This is a great thread! I have two:

In 2000 when I went to Italy, some friends of mine were also going to Italy, but our itineraries didn't match up so we knew we weren't going to see each other over there. Fastforward to San Marco Piazza in Venice, my aunt and I drinking a bottle of wine outside listening to the band and people watching, and who walks by but my friends! Their plans had changed, but they had no way to contact me, so it was just a cool coincidence.

I grew up on Long Island, left for college after high school in 1987, and moved to DC in 1999. I walk into a bar with some coworkers, and the bartender is a woman I went to high school with! I now see her about once a month at the bar.

Have a great Friday everyone!

Karen

I was in Rome and ran into an old friend from college back in NY.

I think this qualifies. It's a bit of a shaggy dog.

A long time ago I'm reading a newpaper article about what 6th graders do during summer break. The child interviewed shares my name: first, middle and last. It's a pretty unusual name.

A year later I call to make an appointment for a hair cut. I'm put on hold briefly and then informed by the shop owner that I must be a crank because the child bearing that name is forever banned from the shop for terrorizing them with her bratty hissy fits. I get the same treatment later that year when I try to get a booking at a bistro near that salon.

A few years pass. Out of nowhere my parents (who live in the same city) and I begin receiving phone calls all hours of the day & night from the brothers of a certain fraternity at UVA where my namesake was well known for the variation and frequency of sexual acts she was willing to perform. The bro's were just calling to say hey since my name double had been expelled for performing some of those acts in public.

A couple of years later the calls from the collection agencies start. Car, furniture, clothes, gym membership. The best was a 3 am call from the Fairfax County police asking what was I thinking when I abandoned my 1992 Ford Escort in the middle of the Beltway near the Braddock Rd. exit.

Fortunately we were preparing to leave the area. No more calls.

A year ago I am bumped from a flight leaving Kansas City. I'm put on standby for another flight out and when my name is called, two of us show up at the gate. I got the seat.

My family was waiting in line at the Canadian border at Victoria, when someone behind us asked where we were from (Our VERY Southern accent gave us away!). I replied "Oh a very small town in Alabama." Then a couple in front of us turned around and asked just where in Alabama....they were from another small town just 12 miles down the road! Weird!

Some friends and I drove from Atlanta down to New Orleans for a long weekend. On the way back to Atlanta, we stopped in Mobile, AL to eat lunch at a Morrisons Cafeteria. After eating, we got back in the car and were merging onto I-65 N to continue on towards Atlanta. Someone in the car said: "Look at those people in that van waving at us". I looked and it was my Aunt, Uncle and cousins from Birmingham. We had entered the interstate at the exact same moment that they were passing by... one minute earlier or one minute later, we would have not seen each other.

In Atlanta (actually Tucker, Ga) during lunch at a Wendys Hamburger joint on a weekday, I was sitting there eating and looked up and a friend from High School in Alabama walked in. They had chosen this particular restaurant by chance. We hadn't seen each other since graduation 15 years earlier.

Back in the summer of '76 I was camping for a weekend on the CA coast (I was from Syracsue NY and working out there for the summer during my college years). I was cruising up Highway 1 in the Big Sur area and picked up a hitchhiker who was not particularly motivated about getting a ride (he was sitting against his backpack absorbed in a book with a sign next to home that said ("San Francisco or bust"). As it turns out.... he had been classmates and friends with one of my cousins in Syracuse and we knew a bunch of people in common.

When I was a freshman in college, I was on a road trip with 2 male friends. I stayed the first night in a girls' dorm room at SMU in Dallas; there was a bed available because one of the roommates was out of town. I noticed that a person in a couple of photos tacked on a bulletin board looked familiar. I was told that she was the out of town roommate. It turned out that I ended up sleeping in the bed of one of my best friends from junior high. I never saw her on that trip, just left her a note.

Another time, my husband and I met a nice couple in a campground in Austria. We taked for about an hour at the campground pub. A week later, we met the same people walking down a road in Switzerland.

Every year, I go to a convention related to my work. About 20,000 people attend. One year, a week before the convention, I had a phone conversation with an elderly colleague in another town; I had never met him face to face, but had a picture in my mind of what he must look like. The first day of the convention, I saw someone in the crowd that I just knew had to be him. Sure enough, it was.

obxgirl, what a great story -- I have a slightly unusual name since I married (but apparently not unusual enough) and have had to deal with calls and emails from people wanting to rent a resort cottage from a realtor with same name in another state, as well as a rather pissy person who refused to return or forward obviously misdirected mail, even though I always did that for her. I phoned her once and she told me she had the name first (she actually didn't, but how is it even relevant?) and it was tough noogies for me!!

I'm SOOO glad you got the seat. Did you exchange any conversation w/doppelfraulein? What did she look like? Did she have any idea you existed before that day?

Paid too much to get into the park itself and then waited in line too long at the actual ride.

We got on the boat next to a foul-smelling woman from Eastern Europe. The ride began and we went through the various regions of the world with small animated statues of children singing an annoying song that, to this day, I can't get out of my head.

However, by the end of the ride I was feeling 2 ways
1) A glow of pax humana. The smelly European lady and I exchanged hugs since we were from the same small world after all
2) I don't know if it was the hug or the seasickness from the boat, but I felt slightly nauseated. I threw up and we went on to the Haunted Castle

Thanks Casssandra. As to what she looked like, my husband's expression "rode hard and put up wet" comes to mind. Dim or maybe just hungover. I didn't speak to her for fear of reigniting the cycle of eveil!

As young newlyweds, my parents immegrated to the USA from Germany(1959). Fast forward to 1979. They take their four young children to Disneyworld for vacation. In the hotel the family takes the elevator down to the lobby. Door opens and there is a woman who was a classmate of my father in elementary school in Germany. He hadn't seen her in decades but said she looked exactly the same!

I hiked to the top of Mt. Pilatus near Luzern< Switzerland (where I live) last summer and at the top was my ex from my days living in Alaska, whom I haven't seen in over 7 years.

About a year ago we were at the Hotel Del Coronado having drinks with family. All of a sudden a couple walks by and my husband jumps up out of his seat and the other man gets all excited also...they were fraternity brothers and have not seen each other in 14 years. So they join us for a while, and we find out they live not too far from us near Seattle. The next evening we are at the airport waiting to fly home and my brother bumps into the wife...turned out we were on the same flight home to Seattle

A month before I left on a high school trip through France for two weeks, a friend of my brother left with a backpack and a Eurail pass to wander Europe. We joked that we "might see each other". He had no specifics to my itinerary; while walking from my hotel to the beach in Nice with a group of friends we cross each other on the sidewalk. I didn't see him, but he loudly yelled out my name in disbelief! We had dinner that night and he introduced me to other friends he made on the way. How the heck does that happen?

We are from western Pa and were vacationing in Ocean City, Md one time back when I was a teenager. We ran into my cousin from back home and couldn't understand why she was less than thrilled to see us. Here when we told my aunt we had run into her daughter, we found out why. She was supposed to be in Canada with a friend's family. They had lied to each others parents and taken their own trip. Busted!

In San Francisco many years ago, when anyone with or without a ticket could go through airport metal detectors, the fellow in front of me sounded the alarm. When he turned around, I was astonished to see a fellow student I had dated from nursing school in Michigan. He was on his way back from his honeymoon with his wife who was also in the class. It had only been 2 years since we had graduated so we had a lot to say to each other and started to hold up the line!

My first time in Florence - back around '96 or so. We're eating in a small restaurant near our hotel - picked it at random.

As we sit quietly enjoying our wine and waiting for our food we hear other Americans talking - you know how hungry you can sometimes get for your own language.

Table 1 talks to table 2 as we eavesdrop. They start chatting away and it turns out that both tables of people are from San Francisco - as were we.

The whole blooming place was filled with unrelated people all from the same city.

My daughter is from Wisconsin. While visiting Xi-an (China) she ran into a friend who is from Boston.

We were planning a trip to Maui and one of the guys at work told me his two daughters and a fiance lived there and gave us phone numbers to give them a call. When we arrived in Maui one of the first things we did was stop to rent snorkel gear. We're all laughing and joking around and the guy working at the store jokes about us sounding like we're from Texas and says his fiance is from Texas - do you know her? Of course, he was just joking because how many times do people hear where you are from and ask if you know so and so. This time it paid off because it was the fiance. Small world.

1969 Working in small electronics development lab where we had a young Tech. who spent lunch hour on phone to girl-friend.

1992 Check-in line at Algiers airport, see him about four people in front of me, instant recognition by both of us ! Yes, he married her !