COFFEE & BISCUITS

As you travel (especially alone), you meet people along the road.  You share your atrocious travel stories, you exclaim over certain common experiences, you exchange information about what to do.  At that moment, you feel like destiny has brought you guys together just for this.

But you don’t really think that these people will reappear again in your real life. 

So imagine my amazement when a friend sent a gmail chat message over saying she has a student in her university wanting to get in touch with me.

My friend said that the girl specifically asked her whether she knows someone who went to Maryknoll, Berkeley, and then to Chicago.  My friend thought, she could only mean Wendy (me).

I knew immediately who this girl is.  I met her on my last day in Vienna, as I was returning the key to the reception.  In line in front of me was this girl with a gigantic backpack.  She was also returning her key as well.  The receptionist handed back her ID (which is used as a collateral).  I caught a glimpse of the ID and observed that it is a Hong Kong ID. 

After that I spoke Cantonese to her.  She is a law student in a Hong Kong university where my friend currently works.  More amazingly, I found out that she also graduated from Berkeley, where I did my undergrad.

We never exchanged our own names or contact during our extended conversation, during which both of us had our huge backpacks on (my is relatively smaller) and on the verge of leaving Vienna. 

The only contact that came up during our conversation was my friend’s name.  I asked her if she knew my friend HXXX who is working at her university in Hong Kong.  She said no.   (What happened afterwards was then, we are both back in the reality world, she back to her law school, me back to my econ school.  My friend was suddenly assigned to notify the JD students via email that their grades are available.  So this girl saw my friend’s name in her email box.  It rang a bell.  Then she sent my friend an email asking about me)

But my friend’s name has turned out to be the key.

The world works in strange ways.

Here is my respond letter to the stranger I met in the strange land:

Hi XXX,
I am amazed by the small world, and also by your memory of the name XXXX!

Five days later I did go to Salzburg, but before that I stopped each
night in the towns along the way.  The most amazing thing that
happened during was that I accidently went to Czech Republic (not
Prague, but a town call Krumlov).

The following story is how it came about:  so it happened that I was
having lunch by myself in this totally empty restaurant in this small
and remote lakeside town call Hallstatt (don’t know whether I
mentioned to you, but Hallstatt was the picture on my calendar and the
major reason why I visited to Austria), where everything was close due
to the low-season, when I met two Spanish speaking men (one is a
Spanish Professor at Linz, and the other is a Biology professor from
Spain visiting Austria), the biology professor’s son who is a 13-year
old kid, plus a 25-year old Chinese student at Linz) , and their dog.
 To cut the story short, they invited me to their table for lunch,
making it a long lunch, and then invited me to stay at their house,
which is located at the border of Austria and Czech Republic.  At
first I was hesistant because afterall they were strangers, but after
hanging out with them for awhile and sightseeing with them I found
them to be good people.  So I said yes!  And I sat in their car for 2
hours driving from Hallstatt to their home.  All the while chatting –
in Spanish!  (which I had never used since the last lesson in 2000)
The next day, we drove to Czech republic (which reallly was just next
to the house) and did some sightseeing at Krumlov and then lunch.
Then they drove me to Linz, where I took the train to Salzburg,
arriving at 9pm.

Salzburg is also great.  I spent 2 days and 3 nights there, staying at
first at YOHO then at this church hostel call St. Sebastian (where
Mozart’s wift laid in the mausoleum next door).   Joined the sound of
music tour and pretended I am Maria and retraced her steps from
NonnBerg abbey to the von trapp house.

But the sad part is that I arrived at Salzburg on the weekend — all
the bike shops are closed!  (these austrians don’t work enough).  The
small towns where I spend the 5 weekdays between Salzburg and Vienna
are also pretty much closed during low season.  I was at Vienna, of
course, during the 3-day Eastern weekend.  In sum, this means that the
places I went to in the 10 days at Austria are usually closed and not
in business.

What did you do before you catch the flight?  Did you take any pictures?

Wendy

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Yes, I know.  This would all be so much more romantic had she been a guy.