“Two years later, in 2018, I was walking down the street in Copenhagen and I stopped dead in my tracks,” Luisa wrote. “There was my Moroccan tour guide! We stopped and chatted for a few minutes about the serendipity of seeing each other again thousands of miles away.”
In 1998, Catherine Barron and her husband, Earlye — both teachers — took their 16-year-old son, Michaelon a trip to Europe. By the time they got to Prague, Michael had had enough European restaurant food. He wanted pizza.
“The concierge at our hotel said the best pizza in Prague was in a little out-of-the-way place down a small walking street and into an even smaller street that came to a dead end,” wrote Catherine, who lives in Fredericksburg, Va. It was a challenge to find, but find it they did.
“However, before we even sat down, we were called by a voice we recognized — the voice of a fellow teacher,” Catherine wrote. “It turned out that he, his wife and 16-year-old daughter were also traveling, and the parents had heard the same request: pizza.”
In 1983, Alexandria’s Mary Goldwag and her husband, Edtook a trip to China. While Mary was in the ladies room at Beijing’s Summer Palace, Ed chatted with another waiting husband.
“When both of us ladies emerged, and we all exchanged names, I discovered that the other lady was someone I knew,” Mary wrote.
It was her ninth-grade English teacher from Taft Junior High in Northeast Washington. “Since then, my teacher had graduated law school and become a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia,” Mary wrote. “She later became chief judge.”
In 1994, Norma and Burt Kirschner were traveling in Israel with their friends Gloria and Fred when something in a bookstore window caught Gloria’s eye.
“I want to read that book,” Gloria said, running into the store.
Wrote Norma: “We followed her in and Fred said ‘We have two more weeks here. Why carry that around? When we get back to Silver Spring you can buy it.’ ”
A male customer in the store whipped around and said, “Silver Spring, Maryland? I just bought a house on Lamberton Drive.”
Norma said to Gloria: “Isn’t that where Jan and Len lived?”
It turned out the man had just bought their friends Jan and Len’s house.
In 1972, Jim Yenckel boarded a train in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, bound for Singapore.
“Tugging my backpack toward my seat I spotted a seated woman whose face seemed familiar,” wrote Jim, of the District.
Jim kept walking, then turned around for a second look. By then the woman was on her feet.
“Jeem?” she queried. And then Jim knew.
“She was Vallithe secretary at the English language newspaper in Santiago, Chile, where I had worked eight years earlier,” he wrote. “I was always Jeemnot Jimto her. Like me, she and her friend were exploring Southeast Asia.”
In the summer of 1973, Annapolis’s Bernie Wulff and his wife, Louisetook their daughters, Kathleen (then age 7) and Cynthia (then 5), on a six-week European vacation. While standing on a crowded Paris Metro platform near Notre Dame cathedral, Louise mentioned that their daughters were the only young children she could spot, before adding, “Except for that family over there.”
“That family over there” turned out to be friends from Baltimore with their two young children.
On a trip to Europe years ago, Terry Mitchell ran into multiple people he knew.
“I worked in the Pentagon Press Briefing Room and had completed a briefing with a Marine general,” wrote Terry, of Alexandria. “The next day I flew out and landed at Schiphol Airport [in Amsterdam] and as I walked down the jet way the general was standing there. He looked a bit startled as I said hello.”
Next stop: Italy. Terry was standing outside a shop on the Isle of Capri in the pouring rain when a couple ran up to him.
“We used to ride the bus to the Metro together,” Terry wrote.
On the way home from the same trip, Terry was delayed overnight at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. As the homebound flight was called for boarding, Terry and another woman stood up. She was a Pentagon correspondent who knew Terry from his job.
“We both said ‘What are you doing here?’ to each other,” Terry wrote. “I should have bought a lottery ticket after that trip.”
Tomorrow: More travel coincidences.
