"The gesture was part of it."

"What were the other parts? And what was the effect, was it how we can understand each other?"

"It's letting me speak your language--look, I'm definitely not the person to talk to, why don't I send you to the planar studies department."

"Fine by me."

She gives Margaret directions. 

"Thank you!"

She leaves for the planar studies department. Assuming that hallways here follow the same laws of Euclidean geometry and contiguous spacetime as the kind she's used to, she even arrives there.

Euclidian geometry and contiguous spacetime are followed! The laws of physics aren't, always, but that doesn't impede her navigation overmuch. 

Are any of the violations of the laws of physics noticeable, or does she get there fizzing with only the maximum humanly possible level of curiosity? 

Some things are levitating. 

Then she will be briefly distracted on the way there by moving her hands all around them, gingerly poking them, etc.

They're pretty immobile. 

Some students passing by stop to ask her questions in the local language. 

She answers with "I'm sorry, I don't speak the language" and gets moving again.

The students accept this and move on. 

There are a lot more students in the halls closer to the Planar Studies department. None of them take much notice of her. 

She takes plenty of notice of them--their clothes, their general level of health, the apparent tech level and magicalness level of their accessories--but keeps moving and doesn't stare too openly or try to interact.

All of them are extremely healthy. Actually, none of the people she passed in the street looked like you would expect if "textbook" had won the fight with "Ren Faire" in terms of population health levels. 

The clothes have consistent styles, mostly, although there are clothes she might be able to pick out as foreign. Most of their accessories display neither tech nor magic but there is the occasional color-changing scarf or floating bauble. 

Looks like dying of horrifying alien plague is a no and inventing the printing press and learning magic are both yes, so that's good. And if she followed the directions correctly, which she's pretty sure she did, the door to the planar studies department should be . . . this one. Knock knock.

The door opens and a tall, thin woman peers down at her and says something in the local language. 

"I don't speak the local language; can you translate?" This time she's going to watch really carefully and find out exactly what gesture and nonsense word goes with translation.

The woman ripples her fingers slightly and says "Erfari ex," then, "Hello, who are you?"

Erfari ex, erfari ex, remember that . . . "I'm Margaret, I think I'm from another plane of reality, the admissions person said I should talk to you?" She really should have gotten that person's name but too late.

"Oh! Yes, come in." She steps aside, opening the door further to let Margaret in. 

She steps inside and looks around.

The room is absolutely filled with impenetrably-purposed doohickeys and bookshelves and books and stacks of paper. What bits of wall aren't obscured by bookshelves are plastered with pieces of paper with what look like maybe equations or something on them in a completely unfamiliar notation. 

The woman who answered the door says "Achari echva!" and then beams. "Yes, it looks like that's correct! How did there come to be humans native to your plane?"

Oh wow. So much to learn, and all in this one room.

"If I say 'we evolved there from other animals', does that answer your question or do you need more detail?" 

"--Now I have different questions."