29. Irène and Markus

A lot of things have happened since my last post; summer has come and gone, I've started hosting couch surfers with great gusto, my facebook status has changed to single (or at least it would have, if I had a facebook profile), and I've booked and organized the next big adventure: a three week long trip to South Korea, which will include my first experience surfing a stranger's couch. It was clear that I wanted to post my traveling stories, but I wasn't sure how to integrate them with Meet a Stranger a Day; should I create a sister blog? Or will you forgive me the transgression of posting non-daily tidbits of non-stranger related information on such a clearly labeled channel? Well, at least for the first post of the new MSD the decision is easy. I'm writing this post during my stopover at Helsinki airport, just after having waved goodbye to Irène and Markus, two strangers that once again prove how tiny the world can be.
So I was sitting on my aisle seat in the airplane, trying to solve one of the problems described in "Programming Pearls", politely not listening in to the conversation that was taking place on the two seats to my left, when I heard the words "couch" and "surfing" used in immediate succession. After five months of hosting surfers from all over the world, for me that's pretty much an open invitation to chat; I couldn't resist, and soon we were talking about travel, people, and the world. All the while I was wondering: Markus looked distinctly familiar, and both he and Irène had that wonderful Swiss German that placed his origins in the center of Switzerland, the eponymous Schwyz - could he be related to my next-door neighbor Daniel? Indeed! I was sitting right next to Daniel's brother and sister - they were on their way to Delhi, on the first leg of an eight months long around-the-world trip. Small, small world!