I am a Canadian who lived in London for 3.5 years. I was used to the sporadic delays and loudspeaker messages when the tube stopped running for a few moments. Coming home from work at the time I took one of the many long escalators down to Canary Wharf station and sat on the bench as the empty train left the station due to a 'passenger incident'. A worried looking girl came to sit next to me not knowing what was happening, I looked up from my book and asked if she was alright. In a heavy accent she said she didn't understand the message. I explained it to her then asked where she was from because the accent was somewhat familiar. "Tunisia" she replied. We started speaking in French which clearly calmed her down. She was in a hurry to get home and I suggested an alternative route. We ended up taking the LRT to another station and made our respective ways home. I didn't think about the encounter much after that but fate was dancing on the jubilee tube lines the very next week where we spotted each other again. We struck up some more casual conversation and again went our respective separate ways. When I ran into her a third time on the Central line I knew I was meant to be her friend or get to know her in some way. We exchanged numbers and started to do the tourist thing... site see in London on the weekends. It turned out she worked at HSBC at Canary Wharf and I worked just across the little pond on Marshall Wall. A year after we met we both left London, she got married and moved to Dubai and I came back home to Montreal. We still keep in touch even though we haven't seen each other in 7 years. I will never forget that tube journey or the countless other tube trips we took while discovering London. In a strange way... thanks for the delays and Happy Birthday London Underground!
↧