I just had a visit from Maja, a Danish friend spending a week in A’dam. The day before she arrived, taking the ferry on my way to work, I saw a freight hauler also named Maja heading up Het IJ. I decided it probably takes that route every day, and I only noticed this time because I had just heard that my friend was going to visit. But now I’m not so sure, it seems that this is a week for coincidences.

Leaving the pub last night, I saw a face I recognised but that definitely didn’t belong on an Amsterdam street. I hadn’t seen Maja for six months, but the last time I saw Charlotte was two years ago in New Zealand, and I had no idea she had even left the country. So let’s put it down to shock (perhaps the beer had something to do with it also) that I greeted her not with some genteel expression of pleasure and surprise but with “What the %$&# are you doing in this country?”

It turns out that she has been living for a year with her boyfriend in France (picking up a rather nice French ‘R’ to complement her Kiwi accent) and now they’re cycling from Toulouse to Sweden. (Kiwis take note: you can really do this on The Continent — take a bicycle and set off, crossing borders and changing languages every week or so. It works particularly well in the Netherlands, where the cycle lane infrastructure is fantastic.) Of all the pubs in Amsterdam, they just happened to be passing that one as I was leaving. I mean, it’s not as if they even came inside, five minutes either way and I wouldn’t have seen them.

Coincidence? Probably. Synchronicity? Possibly. Wonderful luck? Definitely. I’m intrigued to see what the rest of the week will bring…