hdm

I just noticed that this thread is open on the Fodor's home page. Woo hoo! We're famous!

trivbeck

My fiance and I were in Positano a couple years ago. He noticed some people looking over a USA Today so he asked them how the Vikings did on Sunday's football game. After we exchanged some chit chat on us all being from Minnesota one of the guys asked us where we lived. We told him and he stated that his sister and brother lived there too, do you know Jim and Eve B? I couldn't believe it, they were former neighbors of mine!

ehughes

An aquaintance of mine from work took a leave of absence to attend a languange school in Italy so she would be fluent and lived with a local family while there.

My son and a friend went to Italy during that time to visit the friend's family who he hadn't seen in a long time. While visiting a cousin, the cousin said they had to meet the American woman who was staying with them for a long while. Of course it was the woman from work.

MissZiegfeld

Nothing major..two years ago I was at a restaurant in Brussels, and there was an American family sitting at the table next to me having trouble ordering. They didn't speak French and the waiter didn't speak English (which is pretty rare for Brussels, really)

Anyway, I intervene and help them order, they thank me.

A few days later I'm walking past Westminster Abbey and I run into the very same family, and we both gave eachother a surprised look and chatted for a few moments.

Michael

Our street at home is one block long. This past summer, we ran into nodding acquaintance neighbors at the Musée du Quai Branly.

beaupeep

When I first went to Paris in February of 1997 I was living on the island of Nantucket which at the time had a year-round population of maybe 6,000 people. On my return flight home there were three other Nantucketers, none of us knew the others were traveling to and from Paris on the exact same dates.

During that same trip I was in the Diptyque store and heard a woman enter the store behind me. She had the loudest, most distinctive accent. I turned around and it was Cindy Lauper, in town for some French music awards that night. It was also pouring torrentially and her limo was waiting invitingly outside. I told my Parisian friend I was going to ask Cindy for a ride and Mlle Paris told me no way, she would die of embarrassment so I didn't, and we got soaked instead. When I got home to Nantucket I was retelling the story to some friends and one of them said, "You should have asked her and when she found out you were from Nantucket my name would have most likely come up because we're good friends!"

hdm

Oh, I wish you had - I love Cindy Lauper! I especially liked her as a guest character on Mad About You.

lscott

Many years ago, when my husband was drafted into the Army, he was sent to a small base at Wertheim, Germany.
Not long after he ( a lowly Private) arrived, word came down that he was wanted in Major C's office!
It turns out that the Major noticed, in the barracks rec room, a copy of the hometown newspaper from our very small Indiana town that I had mailed to my husband . Major C's wife was from the even smaller Kentucky village just across the Ohio River from us which shares the same local newspaper. We were acquainted with his wife's family. After that, much to the surprise of the other lowly GI's, my husband and the major were on friendly speaking terms!

FauxSteMarie

I am so glad I started this thread (and the companion one on the US board). When I turn on my computer, I get to go over to fodors and read all these wonderful stories.

cynthia_booker

Many years ago, after college, my husband and I were living in Germany as he had received military orders to a small army post there. I was young and had culture shock big time. One day at lunch I was telling him how much I missed our friends from college who had moved to California after graduation. When he came home that night, he had big news. He had run into them at the store on the way home - the husband had joined the army and they had just moved into the next door apartment building on post.

Waldo

This is an interesting post, giving people a chance to tell their "off-beat" stories. I've contributed two, which I can call coincidence, but here's another, which I will never forget.
I was lying on that same beach in Sardinia, and since I go there every year, as do most of the attendies on that beach, we sort of get to know each other. This day, I went out of my sister in law's condo early to get a good spot on the beach. The sand near the water on the beach is packed down, and it is difficult to dig an umbrella deeply into the sand. I did so with difficulty, and we spent the morning on the beach, under our nice umbrella. As we were leaving for the day, this older woman, who we know, had just come onto the beach, and was trying real hard to make a good hole for her umbrella, with little luck. I turned to her and took her umbrella and shoved it quickly into the tight hole from which I had just pulled my umbrella. (She now had the best hole on the beach). She was so happy, and blurted out "L'Americane sono vero gentile!" (the Americans are truly kind). Everyone on the beach noticed and that gave me a great feeling, since we are the only Americans there on that beach. Chalk one up for the USA.

sylvia3

In the middle of a train station in the middle of the night, in a little place near Prague, my son, travelling alone, meets up with a neighbor's son (also solo). Neither of them thought to tell either set of parents until a party 6 months later....

Waldo

I even had a hilariously funny story, which I don't know how to post. I wish I could get some sort of dispensation from the editors to post it. It is a doozy.

coxbox

two stories.. both Italy.. eating in a small cafe in Lucca we chatted with the waitress..turns out her uncle owns the Italian restaurant that we frequented often in San Diego .. and that she worked at once in awhile when home..the other in Cortona..our group of friends.. not three minutes earlier we said lets bet on this trip which of us will run into someone we know.. We mostly all picked Marsha.. and sure enough a few minutes later a judge she knew was eating dinner on the sidewalk.small world..

DDA

In 1968, my college roommate and I were paired with 2 other girls in a stateroom crossing the Atlantic. One, a Canadian, left us in Ireland, as we went on to Southhampton. Years later, I saw in the newspaper that a boy that I knew from my small hometown was marrying a girl from Canada with the same name. It was, indeed, the same girl. Now, many more years later, we continue to be friends.

mcnyc

I have 2 real good stories, 1 of which I'd posted previously:

1- This almost happened twice, but my dad kinda ruined the first go around. We were in London being tourists, when I tried to drag my dad to a random club. He refused. We went back to the hotel to rest. A few nights later, passing the same club, I decided to just go in, dragging the poor dad along. In the club, I noticed the DJ looked strangely familiar. The DJ was my friend, who took a gig in London during our time off. I turned around, and there was another friend, who had happened by the club. We're all NYers, all on winter break from college, and all in London at the same time, in the same club. It was my friend's last day on the DJ gig, which was listed in Time Out London, which I hadn't bothered with.

2-though this did not happen in Europe, this past January, I was on a cruise through the Chilean Fjords, and at my table were a couple from the Netherlands, a couple from Sacramento, and a couple from the UES in NY. Coincidence #1: the couple from Sacramento and the couple from the UES used the same travel agent in NYC. Coincidence #2: the entire table had almost the same itineraries, but were off by a day here and there.

FauxSteMarie

I went on a cruise to the Chilean Fiords too. Did you go on the Skorpios to the Glacier San Rafael?

If you did, maybe that would qualify as a coincidence, but not in Europe.

I did have a coincidence out of that trip, but it is on the thread on the US board.

Jean

Oh, Waldo, you tease. Give it a try with your best alternative word usage.

mcnyc

Faux, did you go this past January too? We were on the Cruceros Australis - awesome ship, awesome crew, awesome itinerary.

Waldo

As I previously mentioned, my wife and I go to Sardinia every year. My wife made friends with a young attractive affable lady on the beach, name of Consuelo, from Milan. Consuelo goes around topless, which is no big thing on the Sardinian beaches. However, the topless scene does her a lot of justice, as she is pretty well endowed. The second year after my wife met Consuelo, I was laying on the beach, face up, and this young lady comes over, next to me, and starts talking to my wife. I didn't recognize her. She then takes off her top and and leans over me with her chest about two inches from my face, so that she can speak with my wife. Instantaneously, I recognized that it was Consuelo. I later told my wife, and she was pretty miffed. I told her I was only an innocent bystander. It's a tough life sometimes.