Luckiest Man Alive

I had to type this before going to bed.

I have always been told I am a lucky person, that things tend to go my way in sometimes big ways.

I have been told correctly.

After leaving Köln, I planned on going to Neerpelt where I'd stay the night at a local hotel before going to Achel in the morning. I took all the right trains to get to Neerpelt, despite some less-than-stellar signage and indications of what trains were where, when. I did, however, get off one stop too early, in Overpelt. This is where my luck went mund-numbingly well. Or, arguably, I made my own luck by taking a situation and making the literal best possible outcome from it.

There was one other person that got off at Overpelt with me. I was unaware of our location and I asked him where we were. He spoke English, thank goodness, and told me. I explained who I was and where I was going and he said I'd have a problem getting anywhere, because the buses don't run to Achel this time of night (I arrived at midnight) and there is no hotel in Overpelt or Neerpelt. No hotel. As in, when I arrived in Neerpelt, there'd not have been a place to stay. Not any tourists, is the reason he says. Fair enough, the place is a seriously small-town look from what I can see. I walk with the guy (Peter is his name) and find out something. This something is not lucky but almost horrifyingly coincidental. He's a Linguist, like me. He focuses on translation work, and has a degree in Linguistics as well. My jaw almost fell off when I heard that. He spent some time in the states, a few months, back when he was my age (so perhaps 25-30 years ago) in Massachusetts and everyone was very kind to him there so he said it was nice to have the opportunity to help out an American in need. I was touched.

So, Peter and I go to this local little night-shop 7-11 kinda place, where an Indian guy comes and greets us. Peter speaks with him in what I presume to be Dutch, it sure sounds like it. After some talking back and forth the Indian guy starts talking in English, which makes me wonder why he didn't from the beginning, but hey. They look up a local taxi service for me in the phonebook. Disconnected, they're not around anymore. The only other taxi service nearby says they're closed, but call X in Y and see if they'll do it. Peter asks me if we should, and the Indian guy says he'll drive me so long as we can find the address of the hotel in Achel, which is a couple towns over. I'm floored again. What a nice thing to do! The only two people I've met in Overpelt Belgium are extremely nice people who've gone way way out of their ways to help me. We figure out where the hotel is in Achel, and Peter calls them. Again, super lucky because they were about to close for the night but will now stay open long enough to receive me. Holy crap. I'm driven by the Indian guy to Achel and we find the hotel and I come in. Only 80 euros for a room, and I get to the room. It's the nicest I've stayed in so far, easily, and costs less than the most expensive by a good 35 euros. Friggin' awesome. AND they have wifi, which is how I'm able to post this. I know I ought be asleep by now, but I had to write this while it was fresh. It is simply too amazing a tale to me to not write down now.

So, to recap:

If things had gone according to my plan I would be in Neerpelt and have no immediate way of coming here. If Peter hadn't been there or been awesomely nice and going out of his way to help some kid from America for about thirty minutes after he'd have been able to go home, I'd have been up a creek with no paddle. If I had managed to make it to the 7-11 place Peter brought me (which I will admit I'd probably have stumbled across in a desperate search for someone, anyone if Peter hadn't been there) on my own, I would have lacked the knowledge of the language to navigate the white pages to find the taxi service that didn't work, nor would I have had any idea about this specific hotel Peter knew of. And even if I DID manage all that, if Peter hadn't helped or the guy simply wasn't really nice that worked this night shop, I'd still have not made it.

So, simply put, every single thing that could have gone right, did. And not only that, but that is perhaps one of an extremely tiny pool of possible paths, perhaps the only one, that would have ended with me in this hotel for the night instead of on the street.

If my luck were measured in explosive terms, it'd have to be in megatons. I almost cannot believe how lucky I am/was and how things turned out tonight. So instead I will just go to sleep, as happy as can be. The only thing that could be even more in my favor would be getting some acceptance letters from universities, I think. That or winning the powerball. Or both, which would be more in line with how lucky I have been tonight.