When it's good, it's just good.

So, I'm sitting in a cafe, having a coffee, reading Magris' book Danube. I usually start books at the beginning but I decided yesterday to read his thoughts on Budapest. Mind you, Magris' travel book really isn't a travel book in the conventional English or American sense. It's very Mitteleuropa. He's a scholar of German literature, who taught in Trieste, which, although it is in Italy, is a Central European town. It's much more a survey of the intellectual life of the Danube, and at times although a bit dense, it is excellent and thought provoking reading.

Yesterday I read a passage about Budapest and the author Gyorgy Konrad. I was very fascinated by Magris' retelling of Konrad's life and works so I googled him while sitting in this cafe today. And then I noticed an older gentleman having a glass of wine, scribbling away in a smallish Moleskine journal just like mine.

"No fucking way," I thought to myself. "It can't be."

But it was. Sitting before me was the man himself, Gyorgy Konrad.

"Working on my next novel," he said, when I asked what he was writing.

"And you, young man, I see are a writer," he asked.

"Nothing special, sir," I said. "Just thoughts about a very long journey I have undertaken."

For the next two hours I sat in rapt attention to the tales of a dissident who participated in the Hungarian Uprising of 1958.

Seldom is serendipity so kind.