"The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley," said Burns, and this is rarely more in evidence than at World Youth Day. How could anyone plan sufficiently to take into account the choices, desires and sheer whims of a million or more people? Of the hundreds of prayer events, concerts and exhibitions in Kraków, some are near deserted, and some are uncomfortably swamped. Public transport too is unpredictable. There’s little more frustrating than seeing tram after tram go by your stop, full to the gills, as you grudgingly begin to accept that your one "must see" at WYD won’t in fact work out. For me, I had a double disappointment on my first day. Full trams weren’t my problem: instead I spent my afternoon in the heart of WYD bureaucracy – think Kafka meets Enid Blyton – resolving a problem with my registration. It was all my own fault of course, as revealed by the fourth volunteer bureaucrat I spoke to: "So you haven’t received a pilgrim pack. Have you paid?" "Oh, wait, I think… maybe not." My mendicant instincts had let me down, and I ended up missing both a dialogue on religious freedom with George Weigel and an Iraqi bishop, and a praise and worship session with Matt Maher and Audrey Assad. Like all other pilgrims in the face of such disappointments, I had to let go of my plans and go with whatever Providence had to offer. In the end, Providence beat my plans hands down. Instead of hearing an Iraqi bishop interviewed, I met four of our Iraqi Dominican sisters, heroic women of God who have stayed in Iraq to educate its internally displaced Christian and Yazidi children. And instead of listening to praise and worship music passively, I had one of the most moving musical experiences of my life: a procession in the Basilica of the Holy Trinity with more than 100 hale and hearty Dominican brothers warmly belting out the Salve Regina and hymns to Dominican saints. Again and again at WYD you hear similar stories of disappointments turned to serendipitous surprises: ‘Even the very hairs on your head have been numbered’ (Lk 12:7).