Dining with Strangers

The second day of our stay in Cleveland, we took the bus to the University area, I had seen that there were a couple of beautiful churches in that area. But when we got off the bus I saw behind one of the churches another structure sticking out. We walked over there and a very modern building came in view. It was the Peter B. Lewis Building; it was strange to find such a modern building in an old area of the town. After that we went to one of the churches, Church of the Covenant. It was built in 1911 and is in the style of English Gothic Revival architecture. And years later an extra wing was added in the same style. The church is actually quite big, there were some beautiful glass stained windows. A student was playing the organ, which gave it a nice touch.

After the visit to the church we walked back towards Little Italy, (apparently the mafia does still exist over here.) Sadly enough most of the shops were closed, but there were a lot of little restaurants and café’s that were open. We crabbed something to eat and sat outside on the terrace in the sun. There were some ladies talking in Italian and I had the feeling that I was back in Italy. After our early lunch we walked to the bus stop and caught the 9x bus to get to the Golden Gate Shopping Area. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered World Market shop, a shop were they sell all kinds of stuff from furniture to different kinds of food. And yes, they had some Indian stuff there as well, so I could not resist buying something’s. I really would have loved to buy more, but due to our shrinking budget I had to pace my self. We had also a look in a discount bookstore and I bought myself “Alice in Wonderland”, I have read the story years ago, but I thought it would be fun to have, it helped as well that it was dirt cheap. Wahid wanted to have a look in Blockbuster for some used DVD’s, but he had no luck finding anything that he wanted to buy.


Again we took the bus and went to the Eastgate shopping area, but it was getting late in the afternoon so when I saw the English Pub, the Fox & Hound, I suggested to go in for a drink. Wahid did not fancy a drink, but I said it would be nice to go to a proper English Pub. (I told him that probably he could get his loved Guinness over here and that did the trick) So we ended up in the bar around 4 o’clock. They had Guinness on draft, so Wahid was happy in the end. They had a big TV screen and they were showing Liverpool playing a Turkish team. We talked about the game a bit and a gentleman next to us overheard us talking and after a little bit he started asking us things about were we were from and where we were traveling to. When our drink were finished Wahid offered him a beer, but he declined. Instead he invited us to his house for a drink, Wahid said no. We kept on talking for a while and then he asked again and this time Wahid accepted to go to his house. We got into his car and we drove about 2 miles or so. When we got to the house his wife, Eileen, was obviously surprised that her husband had picked up two strangers. But she welcomed us straight away. We had a drink on the deck and two of their friends, Brian & Joanne, came over and invited us all to their house for dinner. So we all moved to their house, had a drink on their deck and then moved to the kitchen, were we had dinner. I have to say it was kind of surreal sitting at the table with people we just had met, literally strangers to us. Obviously we were bombarded with questions about our trip, making eating a tat difficult, but it just felt like we were sitting with old friends at the table. It was so nice and they were so hospitable, it is just incredible, while I am writing this it feels like I was just dreaming the whole thing. After dinner Tom & Brian drove us back to the MH parked near Severance and of course they wanted to have a look inside the MH. Tom had told us that he would love to travel in a MH for a while, but that they had not had the opportunity yet, so maybe one day.