It's a Small,Small World!

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