On Valentine's Day, here's how you can get 'love-locked'

On the eve of Valentine’s Day, this special edition of ET-Travel is dedicated to everyone who has experienced love. Since that includes each one of us, we begin with the amazing tale behind the picture (A smiling girl on Pont des Arts or Passerelle des Arts pedestrian bridge in Paris, which crosses over the Seine River). The girl has just etched hers and her partner’s name on a ‘love lock’ or ‘love padlock’ wishing for eternal companionship.

We discovered that this is a tradition that’s now trending in many countries, right since the turn of the year 2000 in Europe. Lovers latch the love lock to a bridge, or public fixture to symbolise their true love.

Attracting hordes of tourists to this hotspot, in Rome, the ritual of love locks has been practiced on Ponte Milvio bridge. It finds a mention in the book 'Three Meters Above the Sky' by Italian author Federico Moccia, who then later made it into the film adaptation 'Tre Metri Sopra Il Cielo'.

In Serbia, women and men hope for an eternal bond by latching padlocks on bridge Most Ljubavi, popularly named the The Bridge of Love. And the love lock story can be traced back before World War II of lovers Nada and Relja. In Taiwan, these ‘wish locks’ are latched in pairs to an overpass at a train station. The local logic is that the magnetic field generated by trains passing underneath will accumulate energy and then fulfil the wishes.

On a fountain in Montevideo in Uruguay, a plaque reads like this — 'The legend of this young fountain tells us that if a lock with the initials of two people in love is placed in it, they will return together to the fountain and their love will be forever locked.'

In Japan, at Nihonkai Fishermans Cape is a Lover’s Point where chains are used to hang pretty looking love locks by youngsters at the thick beams of a wooden fence. Call it a trick to attract scores of tourists to a small town or follow the belief behind these hopeful love locks, we suggest you let the heart rule over your head this time.