The other night I was out with some colleagues watching the football.
We were chatting about how odd things can sometimes be with the English speaking community here in Berlin - all four of us met on English camp during the summer, and all four of us were amazed that the two Americans came from one of America's smallest states, both having been convinced that there couldn't possibly be any more Vermonters living in Berlin.
The Aussie then piped up that he worked with a girl who grew up five minutes away from his home in Brisbane. Amazing, we all agreed, that three of the four of us happened to have such unlikely chance encounters.
All bar me, it seemed. I assured them that there was no-one else from my little rural Irish hometown in Berlin, it simply wasn't possible. I'm the only one and that's that.
I began chatting to a Spanish guy sitting next to me. He thought I was Scottish, easy mistake to make, I was wearing my Scotland jersey. I set the record straight, telling him that I'm Irish, at which point his face lit up.
'Ireland!', he exclaimed. 'I spent a summer there four year ago. Some small town; began with M. Pretty boring'
The potential for extreme weirdness hadn't hit, I just wanted to know what rural backwater he had the misfortune of spending a summer in. I began to cajole the long-forgotten information out of him. I named a few towns beginning with M. Nothing. Then suddenly, from nowhere, it came.
'MULLINGAR!'
An absolutely random Spanish guy spent a summer in my little town. Impossible. Unbelievable. He named some of the 'landmarks'. It was my town all right. I retreated to a corner and rocked back and forth for a while. Not possible. Not possible. Not possible.
But, there you go. The world is a village. One with a supremely-timed sense of irony.
