Italian Hitchhikes For Love AFP
Aug. 29, 2003 — A 15-year-old Italian who hitchhiked to Sweden in search of a girl he met on holiday got a helping hand from police who drove him the last stretch of his journey on Thursday, Swedish media reported.
The starry-eyed Italian was so infatuated with a 17-year-old Swedish girl he met in the United States earlier this summer that he left Milan to hitchhike the 1,240 miles to the Stockholm suburb of Taeby.
But before he could reach his goal police were called to a gas station in the small Swedish town of Linkoeping, where a "poorly dressed" boy who "looked a little confused" had been observed.
"He said he wanted to go to Stockholm to see his flame who lives in Stockholm," a local police duty officer, Mikael Kinnaa, told the news agency TT.
After running an identity check, police found that the teen had been reported missing by his parents, and that the young girl of his dreams did indeed live in Taeby and knew him.
However, she had not actually expected him to visit.
Swedish social services would normally have taken the teen into their charge, but the Swedish father called the boy's father in Italy, and they agreed to let him spend time with the girl.
Police, touched by this display of southern passion, drove the young Romeo the last 110 miles to Stockholm early Thursday, where he finally set eyes on his Juliet again.
But this Romeo's love turned out to be unrequited, and within a few hours the Swedish family unceremoniously bundled the broken-hearted Latin lover onto a plane back home to Milan.
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