Strange, Interesting Encounters

I was standing in front of the iconic clock tower in Bern, Switzerland. I had arrived too late to see it strike 5 PM, and missed the glockenspiel. I wanted to find out what I had missed. There were a group of Asian tourists that I approached to ask what I had missed. At first they were quite skeptical of me, but then warmed up. However, none of them could speak English, so we tried to communicate with each other with hand motions. That didn't work. 

I approached a random man, and asked him if he spoke German or English, and answered me in German, so I proceded to ask him what I had missed. He told me that the major works of the clock hadn't been in play for a number of years, that I hadn't missed anything. 

During the day's events, I was wearing a cap I had received from a friend while visiting Colombia. It had the name of Colombia clearly written on the bill, so my new-found friend asked me if I speak Spanish. We preceded to communicate with each other in Spanish. Turns out that he was born in Chile of German parents, but had emigrated to Switzerland because he was married to a Swiss woman. That was the beginning of coincidences. 

When I asked him what he did in Switzerland after having worked at a language school called Inlingua. This was the same school that I had taught at in the early 80's after my marriage to Esther, my own Swiss wife. This was the second coincidence. 

Even though he started there years after I had left, he thought there might have been the same teachers there from my time at the school. He mentioned some names, none of which I recognized. I told him I remembered only personnel from England, but remembered a Spanish man in exile with whom I had struck up a friendship. He mentioned a few names of Spanish speakers, none of whom I recognized. Then he said the name Fernández, and I immediately recognized the name. I asked him if this Spaniard was a poet, and it turned out that he was. He had only taught with him for a short time before he moved on. This was the third coincidence. 

Who could have imagined that a random encounter with a stranger in a strange land, would result in so many coincidences. A simple question about a clock in Bern, surrounded by hundreds of random tourists from many lands, would turn into such an interesting encounter.