It is a small world, indeed, so be careful! Two years ago my husband and I were in London. He scratched his cornea one morning and decided he'd spend the morning in bed. This was fine with me; I'd waited my entire life to see the Constable paintings in the National Gallery, and didn't want to do it with him beside me, looking at his watch. As I was walking and looking at my map of the gallery, I heard a familiar voice. It was "Mr. X", an executive in my corporation's home office. I'd met him twice, and spoken to him frequently by phone. He was with his wife, holding her hand, kissing her and being very loving and affectionate. This would have been wonderful, but for the fact that he was having an affair with a co-worker of mine. Of course, he was telling her about his loveless marriage, that he was on the brink of divorce but had to wait until their last child got to high school, he was only staying for financial reasons, yadda yadda yadda. <BR> <BR>As I said at the beginning: It's a small world, so be careful of what you do and who you talk about!

A few years ago we were in Innsbruck at the top of a mountain. There was only one other couple around so we talked to them and found out that he had gone to the same university as me, at the same time and lived down the street. When I was in college I met a guy at Dachau and found out he was currently attending the same university and lived a block away. The latest coinky-dink was meeting a Fodorite via e-mail and finding out that she's lived down the street from my dad for 30 years!

My son and a colleague were at a conference in San Jose. They took a trip to San Francisco and ended up in a pub. An Irishman heard their accents ,asked the colleague where he was from and was told that he was from Bristol. The Irishman said that he knew a girl in Bristol but of course they wouldn't have heard of her because Bristol is a big place. It turned out that she was the fiance of another of their colleagues in the UK and they were talking to his brother.

Oh! I have one FAVORITE and another that's not quite as amazing. <BR> <BR>5 or so years after high school, I was living in Paris, and went one afternoon to Musee D'Orsay, where I spotted none other than the former head cheerleader of my high school. I told her I was currently living in Paris. She was there on a 2-week tour with her community college. Very pathetic of me to gloat, I know, but I STILL do . . . <BR> <BR>Another time, my husband and I were in Angkor Wat in Cambodia, when we turned around and saw a friend of ours from the city we live in. This qualifies for this thread just because where we bumped into each other was Cambodia, but really it's not SO coincidental because we (and our friend) now live in Shanghai, and this was a week-long national holiday during which almost all expats go on holiday, and lots to Asian destinations. But worth a picture for "proof" anyway!

This is a meeting that wasn't supposed to happen... <BR>My aunt & uncle were visiting family in Italy and were invited to see an old friend of theirs. The day before, the friend wants to reschedule because her son (who lives in a different town) isn't feeling well and won't be able to make it and they really wanted my aunt to meet their son. So my aunt and uncle decide to go into Rome and sightsee and arrange to go to the woman's house another day. <BR>A few days go by and they go to their friends home with the pictures that they took in Rome. And there in one of the pictures is the woman's son!! He stopped to allow my aunt and uncle to have their picture taken...and got caught in the picture, staring directly at the camera. Turns out he wasn't really sick, but went into Rome with some friends. Too funny!!!

When I was coming home from Japan, I walked onto the plane in Tokoyo and someone grabed my arm. It was a friend from school coming hame from visiting family in Laos. 3 years later I ran into a school friend and my neighbour in Salzburg. The last time I was in Europe I ran into a girl I used to sing with 6-7 years earlier. Wierd!

My father worked for a large European conglomerate based in Luxembourg, and about twenty years ago, the company sent a young up and comer in the company over to the states to see how the American operation was run. It was my father's task to entertain this young gentleman during his stay in New York. My mother and father took him out for dinner one evening, and then back to our house for an after dinner drink. I was a young teen ager then, and loved talking to this guy about his travels around Europe. <BR>Fast forward about ten years. My father's best friend from high school was on a business trip in Hong Kong and stopped in his hotel bar for a quick drink, where he struck up a conversation with a European guy sitting next to him. When my father's friend explained where he was from, the European stated that he had been there once, and gave the name of the man who hosted him around town. Low and behold, the name was my father's, and the gentleman his best friend was sitting next to in a bar in Hong Kong was the young man from Luxembourg who had been at our house in New York ten years before. <BR> <BR> <BR>

These are some good ones! <BR> <BR>I was in the airport in Seoul, Korea on a one and a half hour layover going back to the US. I was in the gift shop looking at souvenirs, and was rather startled when someone said my name...turned around and saw a friend from college. <BR> <BR>

My wife worked on a kibbutz in Israel for a year or two in the 70s. Although she had numerous relatives who were permanent residents of the kibbutz, the only room for her was in the “volunteer” quarters where many nationalities were represented (by people wanting to experience kibbutz life for a few months). She had a French roommate. The roommate returned to France, they corresponded for a short time, end of story. <BR> <BR>Fast forward 25 years. A local friend of ours here in Seattle mentions her cousin is married to a French woman he met while working in Europe. My wife knows the cousin from high school. The woman turns out to be her roomie from Israel. They live two streets over from us; have done so for 10 years. <BR>

On my recent trip, I had dinner with someone from the Fodors site. It turns out she is in education and had actually toured my company several years ago. I also met someone in line at the airport who had just finished a tour of Italy with one of our Vice-Presidents (with whom I had just discussed the trip a couple of days before).

In Portugal a few years ago, were very frustrated because the hotel we had made arrangements with was closed when we got there. A couple sitting nearby at an outdoor cafe sipping sangria were very helpful and recommended the hotel they were staying at down the street. We went there, got a room and decided that sangria looked awfully good. Went to the outdoor cafe and the couple was still sitting there. We thanked them for their recommendation and they invited us to join them. Turns out they lived two blocks from our house!!

My husband is a hair colorist and has a lot of clients.No matter where we go, we end up running into one of them~In Paradise Island-at the airport,in St Martin at the little market, in London at an antiques market,another one in London on Oxford St, in Paris on the Left Bank, in Montreal, at the museum, and what do they all want to talk about? their hair:) <BR>It is such a small world, and getting smaller by the minute~but in a way it is kind of nice sometimes to be in a city where you know no one and around the corner comes someone you know and can chat with for a minute...See you on our next trip~:)

I have been a flight attendant with a major airline for many years. One of my favorite stories was: I was laying over in Boston at the Parker House hotel many years ago.I went to my room,changed and decided to go get ice. I was closing my hotel door when I turned around to see a sorority sister from college(several years younger that had not seen for a few years who flys for a different airline) shutting her door to get ice!We both were in shock! <BR>

These are great, and sometimes amazing, stories. I’ve had a couple of coincidences. While going to TCU in Fort Worth, I became friends with a bridge-playing fellow who lived near the campus, went to his home, met his family. But I was bowled over to run into his sister and mother in the department store in suburban Chicago where I worked in the summers. While working and studying in Paris, I spotted a familiar figure walking down the street, who turned out to be Satch from Baltimore, a girl I had met in summer school in Quebec four years before. But the strangest by far: I had a high school friend who was in Paris on a Fulbright studying music and she introduced me to some of her fellow Fulbrighters, one of whom was a young man from Tyler, Texas. As my former roommate was from Tyler, I asked him if he knew her. He replied, "She’s my sister’s best friend." Yes, I had been in his home in Tyler and met his sister, but had to go clear to Paris to meet him.

My husband and I were staying at a hotel in Bellagio and one night when we returned from dinner, we found an American couple standing outside their hotel room which was located right next to ours. They couldn't find their keys and were afraid they had left them in their room. Jokingly, I suggested that maybe our key would open their door and guess what - it did!! (great security) We started talking and found out that we were both from Florida. They asked us what town and we told them it was a very small town near Ft. Lauderdale that no one's ever heard of. To make a long story short, after alot of questions back and forth, we discovered that they lived in the same section of our development. In fact, they lived on our street (5 houses down) and we had to go to Italy to meet them. It really is a small world.

A few years ago, I was in Chicago on business and stayed over the weekend (I love Chicago!). Saturday morning, I went to the Water Tower Place to get some coffee and browse. Was in a bookstore there and spotted an attorney (from southern California where I am from) that I do a lot of work with. He was with another attorney (female) who lives in Chicago and who I also work with - she was the lead attorney for a very prominent professional organization. They were dressed very casually and holding hands - they obviously hadn't just bumped into each other there. I didn't know that they knew each other. They looked like they wanted to die because I had seen them - he was quite married at the time! <BR> <BR>Monday morning I got a call from him - he said he just wanted to chat. I told him not to worry, that his secret was safe with me! <BR> <BR>You NEVER know!

We were pretty amazed when my husband ran into a woman he worked with at the time in Perth, Western Australia, while shopping in Harrods, London! In fact, as he wasn't very fond of her, we tried to avoid her and her husband and succeeded only to run into them again on another floor.

In 1952 my parents were leaving their hometown of Graz, Austria to emigrate to the States and had a family picture taken in front of their train. They lived in New Jersey for a while and then moved to Detroit where they struck up a lifelong friendship with another family from Graz. Some years later, they were looking at my parent's photos and there, in the window of the train in Graz, were my parent's friends looking at the camera.

The reverse happened to me. I am originally from California. In 1973, I was backpacking around Europe with some friends. On a boat to Brindisi, we met a smaller group of people who were also backpacking. We were all on our way to Rome so we decided to travel together. One very quiet member of the group was a girl named Cathy. Our group spent almost a week together but did not keep in touch after that trip. <BR>In 1989, I moved to Louisiana and was unpacking my boxes. I found my picture album from my first backpacking trip and sat and looked at the photos. I came across some pictures of our Rome group and I showed one to my husband. I said, "Who does this girl look like?" He said, "She looks like Sara", a young girl on on our street who had just befriended our daughter. I found my old journal from that trip and saw that I had described the girl in Rome as "Cathy from Louisiana". Cathy is Sara's mother. Not only was she the Cathy from my trip, her brother in law works with my husband and we had already taken on her other brother in law as our dentist. <BR>

For our thirtieth wedding anniversary, my husband surprised me with a Mediteranean cruise. In the past whenever we have gone on a cruise the first thing I do is to indudulge and get myself a massage. <BR> <BR>Made my appointment and up I went. I gave the gal my name and she told me that Todd was giving me my massage that day. Fine with me!!! Until I looked up and saw my daughters high school and college sweetheart. All I heard was "HI MRS|A". We were so thrilled to see each other. He-more so than me, because he had been living in Europe for a year without coming home and terribly home sick. Needless to say, somebody else did my massage, but I made it up to him by attending his aerobics class every morning on the ship. Talk about a small world.