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 !!!!!!

I have just thought of another !!!!When I was once in London I was outside a quietish subway station....I was late for something, and I was debating with myself as to how easy it would be to get a taxi......This man approached me and asked me if I was Pete Best.....I said no,but was pleased that a total stranger should mistake me for him....He was a guy who was with the Beatles in their very early years.....Being flattered I thought that I could tell this to my nephews who are Beatles daft.....He then approached someone else and asked them if they were Pete Best.....The penny dropped...He had arranged to meet someone.that he may have spoken to over the phone,who just happened to be called Pete Best.....(Pete Best from Beatles I have since found out,looks nothing like me...He is very handsome !!!!

Getting very blatently stared at in the Tokyo train station. This was of course while I was alone. My husband and son had gone in search of an ATM.

Not weird but really cool:
We were in Puerto Nuevo and some sea turtles hatched on the beach in front of our hotel. That evening as the tide was going out, the hotel let all the kids help release the baby turtles into the sea. It was so neat to see.

I moved to Australia in the 70's from a small town in NJ. When I arrived in Melbourne and was walking through the airport, I passed a woman who was holding a shopping bag from a small specialty store in my NJ home town. I stopped and talked to her (she wasn't on my flight) and she told me that a friend of her's lived in my hometown, and she goes to visit twice a year and had ben shopping there.

And, I was escorting a group that was staying in the Hyatt Regency Maui. I was working with a woman there, and we hit it off immediately. After about 3 days, we were talking and we learned that we dated the same German guy in different years...I dated him in Hawaii and she dated him in Germany.
((S))((*))

Well, we will never be able to figure out why every member of our family of 5 was served an adult sized portion of spinach ravioli at L'Orso 80 in Rome, when everyone says to order the antipasti there. (We hadn't yet ordered a thing.) It was good... but 50 Euro for spinach ravioli we hadn't ordered. It will always be a mystery.

Dec. 1990 in Goa, India on vacation, 6.00am one morning I was jogging along Calangute beach and noticed in the very far distance a tiny red speck moving towards me, also along the beach. As I continued my run and the red speck slowily grew larger as I approached, I could see that it was a man in a red tee shirt ambling along the beach. A Red tee with "Canada" printed on the front. A red tee shirt with 'Canada' on the front... and worn by a business acquaintance I knew from home (Toronto) !

My husband & I came down from the Arc d'Triomphe to where my sister was watching our 15 month-old girl. Our little girl was standing there with her white hair and blue eyes in the middle of a pack of Japanese tourists who were snapping pictures at a furious rate. Many of them were taking turns squatting down beside her for a photo. My sister just looked concerned and dumbstruck.

My husband smirked and said "Come on people, just let her get in the limo." and picked her up.

Our daughter wasn't scared. Actually she looked bored.

We had a long train ride ahead of us, from Venice to Torino. This was the days before the ES, so IC was the only way to go. We decided on the spur of the moment to break the trip in Verona, and get back on the train in the late afternoon. We'd never visited Verona before.

We wandered around, saw the arena, stopped in some churches, had a great lunch. Since we were close by, we decided to step into the courtyard of Juliet's House, the famous Verona tourist trap. As we walked under the arch, there standing in front of me was a guy I'd been working with the week before in NYC. We were both speechless. The week before we had shared our vacations plans--mine did not include Verona, his were all about Germany. REally scary . . .

To this day, I swear I spotted Meryl Streep in Venice. “She” was a few yards from me, near the then-empty fish market, one early May day in 1998. I turned away for a second or two (?), did a double take, then looked back: “She’ was gone. I poked around the corners looking for “her.” How far could anyone go in so little time? ... but nothing.

I was in Mexico City a few years ago visiting friends. To understand this strange story, I must say that at this time I was wearing a white dress and had long blonde hair, and stood (well, still do) 6 ft tall. We were outside the grand cathedral, marveled by it's beauty, when I felt a bite on my back. It hurt! I turned around to see my travel companions standing wide mouthed. I followed their eyes to a short man, bare-foot, scampering away in a hurry. I had no idea what was going on. Apparently the man saw me from across the square, ran up and stopped behind me, said somekind of prayer and kissed my back. The bite that I felt was from his scruffy beard!

Sorry, postcards, for my bad manners.

This past November I stayed at Ettington Park - a beautiful old castle estate outside of Stradford-upon-Avon. I was wakened in the middle of the night by the people in the room above me coming in, slamming doors, banging around, talking. I was going to call downstairs and complain, but it stopped as suddenly as it started. When I told the manager about it in th morning, he looked at me, took my arm and said, "Sir, there is no room above yours. You've been visited by our ghost". I didn't believe him because the disturbance I heard was very real and very loud, but he took me out to the front of the castle, showed me where my room was and I could see there was indeed no room above mine. It seems as though a few hundred years ago someone was hanged in the attic space above the room, and she comes back from time to time to make her presence known. Then I went on the internet to discover that Ettington Park is famous for being haunted!

Oh, strange things happen all the time when you travel by yourself, but I'll share one from my last trip, last May. In the gardens of Versailles I saw this guy sitting on a bench near me (I assume a French guy, he was reading a French newspaper) and I thought he was cute. (In fact he had an uncanny resemblance to Vincent van Gogh, which I noticed in particular because I'm a fan and had just gone to Auvers the day before. Sunflower-yellow socks, a nice touch.) He was by himself, saw me too and we played a little flirty peekaboo back and forth. I got up to leave, he got up to leave. We were both walking down the path...but somehow I lost him when we went through a tour group.

But then the next day, back in Paris I went to the Champs Elysees movie theatre on a whim to see the Marie Antoinette movie. HE WAS THERE. He walked in a little after I did--he was by himself too--and he sat three rows ahead of me. (We were in side row section.) I knew it was him when he walked past me. Then after he sat down he was just looking around and he saw me behind him. The surprise on his face was hilarious. More peeking back and forth--he turns around a couple of times all casual, I look up all casual, flirty flirty peekety peek peek.

The theater got crowded. He gets up to move further back, and he paused right by my row, which was empty except for me. I was sitting at the end because I'm a shortie and it's easier to see. I thought for sure he was going to ask to sit down with me...but he didn't! He went further back and I never saw him again. I even looked for him after the movie.

To this day I kick myself; I think he wanted to see if I would move in and make room for him, therefore indicating that I was truly interested in his joining me. But I didn't even think about that and stayed put in that end seat.

The universe pitched me a good one and I struck out. Boo hoo. Sobbety sob sob. I'm going back to Paris this year--will fate step in??? ;-)

Struck out - looking, not even swinging. <i>Tant pis!</i>

Mais oui, tant pis pour moi. That's what I get for trying too hard not to look like an American hussy.

DejaVu, Ah.... I, for one, am touched. Yes, bad for ya even with the sunflower colored socks. May be you should give it another try and see if your nom de plume actually holds good.

Nothing wrong with sunflower color socks. I have couple meself.

While eating dinner in a hotel in Paris with my wife and another female, I made the comment about Bush that &quot;somewhere in Texas they're missing and idiot&quot;. Five seconds later a matronly American woman was a foot from my face saying in a very loud voice, &quot;Fuck you. I'm one of those idiots you're talking about.&quot; I replied, &quot;Thank you, ma'am, for identifying yourself.&quot; Now that was strange.

&quot;I'm one of those idiots you're talking about.&quot;

This is hilarious!

visiting China in 1973 during Mao's time.
Wherever we went the crowdes of people would form and just look at us. ( they had never seen Caucaisans before)My red painted toenails were the biggest attraction

The strangest experience I've had has to do with travel but I wasn't one of the travelers. I threw a surprise party for my wife's 40th birthday. It took a year of planning. It was a big deal with lots of guests and out of towners and it all had to remain a complete secret, it was a lot of fun. So much for the good part.

I was sitting in my office 2 days after my inlaws and brother and sister in law who live in the same city left to fly home together. My phone rings and it's my brother in law. I go through the usual pleasantries and he asks me if I'm sitting down. He then tells me that my sister in law is in JAIL! I started laughing and when there was not a similar response on the other end, I realized he wasn't kidding. They had gotten to Chicago late for their connection and ran to the gate and the plane was still there but they weren't allowed to board. My sister in law went balistic and without going through the gory details, got arrested. My brother in law was calling to see if I new a lawyer in Chicago to get her sprung. She spent 2 nights in jail, had to pay fines, do community service and they were barred from the airport and had to rent a car and drive back to Dallas (imagine that car ride).

I rarely if ever complain at the airport any more.