UMTravels

Work during the day along with a little running around. I should really get serious about packing for Canada, but it just isn’t happening.

Off to the airport to meet Solus’ 6pm arrival from Iceland. He arrived looking a little dazed, and not from drink. From a long flight and a bit of emotional turmoil.

The reason for the turmoil? It seems that in his last half hour in Iceland, several phone calls are about to change his life.

Forty-six years ago Solus ran away from not only his homeland of Australian, but a fiancé and the call of the church and worked on a fishing boat in Iceland. During his time on the boat, knee deep in fish guts, he bonded with one of the other fisherman, talking life, philosophy, the nature of god, not your usual deckhand talk. After the season, they went their separate ways.

Fast forward to yesterday and a conversation with the hotel/café owner where he was staying. The friendly chap was talking of how he had reunited a man and a women after a thirty year absence as part of his job as an innkeeper, to make his customers happy. Solus pasted on the tale of his missing friend and the mutual connection of the owner, Solus, and the missing friend as having all worked for the same seafood company during their lives (a common story in Iceland). He asked the boat, the year, and made a call. Lots of Icelandic chatter, a five minute wait, and the phone rang again. More chatter before handing Solus the phone. On the other end, his lost friend Tor (if I remember the name correctly). With five minutes before his bus to the airport they had reconnected, but now another trip to Iceland was in order. It turns out his friend is a mucky-muck in the central bank, and as the innkeeper said he’d be sad to miss him on his next visit as there would most likely be a car and driver awaiting him at the airport and a run to a country estate.

Makes me smile.

Compared with the above, a simple dinner of pork and beans (pork loin chops in a Cuban lime marinade and steamed green beans), salad, steamed rice and red wine hardly compares other than long time friendship.

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