Strangest experience you have had while traveling
 

Have you ever visited a place or an event that seemed so different that you remember it even now? See http://tinyurl.com/j9u6k as an example!

Well, it was so strange that I still don't believe it happened.

Ira, tell us about it!

I met a German guy in a train between Basel and Bonn who had lived downstairs from me in Houston several years before.

Interesting, Robespierre. Not exactly the same or a donkey blessing festival but once in Amsterdam airport I saw a man running after the moving airport cart I was sitting in with my family. Hadn't seen him for over nearly two decades! That he still recognized me is a testament to my youthful looks. :)

My "strange" experience is when people ask me if I know someone from where I grew up (a little town of only eight million people). Then again, it happens to me all the time, even while at home. In fact, I have even developed a special facial expression for it that looks like this :-o)))

Whilst taking a photo of my other half at the top of the Troodos Mountains in Cyprus I bumped into my old maths teacher who I hadn't seen for over 15 years!

Isn't that strange when someone in Rome or Paris of ? asks if you know someone in your home town? I've been asked at least a dozen times if I knew someone - from New York.

There are 8 million of us (9 million with illegal immigrants) and 20 million including the suburbs. And they really seem disappointed when you don;t know the person (about whom they usually know nothing - like where they live or what they do for a living.) One guy in a pub in London "thought" his brother lived in Manhattan - and worked in a bank. Gee - not too many of those.

I was staying on the Aegalis beach in Amorgos and walked down the sands to pick up some early morning coffee at the sole open cafe. I saw a young blond guy frowning over a guide book and -- being my incurably gregarious self-- asked if I could help; he was trying to pick the next island to hop.

Hearing his unmistakable Swedish accent, I pointed to my own blond/grey locks and said, Svensk also -- my mormor and farmor came to USA 110 years ago.. he asked from where, and I said the usual---nobody knows of it, it'sa teensy town at the top of the Baltic, miles from nowhere. He said, try me.

When I told him he stared: But I am from there! What is your grandparents' family name? When I told him (it is an unusual one), he stared again. But a boy of that name was in my class!! We laughed & shrugged and had some coffee together.

Travelerjan, I am being funny but have you thought if that Swedish boy actually wanted to have a cup of coffee with you and was textbook effective? :)

Brookwood, Thank goodness you weren't in that chinese restaurant from Seinfeld where the maitre'd kept calling for Cartright instead of something else. I mean that could be REALLY confusing.

A friend of mine liked to make restaurant reservations under aliases.
For some reason one night he picked the name of a man we both knew in a job related way. (We both thought he was a major class jerk.)

The real Leo X just happened to be in the restaurant that night, too. When the receptionist called our alias name, the real Leo responded also.

I let my friend do the explaining.
Leo knew us of course.

Hmmm... one night in Bermuda, in a park we never would have found or heard of, a friend led us to a little bridge where we looked down and saw the most amazing display of some sort of glow worms who spiralled their way through the water in the dark. Strange and amazing.

Met a couple by accident on the shores of Lake Garda. They heard my family speaking and said something about it being nice to hear English so far from home. They were my aunt's neighbors.

In Big Sur, and I'm still not sure that this was real, we saw Richard Brautigan's Confederate General walking along the side of the road. He looked exactly as Brautigan had described his CG, and was just where one would have expected him to be. It was freaky, in every sort of way.

Oh, yeah. The fiddler crab migration on Andros Island. We went out one morning and the ground was absolutely alive with crabs. Big ones, tiny ones, millions of them (estimated) all marching purposefully to the other side of the island.

We stayed in our room until noon, when most of them were gone.

Hi

I went to Thailand in 2002 and we went to Krabi in the southern parts of Thailand. One evening when we were going out to eat a guy came over to me and asked me in English if he could ask me a question. I said “sure” and then he started talking Norwegian and he asked me if I was Norwegian. I confirmed this and then he asked me if my name was Gard. This was really surprising and I said yes once again. It turned out that he had been on my homepage and he had seen pictures and he recognized me from that. That is quite amazing if you ask me. I travel half around the world and then I get recognized because one guy has been on my homepage. Quite amazing :d

Regards
Gard
http://gardkarlsen.com - trip reports and pictures

May I say you look very much like Nelson Mandela? I also find it impressive that you have a stamp after you.

Just kidding.

Comfy shoes, the Swedish guy in Amorgos was on his honeymoon, his bride was up at the counter getting breakfast... he was about 24 and I was 66. No reason for him to lie about what town he was from!

In early 2006 was in Elmina, a small fishing town on the Pacific, located in Ghana West Africa. After walking along a street with sellers offering all sorts of local produce, spices, fish, bolts of cloths,etc, we decided we wanted a better view of an inlet where there were some colourful docked fishing boats...so we took a side alley to head towards them. Along the way we met a vendor with a small cart selling fried dough balls. The seller uses pieces of paper to wrap up the item. So I get my 'dessert' and have a glance at the piece of paper. It's a piece of a newspaper...from my home town, dated April 2004. How a piece of paper made its way from Toronto to a small fishing village in Africa thousands of miles away...?

While living in Kansas City I had a trip planned to Hong Kong - vacation. The day before leaving I met with the firm's attorney regarding a pending case. When I got to Hong Kong, friends living there invited me to a cocktail party, where I met a man who said he had grown up in Kansas and gone to law school there. Turned out to be the former room mate of the attorney I had spoken with the day before I left on my trip. They had lost track of each other years ago.

Many years ago I was driving across a bridge in East Africa which was flooded. My companion and I got out to push the car.Suddenly we saw a crocodile coming in some haste to have a meal and we were the meal. We jumped on the roof of the car for a while and he or she went away after a short time. I still shiver at the thought of what might have happended.

When I was in Paris with my girlfriend this last November, we were in line at Monoprix buying some snacks and other stuff. I gave my friend a 20 (euros) to pay for my portion, and only then did I notice a man standing almost beside me but in the next line. He was one of the dirtiest people I have ever seen. He was buying a can of beer..he'd already popped the lid and was drinking it. He was wearing the dirtiest pair of pants, had on a black felt "cowboy" type hat, his hair was gray, fairly long and matted, a several week growth of gray beard, and his breath would peel the armour plate off a tank. How do I know this? Because all of a sudden he was right in my face. He must of seen me pass the 20 to my friend. He was babbeling all kinds of stuff at me and kept coming closer and closer, and then was laughing and giggling and talking some more. The closer he got the more I could smell.

I speak a little french and have been working on upping my skills but for once in my life I was so totally glad that I had no idea what this guy was saying to me. So, finally his line starts moving so he backs off and heads for the cashier. At the same time he's scratching his butt and that butt had not seen soap for many a moon I fear. I kept thinking about Pepe Le Phew!!!!! "Come weeth moi , moi leetle flower petal. You give moi 20 and I show you zee deelights of Pah-ree!!!!" It was just the strangest encounter, and sadly I have to say, he's the only guy that made a pass at me my entire trip!!!! LOL He got finished ahead of us but as we left the store I peeked carefully right and left but "my frenchman" had disappeared into the night.

While joining other persons at the designated vegetarians table in Lorient,(Brittany),for the annual Gathering of the Celtic Nations,I spoke to this lady,after I had worked out that she came from Glasgow,too,because of her accent.....It turned out that not only did she come from Kelvinbridge,Glasgow,(an area of Glasgow),but she was on the same landing as my sister,in a tenement house in this area.....There are only two houses on this landing.....My sister's and this lady's.....Quite a coincidence that we should meet in Brittany !!!!!!