A few years ago my husband and I took an Italian language course at the University of Pittsburgh prior to a trip to Italy. During our trip we were walking along the Arno when a tour bus parked nearby. As the passengers left the bus, who should we see but one of our fellow students from the class!

In a hotel in Innsbruck last year and my wife is speaking with the receptionist. Woman next to her asks where is she from and the last thing you know is she lives 5 blocks away and she is friends with all my wife's friends. We see her in town regularly. Small World.

When I still lived on Nantucket in 1997 I took my first trip to Paris and on the plane home there were three other people from Nantucket on the plane that I knew quite well! Now Nantucket had a year-round population of only 6,000 at the time so I thought the odds of 4 of us being on the same plane were a bit amazing.

Not quite the same but..

My husband, daughter and I were having predinner drinks in Harry's Bar in Venice. At the next table was a lone woman. She soon started chatting with us. It turned out she was one of the reporters for the International Herald Tribune. During our conversation it was mentioned it was her birthday. We ended up having her join us for dinner. Needless to say we had a very intereting evening with her.

Some months later we were at Sabellas Restaurant in San Francisco with our daughter and her best friend. We were celebrating our daughters birthday.

Suddenly I heard a voice and someone calling our name. It was the same woman. She was in SF on vacation and was sitting two tables away from ours. She sent over some birthday dessert for our daughters birthday and joined us after dinner for a drink.

If you travel often enough and interact with other people often enough, you will eventually meet someone who lived near/worked with/married/etc. your ex sister-in-law's maid of homor. It's just the inexorable action of the laws of probability.

Here's our story: While visiting in Madison, WI (far from where we live) my wife and I overheard three women discussing where to find a bagel shop. We had just passed one on a nearby street, so we told them we had overheard, etc. and mentioned the place we had just seen.

As they were leaving, one of the women said to the others, "It won't be as good as Lender's." I said, we knew a Lender's bagel place in New Haven (where I grew up), and they said they were from New Haven. One thing led to another, and it turned out one of the women was a good friend of my mother and knew my whole (chaotic) family history.

Be careful what you admit to while traveling--you never know who the people near to you are and who they know!

<<Author: willit
<<Date: 07/09/2007, 10:50 am

<<Some years ago my brother was hitch hiking in the UK, and was picked up by a driver. As they spoke it became apparent that this same driver had given him a lift about 18 months previously, 6000 miles away in Southern Africa.>>

Now that's a little creepy!