Categories: denmark, postcards
Date: 09 September 2008 16:45:52
Gentle reader, I am back again from my travels and before I do anything sensible like earn a living, I will write up my postcards especially for you.
It seems to becoming something of a tradition that the journey to the destination in question is almost as entertaining as the destination itself - which goes to prove the wisdom of the old (Chinese?) proverb which I can't quite remember accurately which says something like "it is not the destination which is important but the journey there".
My destination on this occasion was Denmark. I was at the coach station in the Ancient Roman City early on Sunday morning awaiting the arrival of the coach. As I was the second person to arrive I had plenty of opportunity to observe the arrival of my fellow passengers. One chap caught my eye because he reminded me of someone. I eventually worked out that he reminded me of two people and so I dubbed him Mr Identikit. Another passenger I particularly noticed was wearing a covetable jacket and her female companion was also distinctively dressed. When the coach arrived we all boarded. My seat companion as far as Heathrow was a charming young lady who was reading Spanish and Arabic at Cambridge and we spent a pleasant couple of hours chit-chatting about languages and travel and her plans after graduation.
I changed coaches at Heathrow and continued on my journey to Gatwick. At the check-in desk, I was astounded to see that three or four places behind me in the queue were the Distinctively Dressed ladies!
Later, I decided to have lunch in a pizza restaurant in the airport. The waitress showed me to a table - which was next to the Distinctively Dressed ladies (I established at this point that they were Danish). I joked to the waitress that the DD Danes might think I was stalking them as we seemed to keep bumping into one another.
The flight to Aalborg was uneventful but for the landing. We flew so low over the Limfjord that I wondered if we were going to land in it. The plane was only about 20 feet above the water - at the edge of which - thankfully - was the runway. As we were waiting for our luggage to appear on the (only) carousel, I turned round to observe a three-year old girl run through the glass doors from landside to greet one of the DDD. I then realised that Mr Identikit was standing right behind me!
What can be the chances of four people (unknown to each other) starting off from the same small town and travelling via Heathrow with its hundreds of possible destinations around the world and via Gatwick also with hundreds of possible destinations and all ending up on the same flight of approximately 60 passengers to the same small airport in Denmark?