Hotel Buffet Communion.

In the morning, when I dress and make my way to the hotel breakfast buffet with the other guests, I notice we are all alike. I study their faces, eyes puffy, faces creased from sleeping too hard or not enough, hair damp and tousled. We don't speak, we don't even speak the same language. We don't try to impress one another.

Some of us behave well, some of us don't, elbowing in to take the last sticky bun or taking too much cheese, surreptitiously building a sandwich for lunch.

I never quite know how to use the coffee machines so prevalent in Europe so I stand too long, hesitating before pushing the buttons, annoying the coffee-starved queue behind me.

No one in the hotel dining room realizes it, but on these mornings when I am far from home, I consider them my traveling family. We are strangers,  but our need is the same and it brings us together: We are hungry. We need caffeine. We are far from home.