I have long said Serendipity takes me everywhere. From time to time I have an incident that I can use to prove it. Yesterday was one of those incidents.

On the way back from the US last Saturday I began talking to a guy sitting behind me. I had flown from Mobile to Houston from which the flights would go to Newark then Munich. This gentleman and his wife were headed to Geneva but would be in Berlin the next weekend. My plan was to either go to Muenster to see the Anabaptist cages atop the steeple or to Berlin so I mentioned I might be there, too. He gave me his card and after landing in New Jersey went our different ways.

Friday night I looked at the map, Berlin is a huge city in case you didn't notice, and saw that where I figured our bus would be was near their hotel which in turn was near the two sites I most wanted to see. Unfortunately I missed both but that's a different story. I emailed him in the hopes that we might meet up to break bread or at least have a coffee or beer. 

Upon arrival in Berlin we had a native Berliner (not the doughnut) join our group and took a tour of the whole city. We made stops at the Brandenburg Gate (where I hummed the Concertos, thank you Mr. Blessey), the Wall, and Checkpoint Charlie. 

At Checkpoint Charlie I walked around and took in the sights. I found it particularly interesting to watch one lady drive through the intersection without even checking up on the gas going from the former West to former East Berlin. Arriving back at the bus I had about 5 minutes until we left when I thought to check my email again. He had responded about forty-five minutes before and said they'd be at Checkpoint Charlie for about an hour.

Hastily I went to my other phone where I had saved his number and to my dismay I did not save the number just the email. As I reached into my pocket to pull out his business card, who do you think walked in front of me? Mr. Lopushansky.

We only had a few minutes to laugh and comment about the unlikeliness of what had just transpired. He had just told his wife something told him he needed to go across the street when they met me. She took our picture a few times and we shook hands. We both parted with a smile on our face and the thought in our minds that no matter how much of this great big world we see it just keeps getting smaller and smaller.