A meeting of a Lifetime

this article was first published in October 2004

Sometimes you meet people who change your life for ever, sometimes it only takes a second.
Here is an example of a split second decision : do I stop for two hitch-hikers or not ?

Read on to find out what happened in Estonia, about one month ago :

When I left Viljandi I saw two girls hitch-hiking. When I told them I was going to Tallinn (about 160 km to the north) they were very happy and what should have been a long, boring journey suddenly became the greatest fun I ever had while picking up hitch-hikers. Kadri and Karita are both 19-year old students at Viljandi university where they study social and cultural sciences (or something similar, I don’t really recall the correct title). And they were going back home for the weekend. I asked them the usual questions I always ask hitch-hikers (where are you from ? where are you going to ? what is the meaning of life ?) but pretty soon it turned out that they were much more interested in me than usually. They wanted to know everything about Belgium and the differences between Estonia and my country, and we were having a really interesting conversation. Kadri didn’t say much but Karita was a chatter-box, even if she didn’t feel very comfortable in English. I really felt she wanted to ask and say so many things, but this language barrier was stopping her. She put in a CD with Estonian music (Sirri Sisask, a singer/songwriter with a very special voice, a bit like Norah Jones. After that I put on a Belgian CD with music by Clouseau, Jaques Brel and dEUS to give her an idea of our music. Karita even sang two songs for me, it was so beautiful and I tried not to become too emotional.
Karita and I really felt on the same wave length.

I think Leonard Cohen wrote a song about this moment:

And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind