not-a-missed connection

"Don't you recognize me??"

I was in Sweden. I had been there for five days, and four of those had been inside a church with 20 other people. The old, brick-paved street was deserted. The voice came from inside a shop whose door I had just walked passed. Who ....?

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::four hours earlier::

"Are you students at the International School of Business?" 

Andrea, Junior, and I turned to see an elderly couple standing next to us at the bus station. We were flattered that we looked young enough to be taken as students. "No, we're here for a leadership training course with an organization. We're just here for a week." The man asked me what part of the states I was from. I said "Indiana," he said "Wyoming." I noticed he had a Swedish accent. "Oh really?" I asked, hoping he would explain. "I grew up there, but I fell in love with this Swedish woman (he cast a quick smile in his wife's direction) and I've lived here for 50 years. We met and married in the States, but she wanted me to visit her home. Fifty years later, we're still here."

We talked with them for awhile about how they met, and how they got married, (they were engaged on a Thursday, and married that Sunday) and their kids. They mentioned working with their children for an organization called "Teen Challenge," a drug and alcohol rehab programme, and we talked about there being a centre in Ireland. From there, the conversation led to OM, which they had heard of. Their bus arrived, and we parted ways. A nice encounter and a great start to our sightseeing day.

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The three of us stopped in our tracks and walked backwards, looking through the shop door. An old man was sitting behind a counter facing the door with antique radios and TVs stacked behind him. "We met earlier!" Then we all recognized him. It was the older man we met at the bus station. We went in. There was a sign on the counter that said "Radio Museum, admission 20 Kronas" He told us he ran the museum. "I know you're busy sightseeing, but come back here at let me show you something special." And he took us to an Edison, one of the first sound recording devices ever made. It had a blue wax cylinder that recorded the sound, and when you didn't need the recording anymore, you just scraped a layer of the wax off. 

We walked back to the front, and I noticed on the counter he was working on a sign. "I realized there isn't a sign saying what this place is!" He explained. "So I'm making one." It looked professional, so I asked him if he had any experience with design. He said not so much design as art, and he bent down and got something behind the counter. It was a coffee table book of wildlife. He opened it up, and inserted in the book was a beautiful drawing of a crane. It was on black paper drawn with a white pencil. "I'm color blind, you see. So I focus all my attention on the detail." And he had too. Every feather, every shape. "My son owns an art Gallery on the island in the middle of the lake, so he sells some of my stuff." I wish I could've gotten something.

He was a talker, and told us more stories, but finally we had to go, and we wished him well. The two things I regret most are that none of us can remember his name, and I didn't get a picture of him. 

It's encounters like this that make traveling great.