As methods of communication, they are an age apart.

作为一种通讯手段，漂流瓶无疑早就过时了。

So it is perhaps not surprising that it took over 30 years for Olivier Vandevalle to get a reply to his message in a bottle - via Facebook.

所以，Olivier Vandevalle等了30年才收到自己扔出去的瓶中信的回音——还是通过Facebook收到的！

At the age of 14, aboard his family's yacht on a sailing holiday cruising along the south coast of England, he tore a page from an exercise book and wrote a message which he secured in a wine bottle in the summer of 1977.

在1977年夏天，Olivier Vandevalle还只有14岁，跟家人在英国南岸度假时，突发奇想从一本练习册上撕了张纸写个字条放到酒瓶里扔进大海。

And 33 years later, the Belgian has had a reply. After finding the bottle on the shore at Swanage in Dorset, Lorraine Yates ignored the postal address and instead tracked the messenger down on the social networking website Facebook, where they are now listed as each other's 'friend'.

33年后，在英国Swanage郡的海滩上发现漂流瓶的Lorraine Yates，直接在Facebook上回复给Olivier Vandevalle：我收到你的信了。

Yesterday Mr Vandevalle, a 47-year-old father-of-two from Ostend, said: 'It was so, so long ago that my first reaction when she contacted me was to say "it wasn't me."

现在已经47岁的Vandevalle是两个孩子的父亲。他说：“一开始我完全忘了这回事，所以我对Lorraine说，那不是我，你搞错了。”

"Then I remembered."

“但后来我想起来了。”

He added: "It was an incredible experience. Where has the bottle been all these years? Was it lying buried under a heap of sand until it was uncovered by a storm? I shall never know."

“这太神奇了。漂流瓶这些年都去哪了？难道就被埋在沙子下面，直到一阵狂风吹来，它才重见天日？”

"But the wine bottle was a safe receptacle for my message. My father insisted that we seal the cork with candle grease to make sure no sea water could get in."

“不过，瓶中的信保存得还是很好的。当时我爸爸坚持要用蜡烛油来封口，说这样海水就进不去了。果然如此。”

 

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