I was in Paris, waiting in line to board a boat ride on the Seine. The couple in back of me asked if I was from the US. when I said the Philadelphia suburbs... we found out that we lived 2 streets apart, and that I used to know the husband's father, we worked together.

I'd met a German lady, Barbara on a remote Greek Island of Amorgos. We became friendly and she came to visit me in Oregon, her first visit to the USA.
Her plan was to cross the country by train ending up in New York. Somehow I'd lost her address and hadn't heard from her either...I'd worried since she'd left some of her things with me and planned to send them to her.
Fast forward 10 yrs later and another visit to Greece. At the port in Athens there are a number of gates where you go thru getting to the ferries. It's a bustling place, people going both ways thru the gates, carrying luggage and what nots. As I'm pushing thru, not paying attention other than what ferry I'd needed to find. Out of the corner of my eye I see a person with extremely white short hair...hmm, I turn and the person now has their back to me and is moving away quickly. It looks like my German friend, I yell out to her, she turns and sure enough, it's Barbara!
We ran towards one another...both hugging, laughing, not believing how impossible it would be...and yet...She'd lost my address in her travels, I'd lost hers. Was it was meant to be? What else was there?

Here is a link that might be useful: Amorgos, Greece

In 1978 I went to Peru, we visited Lima, Machu Picchu and then camped on the Amazon. We had a tour guide that was absolutely tremendous, he really made the trip memorable. Several years later my husband and I were going on a cruise and flew into Miami the night before the cruise, it was nearly midnight as we walked thru the terminal to baggage claim. We went down a set of steps and turned a corner running into Paulo, my tour guide from that trip! He grabbed me and hugged me, we chatted for quite a while!

Great stories. It truly is a small world isn't it?

Sitting in the restaurant at our hotel in Aruba I recognized the accent of the people sitting at the next table. Turns out they were our neighbors. Even though we all knew we hadn't met before in the neighborhood, the husband said I looked very familiar. Turns out he worked with my Dad years before and knew me as a teenager when he use to carpool with my Dad.

Several years later I was walking out of a gift shop at Disney World and the woman walking in as I was leaving was my sister's best friend from high school.

I worked in Arkansas with a girl who's grandmother played cards with my grandmother and great aunt in a small town in Iowa. I also went to high school with her cousins in another town.

I went to a garage sale one day in Tulsa. I thought the husband looked like someone I had seen at Wal-Mart. I started talking to the wife. She had lived in my town in New Mexico. Her mil had lived in my neighborhood. I had probably seen her dh at Wal-Mart in New Mexico.

We lived in Chico for some years and had neighbors across the street that went to Saudi Arabia, and we moved around several times. We were camping at Big Trees in Ca; playing in the Stanislaus River down stream from the bridge and WoW....there on the bridge was our former neighbors waving excitedly at us. Nice visit and memory.

Our older daughter, married to a navy man and stationed in Adak out on the end of the Aleution chain of islands, was working in the Credit Union when she recognized the last name of a merchant seaman, only to find out that he was the father of her best friend in high school. She was reunited with her and now are e-mail buddies. Small World, indeed.

Our next door neighbors sold their house last fall to get a larger house. The house they bought is next door to where I lived 25 years ago.

The man who bought their house told me his mother's wedding reception in the mid-50s was at my house; the owner at that time was a good friend of the family. The mother's name is Kathleen.

When I was working at Social Security, I interviewed people who were filing for Retirement Benefits. I recognized the last name of one couple. I asked them "Did you ever hear of Martha Popowich?" The reply was "She's our daughter!" I had gone to college with her 20 years earlier. They filled me in on what she had done since graduation.

I used to take my parents grocery shopping at a supermarket in a nearby town. The lady who checked their groceries used to chat with them, and found out they were from North Carolina, the same as she. Several months later, my parents went back to North Carolina on vacation. They were somewhere...I forget just where now, and struck up a conversation with a lady, who when she found out they were from Texas, remarked that she had a daughter who worked in Alvin, the same town they were from.
You guessed it....it was the mother of the lady who checked their groceries.

My sister lives in a small town in New Brunswick. One day she was having lunch with a friend (Beth) of hers, and the friends niece(Sara) who was visiting from Vancouver. My sister mentioned that she had two nephews who live in Vancouver (my sons) and said that the one nephew was an actor and he had recently done a Tim Horton's commerical. Then Sara pipes up and says do you mean Dustin? My sister was shocked and say yes, Sara goes on to tell my sister that her and Dustin were good friends and that he was dating a good friend of hers. Small world indeed.

DH, DS and I were on a cruise that stopped in Greece. I stayed aboard ship one afternoon while DH and DS took a tour to the site of the original Olympic games. When they returned they had me guess who they saw there. It was DS's neighborhood buddy, Michael, who was on a school tour. In that remote place, on that one day? There were probably only 70 people present!

We own a motorcycle repair shop and one day I went in the shop and was calling customers to let them know that their bikes were ready for pickup. I looked at the next repair order in the stack and recognized the name (Scott S.) of someone that lived in the neighborhood. When I called I asked him how long he'd been gone from Lynnfield. Oh...a few years...who is this? I told him who it was and we laughed and got caught up. I wasn't at the shop when he picked up his bike though.
Several years later I was at a plant sale at the local botanical garden and recognized the accent (Boston) of several women. They were from the town next to my home town. One of the woman was the wife of Scott S. We bump into each other often at plant sales.

Lots of them. First really memorable occurrence was when I was in Hawaii on vacation when I was 17. I was with a group of people on the beach and I mentioned my nickname at the time. One guy looked up startled and it turned out although we had never met and he was then in the Marines he and I knew many of the same people back home. He knew so much about me it was almost creepy. This was of course way before the internet. We spent a few days seeing the sights together and he disappeared as quickly as he appeared.

Most recent was on a toy run last Xmas. Must have been over a thousand people. I was just standing around talking to a couple and the man mentioned he just moved to the area and wanted to start a MC club there. In telling me about he dropped a name. Turns out I knew the older relative of the person mentioned...almost 40 years ago. He gave me a website to check out and lo and behold old friends. Most dead now now but still....synchronicity!

And, once in Vegas, I was playing craps and I heard a male voice say "Hi, Monica". Turned around, and it was our stockbroker!

Not really the person you want to bump into at a casino over 2000 miles from home :)

In high school I worked as a waitress at a catering hall and a bunch of us (all waitresses there) went to the Jersey shore on vacation that summer, several hours away. We ran into the owner of the catering hall on the boardwalk. He owned several hotels and catering businesses in PA and we rarely saw him at work (maybe once or twice a year) and here we ran into him hours away vacationing with his family (why he was in Wildwood, NJ, I have no idea).

My dad was getting a colonoscopy and the guy prepping him turned out to be his 'paper boy' LOL.

Another one:

While driving down Tropicana Avenue in Las Vegas a few years back, I spotted a wallet on the side of the street. We stopped and picked it up. I opened it up to see the last name Hunsley, which is my Grandma's maiden name. I found the guys name in the phonebook. He came to claim his wallet and I found out he was my Grandma's brother's son's son--if that makes sense. He promised we would keep in touch. I never heard from him again. Kind of sad.

I forgot to add...these stories give me goosebumps!

My story is not about a person, but a thing that popped up again 25 or so years later.

When I was a teen, my dad was in Viet Nam, and my mom held down the fort at home. She bought an Alaskan Camper for the truck. It's one of those that slides down and then you use hydrolic pumps to raise the roof again......

Well, it got sold, along with the truck several years later.

Fast forward 25 years, and I'm living about 50 miles from where I lived as a teen and I'm across the horse pasture at my neighbor's. She wants to show me this old camper she got to store her tack in.

OH! I said, "We used to have a camper like this". I looked inside...."in fact...it was JUST EXACTLY like this!"
It was the very same camper.

I babysat for a lady who had 3 kids. A girl and 2 boys.
They moved on and I met a friend at an auction only to find out she lived in the same house with her husband and set of twins. One of the boys married my neighbor's daughter and built a house in their woods. So now I can look out the window and see his house - oh and he has a set of twins too...

Old Lad and I worked/lived in Iqaluit(Frobisher Bay) in 86-87

met a lot of transient ppl and worked with plenty of others

Went to a psoriatic clinic in Toronto years later and ran into the same ppl we had worked with years before 3500 miles away at the Dundas/Yonge street corners..small small world..and those folks had gotten to the city by sailboat no less

1978....
I am working for the best Chiropractor in Henderson, NV.
Patient comes in..I get his information..his birthday is 1 day after mine, his SS# is from the midwest....

Conversation:

ME: Where in the midwest are you from?
PATIENT: A little town in South Dakota you have never heard of.
ME: Oh.......where?
PATIENT: Miller, SD
ME: Really... I was born in Miller, SD the day before you!
PATIENT: Really?
ME: Yes..who are your parents?
PATIENT: Mr & Mrs *****
ME: I will call my mom and ask if she knows/remembers them.

HOLY HANNAH was I in for a surprise...........

I call my mom...not only does she know/remember them...she DATED his dad in High School!!!!!!!!! A few months later...my mom came to Henderson to visit; she calls his parents and had a great time reliving their past!

When I was vacationing in the Maritimes one year with my family we were waiting for a ferry to go to Prince Edward Island. We ran into the Noels who were neighbours on our street who had moved away at least 10 years earlier. It was so nice to see them again. When I was a kid they would make us kids sing before they gave us our treat on Halloween. LOL I was so shy I wouldn't do it but they still gave me the treat.

Living in Calgary in the 1980's I would run into a lot of people I knew from Windsor. I would be at one of the malls or walking in one of the sky walks between buildings and would bump into someone.

Anne

I grew up in a rural area of Minnesota. Vacationing in San Francisco I struck up a conversation with a staranger while riding a cable car. The woman had been engaged to my 8th grade math teacher.

Ron

I worked the front desk in Bryce Canyon, Utah and a couple checked in from New Orleans. I told them my great grandparents had lived in NO and asked if by chance they knew them. No, they didn't. Then I asked if they knew a Capt. Beck who worked for Lykes Lines. I thought the guy was going to collapse on the floor! He said, "I work for Lykes Lines and I know Capt. Beck". It's sorta like people saying, "you're from Texas....do you know.....?"

The day I moved into my house I literally had the furniture delivered and rushed to the airport to catch a flight to Vegas. No time to meet the neighbours, but there was one man that I had talked to a few days before and he lived directly across from me. During the trip I was in Circus Circus catching the train inside and who should get off but him and his daughter. Then the next year we ran into them again in New Jersey.

Years ago a young, single American man lived here and joined a soccer team and kept a team photo. He moved back to the States. Forty years later a family friend, Jimmy, travelled to Boston and was entering a Sam's Club. One of the female workers approached him and asked where he was from and what was his name. It turned out that he had played on the same soccer team as her husband. She recognized him from the photo, and had never met him until then.

The next one just happened and it's more about a name than a person. Shortly after I moved into the same house mentioned above a nice little dog befriended us and every time we would park he would charge over and make a big fuss. One day I was mimicking Lassie and asked him if Timmy had fallen down the well again. I heard a chuckle from behind the fence where his elderly owners lived. Didn't know their names and still don't know their names.

Fast forward 5 years and there's a knock on my door. I recognized the man as the son of the elderly couple and he offered to paint my house. After some discussion he said that he lived in the blue house and when I was ready to have the house painted to come over and ask for Timmy. I could have died on the spot! After I was sort of vexed, and said to myself - who names their child Timmy anymore.

As a young college grad, I went to Europe to teach in the American schools. I got off the plane in Frankfurt, scared out of my wits, and there stood the librarian from my HS. She almost fainted!! Before her plane arrived, we had a good time catching up, and she gave me lots of pointers about getting around in Europe!

I have met more people in crazy places than I can count! :) The best shock was when my DH and I met online (AOL instant messaging) and found out that our CA families knew each other and even hunted and fished together. I was newly relocated to Northern California from Colorado and DH was from the Silicon Valley. Needless to say, I knew he wasn't an ax murderer and so we met! :) The rest is history. ;)

Blessings,
Haley

So many.

On one trip to DisneyWorld, we were in line for one of the rides in the Magic Kingdom, and looping ahead of us was one of DD's elementary school classmates and his family. Then the next day we went to Epcot, sat down in Norway to have a soda, and who walked in? but one of the town's high school teachers I used to work with! Mind you--this was a week when school was in session--we were ALL playing hookey to be in DW. But that's quite common in NJ, the first full week of Nov--because schools are closed Thurs. and Fri, many parents, teachers and students take the whole week off to travel to Florida.

Just this past weekend, we were talking to the young couple next door. They'd been saying for months that they had friends who might be interested in buying our house when we list it in a month or two. Well, for some reason, on Sat. DH asked what their names were--wouldn't you just know it? It's a cousin of his! Distant--one we never see, but still, how weird is that?

Oh my, do you have all day???

This sort of thing happens to me or people I know all the time. That's because there are Newfoundlanders everywhere! I wouldn't be surprised if the Noel family that cherryfizz mentioned had NL connections - it's a common name here.

My mom's cousin who lived in Nova Scotia left her husband and children and ran off with another man. We had a baby sitter when I was young who married a Mountie and, in the course of his career, they were posted somewhere in rural Manitoba. Guess who their neighbours were? Yup, my mom's cousin and her man. It was sort of "Where are you from?", "I'm from St. John's, Newfoundland", "Oh, I have a cousin who lives there, Maybe you know her.", etc.

I was in London, England, one July years ago and was walking down Oxford Street like thousands of others and I heard someone shout, "Barbara!".. I kep walking because it couldn't possibly be me she was shouting at - I didn't know anyone in London. She shouted again, using my full name, so I turned around and here was a woman who used to play bridge with my mom on a regular basis.

I was in San Fransisco and went into a Wells Fargo bank to change a traveller's cheque. The young lady behind the desk asked where I was from. I told her St. John's and she said, "So am I". It turned out that her aunt and I went to school together.

I was in Washington, DC, visiting my cousin and her DH and I was outside the Lord and Taylor's store and heard a man with a very unmistakable St. John's accent speaking to two nuns. I sort of sidled up to him and said, "What part of St. John's are you from?" He laughed and said "Coronation Street". (Yes, there really is a Coronation Street in St. John's!). Then he ran to help the two nuns into a taxi and I went into the store. The next evening my cousin had a get-together and who should walk in to the party but this fellow who worked with my cousin's DH at the Pentagon. He had lived in Washington for over 40 years and sounded like he just left home!

I had lunch at a nice little restaurant in Halifax in October and at three of the other tables were people I knew from home.

As I said, there are Newfoundlanders everywhere. Tens of thousands of Newfoundland girls married US servicemen who were stationed here during WWll and afterwards, thousands left to find work in the "Boston States", and so on. I'll bet that there are people on this forum who know Newfoundlanders, or people who are descended from Newfoundlanders, and don't realize it.