Pick-A-Day

May 2005
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Happy, uh… holiday

I promised Anja that I would write about our Sunday adventures today, but I am going to break the promise—I didn’t get home until now (11pm) because I ended up going out to dinner with a couple of colleagues from the office and missing the 9:15 train, which meant I had to catch the 10:15 train—dooming me to this late arrival home.

I hereby promise that tomorrow’s blog entry will be about our Sunday adventure, and will include at least one photo. The photos are already on the computer.

Anyhow, today I went to the office rather late, catching the 11:11 train which I thought would get me to the connecting 11:19, except there was no 11:19 train.

Today is a holiday. A religious holiday that apparently nobody understands: the Pentecost. I have no idea what it means, except that here in Germany, lots of people have time off and some trains are cancelled.

Upon getting on the 11:50 train (at 11:18 thinking it was the 11:19 train), I sat down opposite a couple of Americans who were talking. I was on the phone, and once I got off, I asked where they were from. Ultimately it worked out that one was from Utah and the other was from Arizona, and together, you have Mormon Missionaries—and before anybody accuses me of being blind, I will point out that they were not in uniform, they were in civvies.

We actually had a rather decent conversation and it was interesting getting their perspective. They were on their way to Jena from Erfurt to meet up with some friends and enjoy the holiday, or something like that. I mentioned that I had once spent an entire train ride from Jena to Weimar with two missionaries.

“And of them stood back and was really upset with his partner for being so judgmental about your choices in life.”

Wow! It turns out that one of the two missionaries I met today was one of the two that I’d talked to way back in February on the train—specifically the one who stood away from me and didn’t really get engaged in the debate.

I revealed that the night of our conversation my computer had broken and my heating had quit and that I thought it had been “divine retribution,” but that at least my heating was fixed the following afternoon.

The missionary told me that their heating had been broken for three days after our conversation.

I wonder what that means.

1 comment to Happy, uh… holiday

  • ChrisC

    I’m going to take the fact that you heating gets fixed in one day and the missionairies in three means that god would much prefer people from a non-prejudicial background to be comfortable. Though it sounds like the guy you ran into twice was at least somewhat open-minded.