Connections Lost and Found

It is difficult to know when to allow the external world to guide your actions, and when to intervene with your own desires. Due to an insatiable curiosity, a naive optimism, a profound laziness or a summation of the three I belong to the camp preferring to follow the provided path.
The following is a true, recent example. On Tuesday I received an email from a Dutch friend of my parents saying that I will visit him and his daughter on Friday. He had already paid for a hotel room and bought tickets for the Rijks museum on Saturday. A bit of context, I am an American from D.C. who studies at McGill and is on exchange in a small town south of Brussels this semester.
On Friday evening I slipped around the stormy streets of Utrecht searching for a "WiFi gratis" sign so I could look up this daughter's apartment. I arrived late and wet to the smell of warm lasagna and the hospitality of three friendly Dutch girls. Over dinner and many beers we discussed Dutch, American, Belgian (Flemish and Walloon) and global perspectives on the classic topics of education, music, drugs and passions.
Following her instructions the next morning I stumbled through my hangover to the train station and met her father in Amsterdam. We discussed the same topics but with a fresh, mature perspective while looking at the masterpieces of Dutch masters such as Rembrandt and Jan Steen. Learning that I would not be provided with housing that night, I slyly bought a Eurolines bus ticket back to Brussels while discussing Belgian beers in this man's favorite cafe. While he translated the waiter's opinion on "belgisch bier" from Dutch to English for me, I texted, in French, a friend from Brussels to meet me that night.
I arrived in Brussels around 23h and wandered the eastern business district, the south-western Arabic district and the loud, vivacious center waiting for my friend to leave her party and meet me. Around 2h I received a troubling text saying she had to accompany her friend to the hospital. Having 4 more hours before the first train to my town, I decided to pass the rest of the night in a relatively calm bar. Here I finished a book for my Medieval French literature class and spoke with a drunk Lebanese immigrant about his problems with racism in Brussels. I may not have planned to spend my night with this man but I nonetheless enjoyed his friendly attempts at including English words into French monologues and his exuberance all three times I reminded him that I am from Washington.