You wouldn’t believe what happened to me today. I had been wondering about it for some time now, but as the days and the weeks passed I had given up on it. I had come to assume that it just would never happen, extraordinary as that may seem. It must have been, for sure, 7 weeks now, that I expected it to happen any day now. Every morning and every evening I would anxiously wait for it to happen, but it didn’t. I talked about it to Yvonne, but she didn’t know either. She found it as strange as I did. The girls in the office found it funny, they said it was pure coincidence, that this was not normal behaviour. And then they closed the subject with the inevitable “Ti na kanoume?”, “what can we do about it?”. But I hadn’t given up hope yet, I knew it had to happen one day. It would not be possible for it not to happen, not on an island the size of Crete…

And so today it happened. I recognized him immediately. I wasn’t sure at first if he had recognized me, as I don’t always get up at the same location. I greeted him with some reservation while I mounted the few steps, just a small nod of the head, which could be interpreted in many ways. But he returned a big smile immediately. There was no doubt he recognized me. He was at least as pleased with the fact that we met again as I was. “Yasas”, I said when I held out my hand with the ticket firmly grasped between my index and thumb. “Yasas”, he replied while tearing of one half of the ticket. For a split second our eyes met, and we both knew. This would happen again.

Reassured in my belief of the inevitable, I made my way to the end of the bus. The other passengers gave me a strange look. Little did they know why I was smiling so happily. After more than 7 weeks of taking the bus twice a day from Fortezza to the port of Iraklio and back I had finally had the same bus driver for a second time. Today some of the world order had been restored. Now I’m waiting to get on an identical bus I have been on before.