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What crazy coincidence or chance meeting have you had while traveling?

What crazy coincidence or chance meeting have you had while traveling?

Old Sep 19th, 2014, 12:59 PM
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What crazy coincidence or chance meeting have you had while traveling?

I was thinking of this story the other day and asked myself why I had never shared it on Fodor's.

While in Venice a few years ago,my husband and I sat down to dinner at a lovely restaurant,
Fiaschetteria Toscana to be exact, and the couple next to us immediately struck up a conversation. You know them- the people who think they have just discovered the only Americans in Venice that night.

Well as the conversation progressed, it was soon learned that they were from NY, living outside the city but they maintain a small apartment in Manhattan. So I say to them, "I lived in NY for 5 years back in the late 70's / early 80's- where in NY do you live? Upper west side says she. "Me too" says me, "I lived on 225 Central Park West." NO! says she. The Alden? That's where we live! What are the chances? But wait, I say ,"I lived in apartment 315" and that is when she fell off her chair. They live in the same apartment that I enjoyed so many years ago while an art student in NY.

So what chance encounters have you had?
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 01:02 PM
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Last week in Portsmouth our bartender was talking to us, he said his Mom was from Orlando, my friend asked where and turned out his Mum was my friend's neighbor. He sent a text to her right away. Weird isn't it?
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 01:27 PM
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Several years ago I was traveling in France (Mt. St. Michele) with my then 16 year old daughter and my friend/next door neighbor. My friend and I were looking at something and my daughter was a ways behind us. She comes running up and says she just saw "Alice" who is our neighbor on the other side. We went back to where she thought she saw her but of course "Alice" was no longer there. We said it was probably just someone that looked like her, cause as far as we knew "Alice" was not currently in France. My daughter insisted she was right for the rest of the trip and we were sure she was wrong. Got home, turns out "Alice" actually was there - so it was her.
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 01:33 PM
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Once in SF I ran into a friend not knowing he was there - OK nothing extraordinaire about that but then a year later in Paris I once again chanced into him, not even knowing he was in Paris.

It helped that he was 6 foot 10 and literally stood out but still twice with the same bloke!
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 01:41 PM
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In 2001, we went to Italy. Our niece and her friend who were studying in Florence met us in Sicily for a few days. The fellow who was just a friend, was a funny and knowledgeable kid but I paid for everything, even though I had never met him before, so I called him "The Sponge." When we were in Cefalu, he would stop young women in the street and propose marriage because he loved the town so much.

Last year, we had lunch with my niece and other family members, where we reminisced about Sicily including The Sponge. Afterwards we then went for a stroll on the High Line where we accidentally bumped into The Sponge, who we had not seen since 2001, his Italian wife, and his two kids
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 01:58 PM
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We live in a very small town in north western NJ. We stayed at a small family run pension in Ramsau bei Berchtesgaden in early Ocr. 2009. During our last full day there, in the late afternoon, we were sitting outside talking with the owner, Sabine. As a car pulls in, she says, these people are from NJ also. They are staying for the next 3 nights. Anyway, two "older" women get out, introduce themselves and we find out one is from the next town from us. The other lives in our town, maybe a mile from us at best. Her son is a dentist in our town (within walking distance of us!). The next morning we took a group photo in the breakfast room. As we were leaving for home that day and they had another week before heading home, the woman says, stop by my sons office with the photo. We all figure he'll get a kick out of the picture of my husband and I with his mother in Germany. He certainly did! Small world after all.
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 02:04 PM
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I lived in Europe for 2 years and took a couple of weeks to travel around before returning to the US. As I was about to enter St. Paul's Cathedral in London, who walks out but one of my high school teachers, with her two daughters, son-in-law, and grandchildren in tow.

We couldn't believe we ran into each other. They took me out for dinner and we had a wonderful reunion, but I didn't make it back to St. Paul's. After I was home and my former teacher found out, she felt guilty about that for years! I did get to see it on a subsequent trip 14 years later, so all is well.


Another time I almost literally ran into an old friend as he was getting off a plane at IAH that I was preparing to board.
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 02:17 PM
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Here's another one, although I can't remember all the details of it now. But when I was in China in 2000, I met a woman from Australia who was connected to someone I knew in the US.

I'm thinking this was the setup:

I met A from Australia in China.

A was somehow connected to B, who was also from Australia but lived in my then-current city in the US.

B happened to live across the street from C, the daughter of my friends D & E from a former city in which I had lived. When D & E would come to visit C & her husband, C would invite me to dinner, and B & her husband were usually there as well.

Hope that made sense!
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 02:34 PM
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This was not my meeting, but it is in the family, so it will have to do. My sister worked at JFK for EL AL Airlines. There she met a young Israeli who was a graduate student in the US and working for the airline part time in security. They eventually fell in love and got engaged. His mother came to the US for the wedding and in meeting my family, naturally began talking to my mother. It turns out that not only did they both live in Lvov (now in the Ukraine) as children, but actually lived across the street and knew each other when they were little girls.

Sadly, both are gone now.
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 02:36 PM
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Sitting at dinner in Bofinger in Paris, we struck up a conversation with the young couple next to us (or should I say on top of us as you know how close those Parisian tables are.)

It turned out that they lived in the next small town over from our small town in Wisconsin and she was a bridsemaid in a wedding we had attended the previous year. One of MDH's best friends son got married.
Small world, isn't it?

Not quite as good as living in the same apt. Ralstonian, but close!
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 02:38 PM
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I was once invited at dinner with some colleagues at the Italian embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay, where I found myself seated by an unknown Italian lady. We were not introduced, but as she began telling about her work as a musician I had a sudden flash. I did not know her personally but I realized we had had the same music teacher, who had died 10 years before and in that very year we both had been asked to contribute a writing to his memorial book. So we had co-authored a book without knowing each other and now we were seated at the same table on the other side of the world. To her surprise - and, I should say, to the surprise of my colleagues also seated at the same table - I guessed her name and I began telling her the story of her life. I gained instant wizard status among my colleagues.
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 02:40 PM
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We were on a river cruise in SE Asia and became friendly with two other couples. It transpired that couple A's daughter lived next door to couples B's son, in a city with a population of > 4 million.
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 03:43 PM
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We were taking the maiden voyage of the flashy, brand new, state of the art cruise ship. It was a transatlantic crossing from Southampton, England to New York. No, the date was not April 15, 2012 but June 24, 2010. The ship was the Norwegian Epic, which, just hours before had launched from the same pier the Titanic had launched from. We were walking around the ship after dinner when we heard a familiar voice call out to us. It was some friends of ours from New Orleans who (husband) rides in the Endymion Mardi Gras parade with. This was quite a coincidence- meeting friends so far away from home on a cruise that had nothing to do with New Orleans.
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 04:33 PM
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MANY years ago in Rome (in the forum) I heard someone calling my name - not my companion. Turned around and who do I see but the eldest son of my parents next door neighbor (he was in the navy and on shore leave in Rome).

We were not close friends since he was 3 years ahead of me and we were never in the same school at the same time - but had known each other for 10+ years.
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 06:54 PM
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Worked on the 10th floor of an office bldg in Louisville, KY. Hadn't seem my old supervisor who worked on the 2nd floor for at least 10 years....until we stood next to each othet in line at the castle in Kilkenny Ireland!
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 07:48 PM
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This sort of thing has happened many, many times to us.

Visited our daughter who lived in Ballina, county Mayo, Ireland, and ate at a little family owned and run restaurant, elderly parents and daughter. They were so nice, we all chatted and went back several times. A month or so after we got home, we were seated at a dinner party with another couple and started talking kids, travel, etc. they also had just returned from Ballina. They had never intended to go there, but had a friend who was ill and could not travel and he had a unique request. Many years before, he had put a message in a bottle, never really expecting anything to come of it. Then years later, he got a letter. A little girl, age 10 had found his bottle off the coast of Ireland and she lived in county Mayo and her parents owned a restaurant. The man and little girl wrote back and forth for years. She grew up, married, etc. the man asked his friends to please go to county Mayo and find the little girl, now grown up. They did, and stayed with the family - the same family and daughter we met in their restaurant.

A few days after I moved to Germany in the mid-70s, I went to a craft show and there was a guy I had gone to college with, both of us Art majors. He was teaching HS in Frankfurt.

Right after that, we went to a religious service in a little village near Frankfurt and ran into a woman DH had met at a conference in DC. She was traveling around Europe. We became best friends and still are.

Getting on a train in NYC, heard my name called. It was an old college friend of DD getting on the same train heading to DC.

Lived next door so a lovely family in St Louis. We moved to Europe. They left for Colorado. No contact after that. 15 years later, I taught an art class in Kansas and there they were.

Twice, I have even discovered relatives I had lost touch with living only a few miles from me, one only about five minutes. Such fun when these things happen.
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Old Sep 19th, 2014, 08:49 PM
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Staying at a small hotel on Mykonos, we met a couple from a neighboring suburb here in Pgh.
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Old Sep 20th, 2014, 05:19 AM
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I grew up near NYC, attended college in NYC, and still live and work there.

= On a visit to Florence, Italy, I ran into a college classmate in the Botticelli room in the Uffizi Galleries.

= On the last day before leaving for vacation, an illustrator stopped by the office to drop off some work. We both remarked how glad we were to be done, since I was leaving for Italy that evening and he was leaving for Germany. During the trip, my companion and I decided to stop in Verona on the spur of the moment. As we left Juliet's courtyard, we ran smack into the illustrator. He and his companion had, on the spur of the moment, decided to drive south from Germany in search of better weather.

= A small group of family and friends joined us in Venice, Italy, for our wedding. We all stayed at the same hotel. On the wedding morning, I was getting ready in my room when I heard excited voices in the hallway, then a knock on my door. It was my mother, with two co-workers who were honeymooners in Italy and had just arrived in Venice. They'd chosen the hotel from a guidebook while riding the train to Venice that morning, with no idea that my mom was even in Italy. They attended the wedding and even gave us some of the best photos that we're taken.
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Old Feb 20th, 2017, 07:58 PM
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Happens to me all the time on certain occasions when I travel.

In New Orleans in late 90s during Halloween period, ran into an Army buddy on a side street. He lived in Dallas, me in Las Vegas at the time. Had been over 10 years since I'd seen him!

In New Orleans in about 2014, ran into a friend while walking into a store. I knew him when I lived in Los Angeles.... I was visiting New Orleans from Dallas. Had been about 5 years since I'd seen him.

I went to visit two friends that lived in the same city in California. One lived there for 4 years, the other just moved there. These friends didn't know each other. Turns out they lived next to each other....
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Old Feb 20th, 2017, 08:21 PM
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On my first trip to Europe back in 1987 (see www.paulkilfoil.co.za/1987.aspx ) I went with 3 other people. We fell out after travelling for 2 months together, split up and went our separate ways with no plans to stay in contact (it was much more difficult back then with no internet, no email and no mobile phones).
2 months after heading off in different directions I was staying at an obscure campsite in the hills above Menton on the south coast of France. One afternoon when I got back to the campsite I found two of my former travel companions also there, camped right next to me (the two of them had stayed together)!
What are the chances that we would all arrive at the same campsite in the same town on the same day in all of the vast expanse of Europe ...? Amazing.
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