That One Time My Friend Was a Cruise Ship Captain

Once upon a time I was in international club in high school. (Big surprise, no?) I loved having foreign exchange students at school, and befriended a few of them. I spent more time with one in particular: Janno from Hamburg, Germany. Some of the foreign exchange students were wild, and I remember one of them getting sent back to his country because he was caught drinking. Janno was not wild. Janno was a nice boy who accepted my invitation to church most Wednesday nights. His mom was a vicar - still not entirely sure what that means - so I guess church wasn’t as out there for him as it was for some of the others.

Anyway, aside from going to church with me, he came to my house a few times, and was very confused when we asked him if he liked bierocks. “Like, that’s a German thing, right?” (Apparently not.) He was older than me, so when his year was up he moved back to Germany, and I was stuck in high school, pretty sure I’d never see Janno again. But then social media happened a few years later, and somehow we were connected on Facebook.

If you are old enough to remember that far back, Facebook was far from what it is today. (Funny enough, I was reminiscing about this the other day with my mom and asking her if she remembered “the good old days” of Facebook before realizing that “the good old days” were before it was open to her. This is when I developed a personal theory, and probably one that will at least halve my blog reading audience, but basically Facebook was all fun and games until Boomers moved in and took it over and made everything political and, well, not fun. But I digress…) People didn’t really post every second of their lives on there, so even though Janno and I were “friends” on there, we still didn’t talk or really know what was going on in each other’s lives.

Fast forward a few more years and I’m living in Spain and working at the architecture firm. Out of nowhere I get a message on Facebook from my old friend Janno - who I probably haven’t seen for almost a decade at this point. Basically he tells me that he saw on Facebook that I was living in Barcelona and he has become a cruise ship captain and something happened to the boat so they have to make an emergency pit stop in Barcelona for a few hours and would I like to come aboard and have dinner with him? Was I living in a fairy tale? Was I for real being invited to eat dinner on a cruise ship, with my friend Janno, the captain? My magic was once again showing itself.

Any other day I would have had to tell him no because it was impossible to just miss a day of work, but it just so happened that the random Tuesday he would be in Barcelona was some holy day that I got off work for! He even told me I could bring Yago along, so off we went, to have dinner and a private tour of the ship with the captain. It was all I’d hoped it would be and more, and I was so happy to be reunited with Janno in real life.

In spite of this lovely coincidence, we still didn’t talk much, and though I was posting more on social media, Janno still wasn’t. However, a few years later I received a wedding invitation - in Hamburg. I was thrilled to be invited to a German wedding, so I immediately bought my flight. Unfortunately tragedy struck though, and just days before the wedding my grandfather passed away, so I had to be in the states and miss out. I still got to meet the bride a few years later though when they made a visit to Wichita.

Each time I reconnect with Janno, I’m reminded of how easy it is to just pick up where you left off with some people. Sometimes I worry it’s been too long between communications with someone, so I think I should just let it go, but then something happens to let me know that it’s never too long if they’re good people - and that’s pretty much the only kind I know.

These random connections and reconnections through the past decade have been so life-giving. Now, more than ever, in these socially-distanced, isolating times, I’m appreciating my global web of support. I’m so thankful for friends like Janno who will pop back in my life at the moments I need them most, and can’t wait until the universe pulls us together again.