (@Caliope_eterna) July 25, 2020"I remember that when we passed through Guadalajara I already knew that I had 45 minutes to get to see him and I was starting to get nervous," says Verne Jerez. On a trip to Barcelona, Gonzalo proposed to her and they got married. They decided to live in Madrid and create a life together. “In the end we lasted five years married plus five years of boyfriends. I believe that distance relationships are based on communication and not on the physical. Our meetings were always perfect, "says Jerez. Distance added epic to the relationship.
Gonzalo died a few months ago and when Jerez saw the tweet, he remembered those trips and a part of her felt it was a wink. "I have her memory very present and I wrote the tweet so that our history is not forgotten," she says.
Other stories of bus trips for love:
1 boy came to see me from Salamanca to León ... But it was because I had 0 interest 🙁
He left where he came 😐
You fan
Salamanca, Spain - Wallingford, Connecticut. 2 years. 4 trips
blablacar at 4 in the morning to see her whenever she could, three hours of travel.
- Alonsillo (@AlonsilloVFO) July 25, 2020I arrived around 9:00, I called her, I don't know if I woke her up ... I said: "if we had breakfast together, she was in Malaga" It was Sunday, at night I would take another bus back to Murcia, (on Monday I I worked) I think I was rarely so in love and peak days were as happy as that ...
- Javier Baños Rubio 🔻 (@Javierbaru) July 26, 2020* You can also follow us on Instagram and Flipboard. Don't miss the best of Verne!