it's a SMALL world after all!
 

Some of my favorite vacation stories are those about unexpectedly running into friends, family or acquaintances while traveling. Has this ever happened to you? It's happened to me a few times. For example, a few years ago I was standing with a friend of mine at the back of St. Peter's in Rome and I turned around and saw a familiar face. "Seth?," I said surprised. It was one of my college deans who I knew personally but hadn't seen or spoke to for a few years. We chatted a few minutes then went our separate ways. Of course a few hours later we bumped into each other again at Trevi. Back at home several months later I spoke with an old college friend and I started to tell him my story...."I was standing in Rome and I turned around and saw..." Before I could finish my story, he finished it for me. "Oh you spoke to Seth?," I assumed. He explained, "No, but I just guessed because know he's also run into Lori at the Wailing Wall and Leslie at the Louvre..." I read a travel article once which talked about these occurences which happen far more frequently than we might think. These days people are joined by their interests moreso than geography. Well there's one story for now. What's yours?

You're right - just a month ago the daughter of a friend of mine was sitting in a small sidewalk cafe in Rome when she heard her name being called. She looked up to see a girl from our hometown - a small town in Arkansas. My friend's daughter was on a college-sponsored trip, and the other girl was on her way to Pakistan with her Pakistani aunt. Neither knew the other would be in Europe. <BR>And I found out, after returning home week before last, that I had been in Salzburg in the Mozartplatz during the same hours that another woman from our town had been there. She and I are mere acquaintances, but still, it's some coincidence! <BR> OK, one more- several years ago at Disneyworld in one of the neverending lines waiting to get into the Small World ride, I came face to face with a girl I had known in high school and hadn't seen in 25 years - we had been very good friends but they lived across the state. She and I were able to converse each time we met as the line snaked around and around. These aren't great stories, but they happened...

Hamlet, you've chosen an interesting subject for discussion. I'm sure it'll prompt many responses. <BR>My wife has a flair for running into people from her past. Five years ago, as soon as we had ascended the escalator from the Gatwick Express at Victoria Station, she ran into a former co-worker from Johns Hopkins. Two mornings later in the lobby of our hotel, she encountered an Egyptian colonel she had as a student in a management program she had conducted in Atlanta, our present residence. While at breakfast in a Marriott north of Chicago, in mid conversation with me, she burst forth with someone's surname. Just seating himself at an adjoining table was a former client of hers from St. Maartin's. Most recently, she was Training Manager of the Olympic Village in Atlanta, where Olympic athletes were housed. She trained over 800 envoys and associate envoys in Olympic protocols. Invariably, wherever we now go, she encounters one of the envoys or associates. Disconcerting to me at first, I now look forward to the next unexpected encounter.

It was a Monday in Britain and alot of the larger stately mansions were closed for cleaning, so we missed seeing Blenheim(which we had seen previously anyway). Decided to see Churchill's burial area and when it became lunchtime, we drove down the road and saw The Black Swan Pub and decided to eat there. I was up at the bar to pick up menus when I heard someone call my name. In came two teacher friends of mine and a husband. They had been in the area and just decided to take a u-turn in the parking lot to turn around and go the other way, then thought the pub looked okay for lunch. Besides that, the pub had Mexican food and we were all thrilled!

When I was in Rome at the ruins of the Forum I heard my name. It was an acquaintance from my college dormitory who was doing some sort of archaeological dig. What is even funnier is that I saw the SAME girl TWO different times when I was in Quebec on a ski trip in TWO different years, once on the slopes and once in a club. There was also another college acquaintance on the same dig who I ran into. On the same trip to Rome I felt a tap on my shoulder. I just thought it was another leering Italian man (no offense to Italians but as young women, my traveling companion and I had some trouble)and there was another friend from college and his brother. We spent the rest of the evening with them and were not bothered by the Italian men again. We also ran into an acquaintance in Paris on the same trip. <BR> <BR>On a childhood trip to Mexico, my father was bothered during the whole plane trip by a familiar voice. It turned out to be a girlfriend of his younger sister's from when they were children (30 years ago) in the Bronx! It IS a SMALL world after all!

This is not my story but my daughter's story. <BR>Last year landing at Istanbul airport at midnight she bumped into two girls she knew from her home town of Brisbane Australia. These girls had worked in the US for a couple of years and were making their way around Europe. My daughter and the two girls spent the next 5 or 6 weeks together touring Turkey and Greece. All three developed a strong friendship even tho they knew one another only thru their Army Reserve days prior to this trip. Denise <BR>

Great topic. I havve a small one to add to this. My husband and I were on a Med Cruise and our first port was Monte Carlo. We were in the Grand Casino when we heard Mr "A". We turned around and there was one of our sons very good friend from high school. The lost touch when they left for college. My son had just finished saying before we left"I can't wait for our 10th reuion because I lost track of Scott. We'll we got talking and he said he was Director of a health club on a cruise ship. Yep, our ship. Needless to say I made sure I worked out every day. Hew was soooo happy to see a face from home. Small world. <BR>

Great topic. I havve a small one to add to this. My husband and I were on a Med Cruise and our first port was Monte Carlo. We were in the Grand Casino when we heard Mr "A". We turned around and there was one of our sons very good friend from high school. The lost touch when they left for college. My son had just finished saying before we left"I can't wait for our 10th reuion because I lost track of Scott. We'll we got talking and he said he was Director of a health club on a cruise ship. Yep, our ship. Needless to say I made sure I worked out every day. Hew was soooo happy to see a face from home. Small world. <BR>

These are such great stories! Mine aren't quite so good...but here I go. Soon after I returned from Europe I overheard two customers talking at work; one was saying that his daughter had been working in Greece, on Santorini, for the last few months. And I had just been there. Turns out she was working just doors down from our hotel, and we never knew it. I didn't know the girl, but my travel companion did. And at the youth hostel bar in Salzburg I joined a table of five strangers, all travelling solo, and after we had been talking awhile someone mentioned they were from Vancouver..."Hey, me too..." "No way, me too!" They all happened to be from Vancouver (and I'm from Vancouver Island). In Athens I started chatting with a guy in the youth hostel bar and he asked where I was from...when I told him he said his roommate was from the same place (not exactly a big city), but happened to be asleep. And of course, it often happened in the course of the trip that we would run into other tourists we had seen elsewhere...like two guys who had also been on Santorini were in Amsterdam at the same hostel we were at a month later. Spent the long ferry ride to Greece talking to two girls we had shared a hotel room with in Rome a week earlier (complete strangers we had met in a desperate late night search for a hotel room and whom we had no plans to meet up with again). It happens all the time, since many tourists follow similar routes, but it sure is a nice feeling, when you're far from home and missing your friends and family, to run into familiar faces, even if you don't REALLY know them.

This has been pretty funny to me to read these stories since I have this kind of luck all the time. My best one ever happened last year while my husband and I toured Italy. And so it goes...one evening we had dinner in a restaurant just a block from the Spanish Steps. On the table next to us was a sign that read "Reserved for 4 at 8:45 p.m. for Smith's (fictious name...it's a small world afterall). I said to my husband, "honey, you know, that's not a common name to be heard least of all here." He said, "Oh, why be concerened, stop being nosy." I proceeded to order my dinner but it still gnawed at me. I said again, "Honey, this is spooky, I worked with a crazy R.E. broker by that name who had a twin brother, they had quite a reputation - one was a saint and one was so God awuful that I could tell you stories that would make your head spin he was such a nightmare". So I forgot about it and proceeded with my minestrone. Not five minutes later in walks WACKO MAN (as we referred to him) with his wife and two children. I chocked on my soup and proceeded to eat the rest of my meal hiding my face. But it didn't end there. A week later we ferry over to Capri and as we descended from the boat there's WACKO MAN again with his family. This went on my entire journey. I felt like I was being haunted the entire trip and constantly looked over my shoulder. Now let's keep the topic going.......

I seem to utter the words "small world" on each trip I go on. Our first day in Rome we visited the Coloseum. The place was packed and the line for tickets was very long. My companion and I stood out front contemplating the wait. Finally, we decided to get in line. As we waited, I ventured up to the front to check out the admission options. I'm looking up at the sign and I hear my name -- it was a dear friend from college who I had lost track of, someone who above all my other friends I wished I had not let slip so far away. Needless to say, we now correspond regularly -- it was one of the highlights of my trip!

In June we took a 15 day Globus European tour. When in Venice we were shopping in St. Mark's Square among thousands of other people, and my husband spotted my cousin and his wife! Unbelievable, neither of us knew the other was there! We both said we couldn't get away from our family - even half-way around the world!!!!! We had to get our picture taken, as no one would ever believe us!

This kind of stuff happens to my parents all the time. They were on a cruise in Alaska. The ship had 2 seatings for dinner and everyone was assigned a table in a completely random manner. My parents hooked up with another couple they particularly liked from their dinner table. My mother has a way of striking up conversations with people and she did so with their waiter-his children and their grandchildren being the common denominator. They agreed to bring pictures of their kids/grandkids the next night. After comparing pictures, my parents new found friends and tablemates asked to see the pictures, too. That's when the lady said, "Oh my! Chaz look, it's Molly Donnelly and the boys!" Turns out they have a lake house on the same lake as my in-laws and their daughter and my husband spent summers growing up together! Neither couple ever used first names when talking about us so they never caught on to their "connection." <BR> On their way to Spain, my Dad sat with a lady he went to college with. On their way back, he sat next to the daughter of a colleague of his. <BR> Another time they ran into a guy my Mom taught with briefly at the beginning of her career. There is definately something to the "Six degrees of separation" thing! <BR>

We were in Switzerland and Italy from June 17 to July 4 and wondered if (as we ALWAYS seem to do) would run into someone we knew back home. We travel to get away from home and don't necessarily care to run into anyone. After reading an earlier post re. WACKO MAN and knowing a similar person ourselves, I'm sure thankful our trip was 'wacko-free' :-)

This story made me stop and think about the world: In May of 1968, my parents were vacationing (from Prague, where we lived at the time) in Switzerland. On a Monday morning at around 11:30 am, they stopped at a nice scenic overlook to admire the vista spread before them. Another car with a young couple of about the same age stopped also, and the two couples started talking. Well, kind of talking, because my parents spoke Czech (and Russian), but not so much German, and the other couple was German. and spoke no slavic languages. They made do with hand signals and smiles, exchanged addresses, and eventually moved on. They kept in touch over the years, mostly with Christmas cards and such - nothing too regular. In May of 1991, my parents went to Italy. They like small towns, back roads, and cute churches well off the beaten path. On a Monday morning at around 11:30 am, they were looking up at the frescoes in a tiny forgotten church, when my father felt a tap on his shoulder and the words, "...is that you?!?" He turned around, and yes, it was the same couple. Neither one knew the other couple was planning to vacation in Italy, let alone in some unknown town in some little-visited region. They had lunch together, and then went on their ways. A few more years go by, a few more Christmas cards, and then my parents go on a trip, this year in May, to Greece. You can guess where this story is going. My parents were doing their usual thing again, exploring the backroads and admiring the small side of Greece. On a Monday morning, at around 11:30, they happened to be in another church (I guess a good place to be in Greece's sunny heat), again admiring the display of religious icons. Out of the blue, a voice came from behind them, "Oh my goodness, can this be you?!?" Amazingly, it was. The same two couples, 30 years almost to the hour after they first met, meeting again by chance in a remote town in a remote area in a country neither of them live in or near. This time, I think they went for wine. <BR> <BR>I think experiences like this are a message - we just don't know what the message is! As my father noted, the mathematical likelihood of this happening is "none." What does it all mean?

<BR>It has happened to me several times. Last spring, I was in Madrid, at the Prado, standing in front of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights and turned around to see a good friend from college that I hadn't seen since a wedding three years before. We both had studied the painting in our college Art History class and had gone to the museum just to see it!!! A couple of years before, in a small restaurant in Saigon, I ran into a couple of friends from business school. We all went into the restaurant because we had all heard that it was one of the few places (then, at least) that served Diet Coke.

It probably isn't a coincidence that like minded people fine one another time after time. It is a great example to governments around the world that people meet, even briefly, and correspond for years. I met my friend from England while lost in Venice; we have continued to correspond over the years and have visited twice.

I know a fellow who was in a restaurant of a hotel in Iran (shows you how long ago this was) with a flight attendant, and in walked his in-laws...

I'm enjoying everyone's "small world" stories. I especially love that so many of them mention Rome (or Italy), my favorite European city. It makes me believe that all roads lead to Rome! Someone else brought up running into travelers on similar itineraries. That happened to me on one trip throughout Italy, but the more interesting one happened in the US. In the summer of 1994 I was driving cross country with a friend. We were at Grand Canyon and decided to take one of those small airplane rides over the canyon. We shared the plane with 4 German guys. My friend didn't handle the flight all that well (if you know what I mean) so as soon as we got off the plane we said bye and I went with her to her to pull herself together. The next day we left GC for Las Vegas where we had reservations at the MGM Grand, which was the largest hotel in the US at the time. We got to the hotel, dropped our bags in the room and headed straight for the pool. I went over to one of the SEVERAL bars at the HUGEST hotel and there I saw 2 of the guys from our plane ride! Prior to this we never talked to the guys about our trips or itineraries. They didn't even plan to stay at the hotel but were sent over when another hotel messed up their reservation - and I normally wouldn't be there since I'm not even a pool person! <BR>Oh - if anyone's interested, the article I mention at the top of the thread is available online. It's called "Kindred Spirits Find Each Other in Strange Places" by John Flinn from San Fran Examiner 1/14/96. Go to www.examiner.com and do the search. <BR>

(sending up) <BR>

I, too, have met people from my past in unexpected places, but my favorite story is one of mistaken identity because it has long been a joke in my life. I have always been told by strangers that I look like Jane Fonda (personally I don't see it). For some reason I no longer remember, I mentioned this once to my EX boyfriend. He thought it was rather conceited of me to say that. However, as a couple years passed and he witnessed these frequent comments from strangers, he would grow more and more annoyed each time. (Guys, help me out here, I don't know why?) Anyway, in Rome at the Colosseum (both in sunglasses), he reported to me that two fellow tourists had just pointed directly at us and said, "Look, there's Jane Fonda and Frank Sinatra!" I went into fits of laughter!! He was deeply offended, because he was 38 at the time and Frank Sinatra was 79! I thought whoever said it must have been watching some VERY old movies! <BR>Anyone else for mistaken identity?

My wife was looking at some museum cases at the Ming Tombs outside Beijing when she noticed a nearby man who, from the back, looked like a man who was an usher in our wedding party in Chicago and whom she had not seen in at least 20 years. With hesitation, she softly said, "John?" He turned: "Ruthie!" he shouted. Sure enough, she was right. Small world.

Two encounters (but not mine): <BR> <BR>A friend of mine ran into her 8th grade gym teacher while we were walking around Venice. He passed by us, called out her last name, she turned around and they exchanged a few words. She said she was so amazed to see him and that he remembered her! <BR> <BR>My brother was walking along the beach in Boracay, Philippines when he spotted an old chum from high school! Both of them were so surprised to see each other -- they hadn't seen each other in over 10 years. They were really close friends in high school but lost touch over the years. They spent that night catching up and reminiscing. <BR> <BR>It really is a small world!!!! <BR> <BR>

It has happened to me too. I have run into co-workers and my high school track coach, as well as seen people that I don't know following the same itinerary. I often wonder though if anybody ever runs into people they know on nude or semi-nude beaches. I have frequented these beaches and do as the locals do, and my friends have done the same. They assume that they are "safe" to do this because everyone is a stranger, and they wouldn't run into anybody they know so far from home. Has anyone been unexpectedly caught in the buff? I'd love to be able to relate the stories to my more conservative friends!

Here's a "small world" story of a different sort... <BR> <BR>Some years ago, my wife and I moved from Boston to Stamford, Connecticut. After a long search, we found exactly the house we were looking for on Shippan Point, a pleasant spit of land jutting out into Long Island Sound. The moving van came and left, we cleaned and unpacked, then pronounced ourselves exhausted and ready for some R&R. We decided on a getaway to the Caribbean and booked a room at a small, 40 room resort on the island of Antigua. We found a flight and two days later we were splashing around in a warm sea, far from a New England winter. <BR> <BR>On our second day, we were on the beach, chatting with the couple under the next umbrella, who had been at the resort for a week. They asked us where we were from. We explained we had just moved from Massachusetts to Connecticut. "Oh, where in Connecticut?" they asked. We told them. "Oh, us too," they said. "Where in Stamford?" We told them. Suddenly, they were leaning forward in their chairs. "Where on Shippan Point?" We gave them the address. They laughed. <BR> <BR>And that is how we came to meet the people who lived directly across the street from us. <BR>

This is my mom's story, not mine: <BR> <BR>My dad was in the airforce, so from the time I was 3 until 5 we lived in the UK, in a little town called Burwell. My mom made many friends there. About 10 years later, we are living in California (where we decided to settle) and are visiting Calaveras Big Trees, a redwood forest in the Sierras. My mom overheard a couple talking in a British accent, and went over to talk to them. She mentioned that she used to live in Burwell, and the woman said "Oh, you must be Jan". My mom just about dropped dead (because she was, indeed, Jan). It turns out one of her friends from the UK, having no idea how large California is, told this couple to look up my mom. She didn't give any city information or anything, so the couple just wrote it off. They were stationed in Davis for a year or so, and my parents live in Sacramento, which is 45 minutes away. Calaveras Big Trees, on the other hand, is about 3 hours from there. What are the odds? <BR> <BR>Monica

My parents and I had spent a week in London, we were at Heathrow for our return flight to the US. I was looking around at some of the duty free shops when I saw a guy that looked like Scott, our families have been friends for years. We both kind of looked at each other like "is that you?" He said "Anna?" I said "Scott!" He had been working in Denmark for about a year and was on his way home. He was sicker than a dog and was glad to see my parents and I. He later told his mom that he was glad we were on the same plane with him in case anything had happened to him. We ended up giving him a ride home from O'Hare when we got back to the US. <BR> <BR>When I was on a backpacking trip in Europe 3 years ago, my friend and I were at the bar at our hostel in Interlaken, Switzerland talking to some girls at our table. They were from Minnesota and we were from Wisconsin, which we thought was neat. It turned out that one of the girls had my friend's aunt for a professor! Another time during that trip, I was talking to someone and told them that I had just graduated from pharmacy school at the University of WI - Madison. His brother was dating a girl who had graduated a few years before me who I knew.

<BR> <BR>

What neat stories -- and some real LOL's. I have a theory, that some people are prone to this -- and others not. Despite living in Chicago all my (former) life, in relatively the same area, and graduating from a school with a class of only 60, I NEVER ran into anyone. On the other hand, walking down Michigan Avenue one day, I did spy a once-good friend I'd lost touch with more than 10 years earlier (who was living on Chesapeake Bay), and we renewed our friendship.

Sending this back up. Any more stories to share? <BR>

I have a couple of pretty good ones. I have decided that this is not at all unusual but I am always thrilled and surprised when it happens. I now live in Atlanta but I grew up in a small town in Alabama. My high school was somewhat small. I had about 140 people in my graduating class. A couple of years ago I went on a bicycle trip in Vermont in the fall. After we all did our bike rides in the morning we would come back to the B&B and watch the world series in the afternoon. The other members of the group were from various places, not Atlanta or Alabama or even close. So we were sitting there one afternoon and I reached down and picked up the local newspaper (which was about 5 pages) and on the front page of the newspaper was a picture of a guy I graduated from high school with who still lives in my hometown in Alabama!! He owns an auction company and was doing an auction there the day before. <BR> <BR>Last year I was on my way to Nice, France. We flew through Brussels. When we arrived in Brussels had to get new boarding passes for the next leg and we were standing in line waiting. There was this man standing in front of me and we struck up a conversation. Come to find out he was from my hometown in Alabama!!! And I meet up with him in Brussels, Belgium. <BR> <BR> <BR>

Joanne re-started this thread recently. I've been looking for this posting for a while and now I've finally found it......back to the top! <BR>

<BR>Okay, I have a couple. One year when I lived in Los Angeles I was on a trip across Canada and was in Quebec city at some sort of picturesque "changing of the guard" type happening when I ran into one of the professors in my department at college in LA. Neither of us knew the other was going to Canada much less the far eastern part. Another time I was in Freiburg Germany and was delaying getting out of a car because my wife misplaced something in the back seat which kept us searching for about 3 minutes. In the 30 seconds or less that it took us to go from the car into the house we were staying at we crossed paths on the sidewalk with a woman I knew a few years before in California. Another time I was in a resturant in Phoenix and a woman approached me and called me "John" which is my given name (but one I have not used in 25+ years). Turned out she was a friend I knew in high school when I grew up in Ohio. But the freakest time was one night in a very small town in Switzerland where I had gone with a new Swiss aquaintance to see a small concert. Afterwards we were walking around the darkened streets window shopping and talking when I woman approached me from behind and called out "Marc". It turned out she was a German woman I had meet 4 years before in California at a workshop and *she recognized my voice* (which is not an unusual voice). She and I had never even had any personal talks and it had been years before but she remembered my voice and spotted me on a dark street in a small town many thousands of miles away. Freaky.

This has been happening to me my whole life. I grew up in New Mexico, and when I was 10 or 11 years old my family went on a trip to San Francisco. We ran into my 5th Grade teacher in the line for ice cream at Ghiradelli Square. Years later in high school, my best friend's family hosted an exchange student from Belgium. During my first year at college a new friend was showing me the pictures of her friends in her wallet, and there was a photo of my high school friend's exchange student. But the best encounter occurred when I was studying abroad in Seville. I was running through downtown Seville (late to class again) when I saw a very familiar face. I didn't stop since I had a test that day, but a couple of days later I saw the same face! This time I had time to stop, so I got the man's attention. As it tuns out it WAS one of my college professors, so we stopped and had some ice cream or lemonade to catch up.

Years ago when I was doing my junior year in Edinburgh I went to Paris over spring break and saw one of my best friends from college (back in the USA) walking on the sidewalk about 50 yards ahead of me. I had known that she was travelling around Europe that semester but I didn't know where she'd be when. <BR>And last fall a friend from Belgium and I were talking in a corridor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, when another Belgian who recognized him walked up and introduced himself. They had been in the same lab section at university about 15 years earlier. Appropriately enough, we were standing outside of an exhibition of Flemish paintings.

On my 1st trip to Europe in 1985, I got off the plane for our stop in Iceland, and a professor from my college was on the same flight. <BR>On a different tack, I was adopted @ 2 mos. of age, families knowing nothing of each other. Upon finding my birthparents last year, I learned my birthmother had had an antique shop in a town 13 miles from where I went to college, several hours' drive from anywhere she'd ever lived before, and that my birthfather's best friend from med school was my dr's partner, and because of on-call schedules, etc, nearly (by 20 minutes) delivered my baby. (Mind you this dr was in a large city w/ a med center, not like he was my only choice.) Also, the first steps I made toward searching for them, I was 27 and dating an engineering grad student @ the univ. where my birthfather had been a 27-yr-old engineering grad student when he and my birthmother (then 27 also) knew (no pun intended) each other. Yes, it is a small world. Sorry for digressing from the travel thread, but I now think that my 'travels' thru life have not been completely random. <BR>

Another story from a recent cruise I took. I wrote a postcard to my fiance at home and brought it to the concierge desk to mail. As the concierge took the postcard he noticed it was addressed to Antonio and commented that it was his name too. We began to talk and he said he was from Italy - Sorrento to be specific. And then when I told him my boyfriend was from MassaLubrense, a small village outside of Sorrento, his mouth dropped open with surprise. Aside from the fact that he wouldn't expect people outside Sorrento to hear about this town, his grandfather was from there and lived there his whole life. So then I proceeded to tell him the surnames of Antonio's family and friends that I knew and he did the same. But we didn't seem to know any of the same people. Later I called my fiance and told him who I had met and gave him the names the other Antonio gave me, one of them rang a bell. It turns out one of the concierge's cousins is married to one of my fiance's cousins. So I returned to the concierge desk and informed the concierge we were in essence......cousins!

I am glad to see this happens to lots of folks!! It sorta makes you feel like you're in the Twilight Zone or something to run into someone in a far away land!! Here's my take on this... <BR>In addition to going to Disney World 12 times and seeing someone from our hometown each time (6 1/2 hours away) the oddest story was in Barcelona, Spain in 1994. We had just finished a Royal Carribean cruise of the Med and were on our post cruise hotel leg. Someone mentioned our Southern accent and said, "Oh, I just met someone that had that same accent and they said that they were from Alabama too." We looked around and saw a friend of my mother's that was on her pre-cruise hotel stay and was due to leave on the cruise that we had just finished. I couldn't believe it. Now we are slated to go to Paris in June and my sister-in-law tells me that her son (my nephew) will be in Paris at the same time. I almost wish she hadn't told us, just to see if our paths would've crossed!! It truly is a small world!!!