Serendipity on Christmas Day in Tasmania

If there ever was a fool's errand in Hobart, it was our search for a restaurant to have dinner on Christmas day. Yet, it resulted in the most extraordinary surprise ... but not of a culinary kind.

We had landed in the morning at Hobart's airport, after a short flight from Melbourne and gone immediately to visit Port Arthur, one of the first penal colonies in Australia. After checking in at our hotel mid-afternoon, we went to explore Hobart, which, on Christmas day, was deserted. Our hotel was in Battery Point, the oldest district of Hobart, on top of a hill with great views of the Derwent River and charming Victorian houses. A short walk down the hill took us to the Salamanca Market Place and the waterfront on the old port. This is where most restaurants are ... but the few that were not closed had been fully booked for weeks. We walked back up the hill in search of Kelley's Seafood Restaurant, recommended by our guide-book.

Kelley's Seafood Restaurant is a quaint old white cottage at the corner of two back streets of Battery Point ... but it was closed. As we were standing there wondering what to do next, we were overtaken by a couple. The woman turned around and, as she was about to address herself to Ellen, it came back to me in a flash: she was the Brasilian woman who helped take care of our children when they were infants in Palo Alto so that Ellen could have some time to practice her harpsichord. Her husband was studying for a doctorate at Stanford at the time. Ellen did not recognize her immediately, but, after she introduced herself to us, it was indeed Matilde, who was here in Hobart with her husband Jose, exploring Battery Point.

This was the most improbable encounter. We would never have imagined that we could stumble upon a couple of Brasilian people we had lost track of for more than 25 years; and in Hobart, of all places, at the end of the Earth, with only water between this Southernmost point of Australia and Antarctica. It became only a little less improbable after we learned that they were both at the end of a one-year sabbatical in Melbourne from their university jobs in Sao Paulo, but only marginally so, really. For this encounter to happen, we still needed to decide independently to spend time around Christmas in Hobart, to book rooms in hotels of Battery Point, and to wander in that area on the afternoon of Christmas Day.

We walked back to our hotel with them and talked for hours over some food (only room service was available) and a bottle of wine we had purchased at a winery in Yarra Valley and brought with us from Melbourne.

We exchanged email addresses and phone numbers, determined this time not to lose sight of each other for another 25 years! Ellen, who is not adventurous and would never have thought of visiting Brazil, now wants to organize a trip there.

This was, really, the most wonderful Christmas present we could have hoped for.