It's a Small,Small World!

Have you ever been far away from home and met someone that lived in your hometown, or even on the same street? Is it purely a coincidence or much more meaningful?

When we were traveling through the Netherlands, we stopped in a grocery store in a small beach town. Unfortunately, when we returned to our car, we had a parking ticket. So, I ran back into the grocery store to ask what we should do about the ticket. Standing behind me in the checkout line was a woman that spoke English. After discussing the parking ticket, I asked where she was from because I detected a familiar Western Pennsylvania accent. Amazingly, she was from the same little hometown in Pennsylvania, and the same street, although she lived on West New Castle Street, and I grew up on East New Castle Street.

Last week, another incidence occurred. We had lived on Ometepe Island in Nicaragua and made many wonderful friends in the small port town of Moyogalpa. One of my friends, Robinson, rents motorcycles in Moyogalpa. He saw some tourists sitting across the street and crossed to talk with them. When he discovered that one of the guys lived a mile away from us, on the same road in Tennessee, he was blown away. Robinson told us that his father even fainted...but he wasn't hurt. LOL! To add to the coincidence, we both had been teachers at the same high school in Tennessee. Robinson ran back to his house to get pictures of his visit to our place in Tennessee, and the high school where I taught and he had given a presentation. Then, everyone was blown away!

Has something like this ever happened to you in your travels far away from home? Is it purely coincidence, or something much more meaningful? By the way, we are moving back to Ometepe Island. Robinson took my neighbor on a tour past our little beach house on the island. Now, we will forever be bonded and I hope to have lots of visitors to our place on Ometepe.

Here's a tale for you.

My father an Irishman who migrated to Australia in the 50's was travelling in the Philippines in the 80's. After mass one Sunday a man spoke to him outside. Tell me, he said, you wouldn't happen to come from Belfast? Yes, replied my father. And would your name be O'Doherty? Yes, was the reply. I thought it could be, said the man. I was kneeling behind you and thought: That head reminds me of Gerry O'Doherty who was in my class at school. Gerry is my brother, replied my father. The man had not seen Gerry in something like 30 years.

I had an experience that was almost unnerving in Thailand 2 years ago...

I was staying on the island of Ko Jum, at a little bungalow place. One morning I walked up to the local village to buy some fruit, etc. On my way back, I decided to stray at the very last second and take a different route down the beach instead of the road. As I walked along this beach, I was passing a VERY posh resort (Ko Jum Lodge) I stopped to read the laminated menu that was attached to a post at the entry way to the resort. Just inside this path was the resort's pool. An older lady was sitting by the pool and smiled at me and said "I see you have some nice mangoes".
Instantly recognizing the Canadian accent, I asked her where she was from in Canada.
"Saskatchewan" She replied.
Meh, I thought, no big deal... Thousands and thousands of Canadians in Thailand at any given time and there are going to be lots from Saskatchewan, too.
I am from Saskatchewan, too, so I asked where in SK she was from.
"Saskatoon" she replied.
Again, no big deal, Saskatoon is a city of almost 230,000... There are bound to be a load of them in Thailand, too, at any given time.
I said I was from Saskatoon as well... We both laughed, but never really thought of it as that remarkable.
So, we got to chatting about this resort, how posh it was. Yacked about this and that...

Somehow, we got back to where we were from and she mentioned she was actually originally from a small town just out of Saskatoon... When she mentioned the name, then my heart began to race... I grew up in the next town down the line... Kids from both of these communities go to the same school, so there are both fairly intertwined.
I asked for her name...

"My name is Thelma Richards"

I dropped the mangoes... She is a really good friend of my parents from over the years, but I had never met her or maybe had and had forgotten what she looked like. (You don't see people in bathing suits, sun hats and sun glasses in Canada... Too cold.) I wouldn't have reconized her anyways, I'm sure)

When I mentioned my name, she also became quite excited. We got our picture taken together and I emailed it home that week because I was sure no one would believe it if I told them.

It was quite eerie.

working in a pub in tokyo i have had a few. one of my school mates came in on a business trip from HK.
Another fellow I worked with in Cambodia came in too.
Also met some Japanese water-skiiers who were friends with some pople I'd been friends with for 20 years.
A bloke standing next to me in a pub one day had once played full-forward (aussie football) on a mate of mine- in Saigon.

I was on the way home from Guatemala and made my transfer in Houston Texas...
sitting next to me across the isle was a woman I know from the gym I work out at in our town in Oregon. She was coming home from Mexico. The thing that really made us laugh was that we seem to run into each other at home much more than usual too.

There are bound to be just plain old coincidences but one period in my life I was bombarded by many many coincidences and it really freaked me out, like something was trying to get my attention. It was a life changing experience that opened my mind to the fact that there are simply things we don't about out there.... to be open to the possibilities .

These stories fascinate me...keep 'em coming! Maybe there is truth to the law of attraction. In other words, maybe we do manifest what we are thinking, sort of like creating our own personal reality. Far away from home, lonely, thinking of home...and a stranger from our hometown pops into the scenery.

I had always wanted to find arrowheads and on my hikes through the woods, I would constantly search for them. Frustrated that I was unable to find any arrowheads, (I was looking in places where I was sure there would be some), a friend of mine told me, "You will never find arrowheads by searching for them. They will come to you when you give up the conscious search." Sure enough, when just appreciating the solitary walks through the woods, contemplating on what life would have been like for the ancient ones living in the area, an arrowhead would be at my feet. The law of attraction?

I only wish that it worked that way when I play the lottery! LOL!

There have been quite a few, but the one that sticks in my mind was in Panama. I was sitting in the yacht club pub in Colon, waiting for our turn to go through the canal. I spotted a large yacht with a Canadian flag, and wondered where it was from. A fellow came in, and joined me for a beer. Turned out he was sailing on the yacht, called 'Stitches'. It was owned by a retired doctor, and was crewed by other doctors for short stints on a sailing trip around the world. I asked where he was from:

"Winnipeg.", he said.
I am from Winnipeg, so I asked him the 'Winnipeg Question'.

"What part of Winnipeg are you from?"...
"River Heights", he said.
While I haven't lived in Winnpeg for many years, my parents still did, and so did many members of my family.
"What street", I asked
He named the street next to my parent's, but since he was much younger than me, I asked him his mothers maiden name, and I concluded that:
I had gone to High School with his mother, and he had gone to Univeristy with three of my cousins.

When I was 21, travelling through Europe with two other Canadians, we went to a performance of Aida at the Caracella Baths near Rome. One of them went off at the intermission to get something to eat, and returned with two good looking Canadian guys she had met at the concession stand... One was a friend who lived 8 houses down the street from me. I had no idea he was travelling as well!

Gypsytoes!! so you are going back to Ometepe! for good this time??? what's the plan?

Great stories, Canayun! To make a long, soul searching story shorter...we decided that we want the best of both worlds. We've travelled extensively, trying to find a spot that makes us feel as good as Ometepe, but to no avail. So, we've worked like mad to become debt free, with our Ometepe casa and our house in the states. Ahhh...we have finally met our goal.(Even with a world wide recession!) Next year,(hopefully) we'll take early retirements, rent our house in the states for a year and live on Ometepe. We'd like to live in each place 6 mo. but we have a lot of plans for Ometepe, so it will take at least a year to accomplish them.
At least that's the latest plan....quien sabe? Now, at least I can relax a bit and not work so hard. :-)

I was on a boat out of Brindisi heading to Greece and strolling around the top deck at 2:00am when I bumped (literally) into a woman I had gone to high school with in the States years before. What are the odds?

My elderly mother was visiting her penfriend who lived in a small Finish village. Walking down the street one morning she was stopped by another visitor to the village who called her by her name (not her nickname which is whats used now). Turned out to be a classmate who had moved out of the district but also had a penfriend in the same area. Both women are now in their 90s and still (via all their daughters who have eyesight) correspond with one another in the original group;

just remembered something else about 'that friend' I bumped into in Italy... many many years later, after he had joined the foreign service, he was working in Iran, and was one of the embassy staff that helped a group of American diplomats escape from Iran during the Iranian Revolution.

We were in Dali in China when I saw a group of Westerners talking. One, a female I recognized. so after thinking about it for a while, I went up to her and said "I know you but I cant remember your name". I actually thought I knew her personally. She told me her name and the penny dropped. She was an actress on New Zealand television and they were there making a travel program.

Three times while traveling out of the US I have come across people known to me. All the meetings occurred years ago. In the early 1970s while on a three month wander about Europe I was standing impatiently in line at Rome's perpetually chaotic American Express office waitng to use my Amex card to purchase travelers checks with a personal check. I had spent nearly an hour rotting in the hot crowded office when someone put a hand on my shoulder and spoke my first name. The hand was that of a work colleague of many years.
The second incident occurred when I was on board a Greek rust bicket car ferry traveling from Patras Greece to Brindisi in Italy. Meals were included in the off-season fare that I had bought a a discount froma travel agent in Athens for the first sailing. At dinner a few hours after embarkation I arrived and was curtly ushered to a table. A couple of minutes later a couple came toward my table having been directed there by the same abrupt waiter. I was stunned when I recognized the couple as my former next door neighbors who had moved away a couple years earlier.
The third incident occurred in Mexico when I decided contrary to my custom to have dinner at the restaurant of my hotel in Taxco to avoid getting drenched by the heavy rain. The restaurant was not terribly busy and I was seated in a completely empty row of tables with my back to the entrance so that I could appreciate the hotels stunning view of the colonial gem cathedral of the town with magical reflections of its floodlights in the rain. A few minutes after my dinned had arrived a couple was ushered in. They had chosen the table next to mine for its stunning view as had I. As they turned to sit down I instantly recognized my former former boss and her husband. The three of us instantly anounced the other's names in astonishment since we had not seen each other for a time since she had retired a few years earlier.
While on the Europe to India and on to Southeast Asia & Hong Kong wander through South Asia during a year's time I came across a number people more than once with whom I had earlier struck up an acquaintance.

About 15 years ago I was waiting in line to go into the Musee D'orsay (Spelling?) in Paris. There ahead of me in line was my cousin. We are both from New Zealand but she lived in England at the time and neither of us knew the other was in France. My aunty ran into the same cousin in the same way but on the steps of the Sydney opera house in Australia. aloha

I'm the odd (wo)man out amongst my friends, being the only one who travels. And my school mates are mainly happily settled New Zealanders, while I live in London.But I do tend to run into people met 'on the road' on later travels.

Perhaps the most amazing was a guy I met at the Silk Road hotel in Yazd, Iran. He came up to me and asked if I remembered meeting him a couple of years earlier in Istanbul; he'd been sitting just outside a park checking his LP and I'd given him some sightseeing suggestions. We hadn't spoken for more than a few minutes...

At the same hotel I met (by prior arrangement) a TT poster from London. Because of work constraints we'd never managed to get together before, though we'd had several phone conversations.

Same place again and I met a couple of motorcyclists I'd first run into in Lahore. (As you can see, the Silk Road is a great place for meeting people!) I later ran into them again in Goreme, in Turkey. Not exactly surprising, as we were travelling roughly the same route - but we'd never planned to meet up at any stage along the way and were always surprised to see each other.

On four separate occasions we've run into people we've met a couple of years previously in completely different places. We live in Australia, and in 2001 on a cruise from Yangshuo in China ran into an Englishman we'd met eighteen months previously on a backpacker bus from Perth to Exmouth. In 2007 in a small backpacker's near Mopti in Mali ran into another Australian we'd met two years previously in Fairy Meadow, just off the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan. At the same backpacker's in Mali we met an English couple travelling in a Citroen 2CV. We ran into this couple again a year later in Cannakale in Turkey.
Perhaps the funniest one was at Friday drinks at my place of work. Was talking to someone I had worked with for two years, and happened to mention losing a camera in Mexico while we were travelling with our young kids. This story seemed familiar to him, so he asked if it was in 1987 (nearly 10 years earlier) and had we spent 8 hours in Los Angeles airport. We had been travelling for nearly 4 months, and hadn't had many opportunities to connect with other Aussies, so had spent several hours talking to each other and had really connected. We both remembered the conversation well, but had not recognised each other during the two years we'd been working together!

Many years ago in Israel, we were "hitching" from Haifa to Jerusalem (hard to imagine such innocence today!) when we realized that it was getting too late to make it. Hearing a train coming, we ran to catch it, sitting across from a very friendly man, Yigal, who was delighted to hear English, and began to converse with us. He had travelled to Winnipeg, and playing the Jewish Geography game, we discovered that we had relatives in common. When I told him that I was looking for a kibbutz to work on, he invited me to his and I spent three wonderful months up in the Carmel.

Many years later, I was called for jury duty in Ottawa. While sitting in the jury room, there was someone in the room with the same last name as Yigal, and I jokingly asked him if his family was from Winnipeg. Although he wasn't, the man sitting next to me said that he was, and now playing Winnipeg geography, discovered that we had lived in the same house in Winnipeg, him from 1920 - 29, and me from 1970 - 73!

This has happened many time to me, but the best one was when I bumped (in the physical sense!) into someone I knew while going around a corner in Cairo, Egypt.. we knew each other from university, and neither of us knew that we were in Egypt. He was quite happy to see me, but even happier to find out that the place I was staying at was much nicer where he was staying (without the fleas!) and had space for one more person! I was quite happy to see him as he had some archeological connections to some work being done at that time at Saqqara...and I was able to go see some interesting excavations.

Mr.W and I were waiting for the train in Denali, AK, when I caught sight of my neighbor from around the block. She had been crewing on a boat for the summer, and was taking some time inland before heading home to Boston.

Another time we ran into some neighbors in the National Gallery in London.

And I got to San Francisco, bought some opera tickets, walked into the lobby, saw a familiar face and said, "Hi, Toni!" It took us both a second to realize that this was the San Francisco opera, and not Boston!

Edited by: psw - thought of another one

My Australian son was living in a small Pennsylvania town not normally frequented by tourists, when he dropped into a small shop to buy some milk on his way home from work. The customer in front of him was an Australian tourist, having trouble working out the coins for change. The little old lady owner of the shop was all excited, twittering on about actually having a real, live Australian in her shop, how she had never met an Australian, etc.

"What did she say when she found out you were Australian too?" I asked. "Wasn't game to say anything", he replied. "I thought she might have had a heart attack if she found out there were two of us there."

On my RTW I did when I was still young (that was back in '92) strange encounters happened to me twice:

1. in Singapore I ran into a fellow student from my Universtity (back home in Germany) right on the street. We had seminars together maybe one or two years earlier.
2. in Penang, Malaysia I ran into an English guy I met in Mexico half a year earlier, where we travelled together for about a week before we went our separate ways - he westwards and my self eastwards, to meet again on the other side of the globe by pure incident !