In September 2010, I was invited by friends to spend some time at their place in Brooklyn. At that time, I was still living in Paris. On September 26th, almost at the end of my stay, I went down in the subway to go to visit another friend, in Tribeca. At around eight in the morning, I was waiting for the 2 or the 3 train on the platform in Grand Army Plaza station.

There had been 2-train problems the day before, so when I went down to Grand Army Plaza station, I wanted to double check everything: train numbers, destinations, and schedules. I remember clearly that I was looking carefully at the subway map on the platform, when I saw a very nice woman beside me. I took the liberty of asking her a question about my destination:

“Is the next train going to Chambers Street?”

She smiled at me and confirmed that I was on the right platform, waiting for the right train. We started to talk. She was curious about my stay in New York, about what I had already seen in the city, and as I was talking, she quickly noticed that I did not have a Brooklyn accent, or even an American one.

“Where do you come from?” was her first question.

“Paris, France,” I answered.

She smiled and said, “My name is Martine; I come from Switzerland. I am a native speaker of French, so we can continue our conversation in French.” The two of us began to talk about ourselves, our roots, our family, our jobs, New York, Paris, Switzerland, people in general. Small talk. The 2 train finally came into the station. We sat beside each other. I had broken up with my girlfriend a few months earlier; I was single, and I wanted to see Martine again. I asked her for her telephone number, in order to invite her for a drink, before getting back to Paris. At that point, there was a major turning point for me when she said, “Give me your telephone number, just in case!”

It was for me the obvious proof that she also wanted to see me again. Everything was natural, simple, and effortless. I had to get off at Chambers Street; she had to get off later, uptown. When I left the train, I gave her a friendly kiss, and we promised to see each other soon. A few days later, I called her to schedule a meeting at MoMA. I remember that we spent hours talking about our lives and our dreams. We shared meals, walking randomly at MoMA, and moved toward midtown Manhattan, visiting different art shows.

Then, I had to go back to Paris, but we continued sharing our stories and thoughts through Skype, spending a couple of hours every day to know each other better. Before New Year’s Eve, I invited her to stay a week with me at my place in Paris. She came and started to learn about my friends and my lifestyle. At the end of her Parisian stay, we decided to live together in New York.

For that purpose, I had to apply for a visa. We had to hire a lawyer (whose office was in Minnesota) to facilitate the process. I started to discover the subtleties of the U.S. Department of Immigration. Tons of documents about my professional life were required. All these included four letters of recommendation from my clients, saying that I would be a person of great interest to the country. I was not used to thinking of myself in that way. Two months later, all the documents were gathered in a big, heavy file and sent to the U.S. Immigration system. In November 2011, I finally got my visa. It gave me the opportunity to work in the United States for three years. The next step was to prepare my move to Brooklyn. I had to get rid of everything I did not really need, which was a very good thing. I moved to Brooklyn on December 21st, the winter solstice, when the days start getting longer. On that very day, we started to live together at Martine’s place in Brooklyn.

This big change in my life was the joyful continuation of our first encounter, a little more than a year before. When we decided to get married, in February 2013, the easiest way to go to Borough Hall in Brooklyn was to take the subway at the Grand Army Plaza station.

When we passed by the big subway map on the platform, the two of us smiled at the same time.

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Philippe Ungar is a French audio archivist based in Brooklyn. For more than 20 years, he has been working for companies, families, art collections, museums, and foundations in Europe and the United States. He studies English with Charles Perkins at CUNY’s City Tech.