BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts

Subject: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: Arnie
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 12:12 PM

A few years ago, my family and I flew to Los Angeles. Bravely hiring a car with the steering wheel on the wrong side and no gear stick, I then got completely lost whilst aiming from the airport (north LA) to Anaheim (south LA). Did you know that LA is 80 miles long? I do now!! Anyway, having arrived at night at our hotel, we were informed that there was an 'outage', a word we did not immediately recognise but did wonder why reception was lit by oil-lamps. So, we were then sent to another hotel a few miles away, the finding of which was an adventure in itself. After finally checking in, we were totally exhausted but staggered over the road to a Dennys burger joint. Whilst sitting there, my 8-yr old daughter pointed at another family in the restaurant and said that she knew their daughter. We of course told her she must be mistaken as no-one she knew would be sitting in an LA burger bar. Then the mom came over to us as asked if we lived in Whitfield (a village near Dover). Turned out they lived down the road from us and were also on hols in California. Our daughters went to school together. Quel surpris!! However, I suspect that this sort of coincidence is not all that rare - anyone else had a similar meeting???

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: SINSULL
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 12:22 PM

I walked into a hotel lobby in Beijing and there was one of my customers. Neither knew the other planned a trip to China.


In a crowd of 500,000, at an outdoor concert, I ran into my cousin who was with a lady not his wife.

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: greg stephens
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 12:24 PM

I met a guy I was at school with(on Exmoor, in England) in a public bog in Vienna.(We were not in search of company at the time).

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: AggieD
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 01:33 PM

A few years ago we went to North Carolina for a family wedding on my husband's side of the family, taking the opportunity to have a holiday there as well. I also have a cousin who lives in NC,& we were planning to visit him & his wife later in our holiday.

We were planning to visit a large house, who's name escapes me for the moment, but I was feeling very poorly having got a flu type bug & the last thing I wanted to do was wander round some hot old house.(It was during August & boy does it get hot & humid in NC at that time of year). So we decided to visit Chimney Rock, where they filmed part of the film 'Last of the Mohicans' & nearby Lake Lure where 'Dirty Dancing' was filmed (I used to like Patrick Swayze!).

To cut a long story short, we were just about to come down off the Rock, & have a walk around, when my husband nudged me & pointed to a chap who had just climbed up onto the rock & pointed out that he looked a lot like my cousin. I just yelled 'but that is Jonathan!'

Not only were he & his wife visiting the Rock at exactly the same time as us, but they had been contacted by another of my cousins & his wife from the UK who were visiting friends in Kentucky at the time, & decided on a whim to drive over to see our mutual cousins from NC & they all came up to the Rock for a weekend. Boy did we have a good time that night when we all went out to dinner together. None of us could believe the coincidence that 2 sets of cousins from the UK had met a 3rd set from the US on top of Chimney Rock at precisely the same time. If we'd planned it we couldn't have arranged it better.

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: DMcG
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 02:37 PM

We moved from Newcastle-upon-Tyne(UK) to Gillingham, Kent (UK). Within an hour, we met my wife's ex-boyfriend from Washington DC.

(Of course, it might not have been a coincidence...)

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: AliUK
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 02:45 PM

One of my students here in Brazil enrolled in the English course where I was Director of Studies in London. I bumped into him in the reception of the school.

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: Peg
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 06:38 PM

ran into an Oxford tutor from a summer program I attended in Oxford many years later, in an Oxford   bookshop...which might not be unusual, except that at the time I was living in western   Massachusetts and he was living in Boston...

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: katlaughing
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 06:52 PM

Our daughter was working at a Catholic retreat on Enders Island in CT. One of the nuns she served was from NH, so our daughter spoke to her about Rog coming from there. She turned out to be Roger's cousin who was much older than him and whom he'd only met once of twice in his life. They've got a big family!

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: mack/misophist
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 07:13 PM

One day at a navy base (you can't get much more foreign than that) we were told to line up in alphabetical order. There was another guy there with the same name as me; not friend or a known relative. It turned out that our ancestors were from the same corner of Poland and our fathers had shortened the name in the same way. Is that close enough?

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: SINSULL
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 07:17 PM

AWWW you made that up!

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: katlaughing
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 07:28 PM

Oops, I missed the foreign designation. Sorry!

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: artbrooks
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 07:44 PM

My wife and I took a long-anticipated trip to Europe in 1972. While on a ship from Pirais (sp?...the port of Athens) to Haifa we met a women I dated while in high school in Virginia in 1962...I left Virginia in 1963 and we never corresponded.

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: GUEST,Grab
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 07:46 PM

When I was 18, my folks took us to Greece on a sailing holiday, and we got friendly with the family on another boat. We went again three years later, and found one of the lead-boat crew (the company people) was the daughter of the family we'd sailed with that previous time.

Not foreign, but I've just found that my sister and I have both arranged trips to the Milton Keynes ski slope on the same afternoon. Since I've not skiied for 8 years and have never been to this ski slope, this is quite some coincidence!

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: mg
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 08:26 PM

I wanted to meet up with a friend who had a farm in Freisland...and I wrote but never heard from him..So I went on to Europe anyway, flying into Amsterdam..couldn't stand the looks of Amsterdam (no offense) so I hopped on a train and said I'll get off at the first cute town, which was Lyden. I needed to wash clothes so I asked the tourist center where the nearest Laundromat was..I was on my way there when who do I see but my friend...he said oh there you are..wait right here while I get some milk..so I waited a while and concluded I was hallucinating...but then he came back. I had no idea he had another home and a shop in Lyden. He assumed I had known about his other house and was looking him up.

mg

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: AliUK
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 08:53 PM

another freaky coincidence...Guy I used to know from around the herts/beds/bucks area folk clubs. I walked into a bar in Recife NE of Brazil and who should be singing in a band but the same guy who played melodeon and sang at Watford and Luton folk clubs.

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: Bill D
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 10:49 PM

I once helped a fellow move from one part of Iowa to another.....2 or 3 years later, in a drugstore in Juneau, Alaska, I heard my name called...and there he was!

And while visting friends in Seattle, I walked thru a famous park in downtown...a month later, someone who lives 15 minutes from me asked..."you weren't in Seattle by some chance last month, were you?"

Yes...it IS a small world.

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: Mickey191
Date: 26 Oct 03 - 11:43 PM

Many years ago I was having dinner with my Aunt in a hotel in Cobh, Ireland. She was facing the entrance and suddenly had the strangest look. I said what's wrong? She proceeds to tell me that many years before a trolley driver in Westchester County, N.Y. made a very insulting remark to her. She reported him and was threatened with the loss of his job.He was made to apologize to her face. I had never heard the story, and as he passed by our table I recognized him as the bus driver who would not believe I was entitled to students half fare. I was 11 yrs. old and very tall. I wrote a letter, and again he was made to apologize for harressing me for 16 blocks.

So this crabby bastard must have spent his career driving the passengers nuts. Today they probably would pay no mind to our complaints.

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: musicmick
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 01:52 AM

This reminds me of a pleasant surprise I had in 1969. I arrived in Glasgow, knowing not a soul and armed with just a phone number of an agent, Arthur Argo. I called Arthur's house and spoke to a woman who was minding his kids for the afternoon. I told her that I was an American folksinger with an introduction from a friend of Mr. Argo. She offered to drive out to the station and pick me up and told me to wait outside for her. Twenty minutes later a car containing two small Argos and Jean Redpath piled out of a tiny Austin and packed me in.
I hadn't seen Jeanie since the Beers Festival and I didn't know she was a friend of Arthur's. (How come I never had a babysitter that cool?)

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: mouldy
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 02:42 AM

About 10 years ago my husband Ian was in a neighbouring immigration queue at Tehran airport to a guy he worked with when they both worked for the same company a few years previously. Both had left and gone their separate ways, plus our homes were only about 20 miles apart. As he used to say, nobody arrives in Iran sober when making a long stay, as you cannot drink when there. So, courtesy of the Lufthanse frequent flyers' lounge at Frankfurt, around the hall echoed the drunken, whisky fuelled cry of "Tony, what the f***ing hell are you doing here?"

And Badger and I found out we used to go to school on opposite sides of the same little street at the same time, 'cept he was the year above me, it turns out. I was at St.Anne's RC and he was at Hardwick Square, both in Buxton.

Andrea

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: C-flat
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 03:07 AM

This sort of thing seems to happen a lot to me but one of the strangest was during a business trip to Hong Kong. I was browsing on Nathan Road for gifts to take home when I stopped to examine a tie on a revolving stand. As I tried to turn the stand I realised that someone was attemting to remove an item from the other side and, leaning around to apologise, came face to face with my next door neighbour!
Neither of us even knew the other was away on business and we stood, amongst the million or so other shoppers on that road, laughing loudly at the sheer fluke of it!

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: catspaw49
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 05:29 AM

During a partucularly busy period of my life I used to meet myself regularly going in and out of the house.

Actually, this kind of thing rarely has happened to me.   I must be an incredible dullard............

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: muppett
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 06:47 AM

I've just met up with my uncle again, last time I saw him was at my Dad's funeral, 26 years ago, I've found out he lives less then 5 mins walk from were I now live.

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: muppett
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 06:50 AM

RE. Last posting, OK I know it wasn't a meeting in foreign parts, but it was a strange and chance encounter.

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: JennyO
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 08:32 AM

In 1994 I was visiting my brother in Paris for the first time with my son and my daughter who had just done her final exam in school. We were sitting on a train going in to the city, and sitting across the aisle from us was one of her teachers, from Hunters Hill school in Sydney.

I was talking with a friend of mine, Rhymin' Simon one day, and we discovered we had lived in the same small country town for several years when we were small children, but had never met.

Jenny

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: Bill D
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 10:44 AM

'spaw...you must be the guy in a story I saw published once.

(paraphrased): "When I was 12 years old, I found a small turtle in our garden, and I carved my initials in its shell. 35 years later, I came back to my hometown and stopped by our old house. Glancing into the garden, I saw a large turtle under a bush.....rushing over, I picked it up and examined it!.....but there was no sign of carving."

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: C-flat
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 12:49 PM

Some years ago we took a holiday to Florida but had an uncomfortable flight over, due largely to a gentleman in the seat behind who had an unpleasant habit of clearing his nasal passage. This process involved a series of grunts and snorts which, at one point, was so severe as to provoke me into asking if his was attempting to eat my head-rest!
Never-the-less, we dissappeared into the Floridian sunshine and the wonders of theme-park-life.
A week into the holiday and we were now accustomed to standing in long lines whilst enjoying the shade. As we waited in a particularly long queue in Disney World a familiar sound came to my ears,
"CHMMMPFFFSSNNNNNOOORRRTTT!!!!"
...and there he was, standing directly behind me!
The thought of standing for 45 minutes while Mr. Sinus-trouble entertained us with his phlegm-based impressions was more than I could endure. Sea World was beckoning!

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 03:18 PM

In 1982 I was a winter seasonal National Park Ranger (interpretive naturalist) out in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona. It wasn't the most dangerous park in the system as it is rated today, but was a sleepy little park on the Mexican border with lots of "Snowbirds" (folks who head south for the winter in their camper trailers) and a few visitors who defy easy description. One of these was a fellow who looked rather like I imagine Icabod Crane looked, and he traveled in his Volkswagen van. He was difficult to track down when it came time to get his camping fees paid, he overstayed his two-week limit, and he was frequently hanging around the visitor center, not just for programs and walks and films and to buy postcards, but to sometimes ask some pretty unusual questions. I, like all of the other rangers, knew him on a first-name basis by the time he left.

Fast forward a few months to the summer season, in which I had relocated to the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, again as interpretive naturalist ranger. I was working in Sugarlands Visitor Center, when who walks in but Icabod Crane. I walked over and smiled and called him by name and when he looked like he was going to have a stroke I reached out and shook his hand and explained where he knew me from. Close call!

The Organ Pipe story that I cherish most, though, is of an older gentleman who gave me his driver's license in order to show his age to get the "Golden Age Passport," the senior discount camping pass. I remarked on his Burlington, Washington address, telling him that I'd passed through there often each year when my family traveled north from Seattle to spend our summers at a remote place on Lake Whatcom. Turned out that he was the conductor on the train that went across a trestle at the lake's edge in a narrow valley. We lived where the valley widened a little and the train went past between the road and our house every day. He remarked that there was one place where there were "several little tow-heads who always waved." That was us! Small world, indeed!

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: Cluin
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 06:06 PM

When I was in Scotland, I met my goddaughter there.





Well, not such a chance meeting. That was the reason for the trip.

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 07:36 PM

A friend of mine is an international pilot, and he has run into people who knew me from childhood...one in a bar in Alaska, another in a cross-Atlantic flight.

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: LadyJean
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 12:12 AM

Mother and I were in Cornwall, at a lovely little B&B. There was another American mother/daughter team, staying there. They entertained us at diiner by sqabbling, and started up again at breakfast. I remember the daughter looking at mother's silver hair (it was natural by the way) and telling her mother, "You should let your hair go gray, it would look so much more dignified." Her mother had a great deal to stay about that, none of it nice.
We went on to London, and an elegant hotel. We came down to breakfast, preparing for a trip to Liberty's and St. Paul's Cathedral, and who should we see? Oh yes! We denied ourselves the pleasure of another breakfast show.

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: Dave Masterson
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 10:55 AM

We were on holiday in Greece last month and a bunch of us went for a meze at a taverna up in the mountains. We got chatting to the couple sat opposite us and it transpired the lady knew our friends Ann & Adrian, and had recently been a member of the Enfield Chasers, Ann's morris team.

On a more local level, at Broadstairs Folk Week back in 1986 we sat on a bench next to an elderly couple who had retired to the town. We got chatting, only to find that they lived opposite me when I was a kid in North London, and remembered my parents and I moving into our house in 1953! Amazing or what?

By the way Muppett – Yorkshire's quite foreign enough for me!!!!!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Chance meetings in foreign parts
From: Peterr
Date: 28 Oct 03 - 11:25 AM

Not unlike Dave M's tale.. My brother moved to Adelaide earlier this year (via Darwin & Sydney). At a party where he knew no-one someone said there was someone else from England who he should meet. Cutting long short, they went to live in Australia after selling their house to our parents, 30 years ago.