Sunday, October 10, 2010

Small World

Everyone has one of those "it's a small world" kind of story so here's mine. Back in Southern California, I went to junior high and high school with this guy named Clint. We knew each other and we had some classes together but we never really hung out. When we graduated in 1989, he left for college in Texas and I went in to the air force.

Fast forward to 1992. I was in Heidelberg, Germany and on vacation with my girlfriend. We were craving American fast food so we went on to the U.S. Army base there because they had a Popeye's Chicken. Well, there was Clint, working behind the counter. Small world...right? He was traveling across Europe, on his way to Poland, and working on the base to earn some money.

So now fast forward again to 1998. I'm at home in Atlanta and reading a copy of The Advocate. And there is an article in the magazine about him. The same guy I went to school with and who I ran into on an army base in Europe.

A few years later...here comes Facebook and we friended each other online. He was living in Mexico but getting ready to move to Haiti and I was still in Atlanta. We had a lot more in common that we knew about back in school and over the last couple of years we've continued to catch up online.

Well now I live in the ČR and guess where he now lives? Paris. Small world, right? So we made it a point to get together for dinner a couple of nights while I was in town. One night we met up at Sacré-Cœur and we grabbed dinner in Montmarte. We walked around and he showed me the house where van Gogh lived and we went to Café des Deux Moulins (Cafe of the Two Windmills) for drinks.

It gets its name from the two historical windmills nearby - the Moulin de la Galette and the infamous Moulin Rouge, about 1 block away. The Café was used as a location in the 2001 film Amélie. At times it can be quite touristy but we got lucky and it wasn't very crowded on the night we went.

We had a really good time getting caught up. Neither one of us attended the 20-year class reunion so we had our own mini reunion in Paris. We ended up closing the place and the bartenders let us stay until they were ready to leave. Having gone through several bottles of wine, I learned the next morning that lots of French wine leads to a French hangover. But it was so worth it.

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