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Post by tassiedevil on Oct 14, 2014 3:58:00 GMT
While I was at Melbourne airport, sitting at the gate waiting for my flight to Los Angeles at the end of last month, two women walked by and sat at the other end of the area. I poked my father and said "Isn't that the Canadian lady from our 2012 Highlights of France tour?".
After much discussion of why it couldn't be her I decided to walk over to her and find out. It turned out to be her! She had been visiting her niece who lives in Melbourne. We continued talking until we were boarded. We then met up again in terminal 4 at LAX!
I would hate to know what the chances are that someone who lives in Hobart and someone who lives in Halifax, who first met in Paris, could run into each other at Melbourne airport while waiting to catch the same flight to Los Angeles.
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Post by californian on Oct 14, 2014 4:20:19 GMT
Extraordinary coincidence! One in a million sounds about right. I would love to have an experience like that.
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Post by Oz-T on Oct 14, 2014 4:38:59 GMT
That's more like a billion to one chance, Tassie. However, if I ever notice at Melbourne Airport another Canadian lady arranging the loading of 315 cat cages onto a tour bus, perhaps the odds would be considerably less than your situation.  My own long-shot experience was seven years ago when I took our family on a self-tour of Europe. We had arrived in Florence the day before via a train from Venice and were having lunch at a cafe at Piazza del Duomo. Whilst casually looking out the window at the Cathedral, I noticed a woman from the corner of the room staring at our group. So I looked back. And she looked back again. She looked familiar so I kept glancing in her direction. The guy she was with didn't look familiar, just her. I began to be more furtive with my glances at this woman, working on the time-honoured principle that eyeing off attractive blonde women in public never goes down well with a certain category of the population, namely wives. Eventually, the lady came over to our table and asked if we were from Australia. Yes, indeed. Then she mentioned our suburb. Yes again. Next came an exchange of hit and miss questions where we each tried to work out how we knew each other. It wasn't looking comfortable for me when it became apparent that she and I were the only ones showing any recognition. Then suddenly I made the connection: she was the (then) single mother of one of the boys in the local basketball team a few years earlier. And being the team manager, I had a bit to do with all the parents, getting them to become available for scoring rosters. So it all made sense, apart from the weird situation of how people who lived a mile from each other could separately travel halfway around the world and bump into each other at random in a bustling city like Florence. Naturally, Mrs Oz thinks that this is good enough reason for me to be on my best behaviour when we travel the world because you never can tell when you might meet somebody you know. Of course, I ignore that sensible advice and still clown around.  |
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Post by keitel on Oct 14, 2014 8:12:58 GMT
Some years ago now I was in Athens, as I walked around a corner I bumped into a lady causing her to almost fall. Some weeks earlier I had the task of dismissing her from the work place in Sydney. She proceeded to called me some names that I think are humanly impossible.  |
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Post by tassiedevil on Oct 14, 2014 22:30:16 GMT
I've also had another long shot experience similar to Oz's.
This was 2012 in Rome. I was eating in a restaurant with views to the Collosseum. We were eating inside and outside was a woman and a lot older man. As soon as I saw her I knew it was someone who went to the same primary school and high school as me, but 2 grades ahead of me. After awhile I went outside on the pretense to get a photo and obviously the best spot was near their table. While taking the photo I heard an excuse me from behind and then the question, ar you from Australia. My response was, yes I am and I went to Howrah Primary and Clarence High. Thankfully I was right and hadn't just started a conversation with some random stranger by telling them what schools I went to.
Like me she was travelling with her father and was starting a tour the next day with Trafalgar, European Delight. That was also the same reason I was in Rome. We were going to be on the same tour!
To me this was remarkable that both of us recognised each other even though we were never friends (I don't think we ever even spoke a word to each other at school), and it was almost 20 years since we last saw each other. Found out that both of them live in Hobart, with her father in a nearby suburb and her in on the other side of town. For the 20 years before and now the 2 years later I have never seen either of them around, and where I live isn't huge we have a population of around 200,000. Yet I can go to the other side of the world and run into them.
I will maybe share a few other similar experiences later.
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Post by tiffany on Oct 14, 2014 22:40:54 GMT
During my first tour of Italy, while in St. Peter’s Square, I ran into a women who works at the same company as me. She was visiting family in Sicily, and had travelled to Rome with her mother to hear the Pope speak that day. I work at a large company with over 500 people in my office, so I didn’t know her very well, but we still recognized each other and got a photo of us together. We both thought running into each other was quite the coincidence, although I think these things happen more often than we think.
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Post by Oz-T on Oct 15, 2014 0:14:14 GMT
Another anecdote, although it happened to some friends, rather than me.
A work colleague named Bruce was excited about his impending trip to Hawaii and when he returned he explained an incredible coincidence. He and his wife were walking down a shopping mall in Honolulu when he bumped into another person from the same office (also named Bruce) who was also holidaying there. Whilst Bruce from Floor 1 had little to do (workwise) with Bruce from Floor 3, they at least knew each other. However, neither knew that the other one was also holidaying in Hawaii at the same time, and they had departed on separate planes from Australia.
I thought it was a very interesting coincidence, reminiscent of the theme of Liza Minelli's 'Ring them Bells".
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