Dayle

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?

Arizona

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.

Bee

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>

Shawn

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!

Neal Sanders

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>

Monica Richards

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

Anna

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.

me

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ok1015

raeona

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.

hamlet

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

Nancy

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>

hamlet

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>

Marc

<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.

claudia

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.

KT

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.

pam

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>

hamlet

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!

Vanessa

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!!!