“You cannot do kindness too soon, as you never know how soon it will be too late.“ …Ralph Waldo Emerson

Traveling provides the opportunity to see new sights, meet new people, and experience different cultures and languages.  By far, meeting new people from all over the world ranks high. I have met people from at least a dozen countries in my short stay in Costa Rica.  Many just stay a few days, but some are here for one or two weeks and, seeing them around this small, boutique hotel everyday, prompts many pleasant conversations.  A guest from Germany, who I chatted with daily, left the hotel yesterday. As he was leaving, I noticed he had a ukulele case slung over his shoulder.

I said, “Andre, I didn’t realize you played the ukulele.” and I then told him my tale of woe with the ukulele.  As I’ve written before on a Facebook post, I said, “I play the piano. It’s got 88 keys. The ukulele has but 4 strings — how hard could it be to learn?  To this day, I have yet to be able to even tune the damn thing.”  

Andre laughed and immediately handed me the ukulele case from his shoulder.  He said, “Here, take this as my gift to you.” I, of course, resisted his offer but he was rather insistent that he wanted to give it to me.  He said he has a couple of ukuleles and this is one of his favorites. He said he really wanted me to have it as a gift from him. He said, “When you learn to play it, remember me!”  How could I refuse and I accepted his kind gift.

I was touched not only by his generosity and kindness but also that he gave me “his favorite.”  I will give learning it another try, much to my wife’s dismay no doubt but probably to Andre’s delight, and each time I learn a new tune I will remember Andre from Germany with fondness.

Interestingly, Andre spoke no English just two years ago but made up his mind to learn the language.  Today his English is quite conversational — I wish my German and Spanish were as good. His quest now is to become conversational in Spanish.  While in Costa Rica he was able to make progress toward that goal and is now heading to Argentina for four (I think) weeks to immerse himself even more in Spanish.  Andrea is about 50 years old, recently retired, and obviously putting his retirement time to good use. I have no doubt that he will achieve his goal to become multi-lingual.

Best wishes to Mein Freund, Andre, und vielen Dank für Ihr freundliches Geschenk der Ukulele.