The weirdest day of my trip

Every trip has to have one weirdest day. I have not returned yet but this will surely be a strong candidate whatever happens to me in Argentina.

I woke up quite late this day after having made an effort on the night life in Lima. Nothing special, just visited a couple of bars, a peña (a local drinking place, often featuring traditional dancing) and finally a dance club. Not much to drink, not at all. No hungover, nothing. Just a bit tired.

I didn’t have much planned for the early morning so I could do with using the Internet for a while. I connected my laptop to the wireless network while still in bed and started reading the news and the emails. There was a message there from a girl I didn’t really quite recognise, even less expect a message from. A Spanish name. So what is now this, I wondered, and opened it.

- “Hey you, you are in Lima?” it said. Well, its written all over my Facebook where I am so not too strange that strangers can see where I am. It continued: - “I can see you are in Lima, I saw you in the club yesterday and you had these and these clothes”. I sounded very correct to me, and I started to become worried, what was this all about?

After reading a bit of the message history, I concluded that it was a person I had talked to before to practice my Spanish online. I had no memory of where she lived or what she looked like but for some strange reason I was recognised in the dance club. Impressive. But she did not say hello or anything so all very weird and strange. Bad friend.

An hour later, I was still confused and not in the mood to do much (still online), when someone knocks on the door and asks if I am from Älvdalen. Älvdalen (lit. River Valley) is the name of the little town, deep in the Swedish forest, where I grew up. Even few Swedish people know where it actually is located. - “What the f-k, enough of this persecution you monkies, what do you want?” I thought... But I didn’t say it. Instead I answered something more diplomatically like: - “eeh, yes, how do you know..?”, but in Swedish of course, and still not recognising the person.

As some kind of a response to my question he continued to ask: - “Have you, or do you have a brother that has studied in Norrköping?” What a relief, he didn’t recognise me either, so nothing to be ashamed of! But nonetheless correct again. They seem to know everything about me today, where I go dancing, my clothes, my birthtown and where I study. This is fucking Lima with ten million people, what are the damn odds???

At that very moment I also realised who was standing in front of me. It was an old friend, not far from Älvdalen (from Leksand to be exact), who I used to share the corridor with at the student halls during the first half year of Uni. During the time when everything is so new, you meet so many people and you also forget so many.

The rest of the day I took it easy, shocked by the last events. And I didn’t dare go out in the evening.