A French castle and an (almost) Japanese TV star

They say, destiny does not make home visits (unlike NHK representatives), but now I would not be so sure. I agree that you still need to buy a ticket to be able to win a lottery, but sometimes you may get a bit more than you expected.

A few weeks ago I got a link to an article about a French castle. There are many, you will say, and you will be right. What makes this one different is that it has been abandoned after a big fire back in 1932 and recently a group of enthusiast came up with an idea on how to bring it back to life. Instead of just asking people to donate, they suggested to buy a castle and invited all those who donate become co-owners.

A castle in France. I hope some day to show you a photo of the one I am telling you about.

If you know me well enough, you will know I could not resist to a proposal to own a castle. Who would? Even if in reality it means owning no more than just a few pieces of rock in the wall, but nevertheless it is a castle. So I go, register, pay my part and wait for what the future will bring.

A view from a castle’s window.

You may not know, but by Christmas time, the “What if we adopted the Mothe-Chandeniers castle?” project had over 18,000 contributors from over 100 countries with over 1.6 million euro to transform idea into reality!

New year starts and one evening I receive an email from the organizers, saying that a major Japanese TV would like to interview Japanese contributors. I was so amused at the thought of representing a “Japanese contributor” and imagining the shock everyone would have by seeing someone as non-Japanese looking as you can possibly get and hardly speaking more than a few words of the language.

Let’s see, the story is not over yet! 😉

Since I came across this quote during my recent New Year’s holiday (see English version below in the post), a number of events followed to prove that adventures may come right to your doorstep 😉

“Destiny is usually just around the corner. Like a thief, a hooker, or a lottery vendor: its three most common personifications. But what destiny does not do is home visits. You have to go for it.” (Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of wind)

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