a surprising conversation

Nowadays, the sun goes down early and when I'm going home its already dark. I don't mind so much because my commute includes the beautiful castle, churches and bridges lit up at night. Last night, as I was riding the old, rickety and loud tram I was reading my newest subscription of the Economist.. finding out what's going in the Elections. Anways, as we approached a stop there were tons of sirens and lights. It turned out to be a diplomat or ambassador of sorts I'm sure. The lady sitting across from me pointed it out to me and said a few things about who it might be. I smiled and said, yes I'm sure it was someone like that becasue of the police. (remember this was all in Hungarian)

We approached the Kossuth Lajos Ter stop where I ride the long escalator to the metro when we both got off, walked across the cross walk and started down the metro together. She asked me something and I said, I speak English but if you speak slow and loud I can usually understand. She repeated herself and we started on the typical conversation about.. Why am I here? What do I do? Do I like it? How are the students? We arrived at the bottom of the escalator and the metro was waiting there so we sped up and got on and continued our conversation (let's remember this NEVER happens). As we kept talking about life here in Bp for me I said, I'm getting off the next stop and she was so sad so she got off to talk some more.

So, we stood, amidst the hustle and bustle of rush hour traffic at Batthany Ter metro platform. We had a conversation. I had things to do, people to see, but knew that this woman at this moment was much more important. She was around 60 years old and about 5 feet tall. She had soft eyes. We kept talking and she asked me to guess her occupation. I said writer and she said exactly. We then talked about her books and she said a bunch of words I wasn't positive about but I know that she writes about Philosophy and the Spiritual realm. We talked about this not being just a "chance" meeting. She gave me her name card and asked me to keep in touch, that perhaps we could meet for coffee someday.

As she re-boarded the metro (after watching 3 go by) she said, Isten aldod! (God bless you) and I went up a second escalator to take the commuter train. Thinking, Praying for my new friend Katalin.

This is what its all about right? Talking to people, taking advantage of divine opportunities and for me... learning that I MUST work on my Hungarian.