Out shopping today and bumped into our next door neighbours.
And?
Well. We're on holiday in the south of France! I was weighing some tomatoes in Géant and
was grabbed by our neighbour with a "I thought it was you." I thought I was dreaming. It's not like we're staying in a popular holiday resort. We're in Gassin about 60 miles west of Nice.
Just had to tell someone. Thanks for listening.
What are the chances?
1 in 6.
Happens all the time.
Only last month I met the wife on holiday, not only the same resort, but the same chalet....
Had this years ago. Was on a family holiday in the mid west of France, can't remember exactly where. Anyway went to the local funfair and randomly bumped into two other kids who were in my form at secondary school at the time.
Hehe. That’s ace. I love it when stuff like that happens.
A friend once (literally) tripped over their childhood best friend while taking a picture on a tiny out of the way beach in New Zealand (they are both from York)
They hadn’t seen each other for 20 years.
Once they got chatting, they realised they had been living about 500m apart for the last 10 years.
Approximately three thousand seven hundred and twenty to one.
In a bizarre coincidence these are the same odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field .
Weird.
I went trekking alone into the Amazon jungle in a bid to "find myself".
Sure enough, I found myself - I was taking a piss in the same stream as me.
Unfortunately we didn't have a pen and didn't exchange addresses, so we haven't kept in touch.
On the plus side, it's one less Christmas card to write...
Cool.
Coincidence is generally just a big numbers game. You also spend decades going places and not bumping into people you know, so it's bound to happen eventually. Though, it being your next door neighbours rather than just "someone I knew once" is pretty spectacular!
How come though, you never meet anyone you met on holiday when you come back to the UK? (Unless they're your next door neighbour, of course)
Yeah in supermarket car park on west coast of France and bumped into one of the some a parent of one of the kids class mates.
you may think its a coincidence...
Bumped into a mate from Uni on a bus in Mexico once.
On Holiday in Tenerife a few years ago, sat outside a restaurant waiting for food, in a town miles away from where we were staying, with my girlfriend, just chatting, and I hear "How be ya boy?" - standard Radnorshire greeting.
Look up and it's a lad we know well, who girlfriend went to school with stood there smiling, he'd just that day swapped ends of the island to get some better weather. I never expected to hear those words in Tenerife.
BUT, has happened twice besides, once in Menorca on a family holiday, a local farming family in the same hotel, and once mainland Spain a big group of lads that I went to school with and played football with came strutting down the sea front one night.
No longer surprised!
[means nothing to anyone but Derek Starship]
I bumped into Stevie Sausage on Fore Street in St Ives. Blanked him. Obvs.
Julie bumped into a colleague at The Eden Project.
A lad from my class as school camped next to me at Glastonbury in 1996. 11 years after I'd last seen him.
[/means nothing to anyone but Derek Starship]
It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to carpet it.
1-1/e which is approx. 0.632
Coincidence is generally just a big numbers game. You also spend decades going places and not bumping into people you know, so it's bound to happen eventually. Though, it being your next door neighbours rather than just "someone I knew once" is pretty spectacular!
I suppose it's more likely than any other specific person (as opposed to the collective odds on seeing one of the 1000+ people you probably know enough to recognise) as they'll be from similar demographics, middle class and affluent enough to be holidaying in the south of france, but not so affluent they holliday in the Maldives. And you probably have a common friend who's been somewhere similar, so you both googled it and the best option was Gassin.
I bumped into [s]Stevie Sausage[/s] Neil Oliver, floppy haired TV history gimp on Fore Street in St Ives.
I' d never met him before, mind.
On the up escalator in supermarket, I saw a mate I hadn't seen for years on his way down. At the bottom, I turned and went on the up escalator - you'll never guess who I saw on the way down. What are the chances?
I was once InterRailing (1990 since you ask) and bumped into the girl that worked in the local art supplies shop where I worked. Turned out she had been inspired by my doing it so decided to go herself. That was in a Zurich bus station.
A few weeks later I was waiting for a water taxi in Venice and saw her again.
I put most of it down to the fact we were both doing the same typical routes, but at the same time, they are big places and it must have taken a big co-incidence to bump into the sam person twice.
Parents were driving a camper van round New Zealand last year and clipped wing mirrors with another camper coming the other way. Pulled over to exchange details and the other driver was a friend of theirs from their golf club.
In my 20s spent time travelling. Met a South African guy in Israel who I was mates with for a time. He headed off somewhere and I went to live in Holland for a while. About a year later, got on a tube in London and he's sat there. I know, Saffers in London and that, inevitable he'd end up there eventually. Even so, London is a biiig place and 2m journeys a day on the tube. What's weird is 2 weeks later I jump on a bus and decide to sit upstairs and there he is. Again! Haven't seen him since so pretty sure he wasn't stalking me (or vice versa..) 😉
Saw my (then) current girlfriend on holiday once.
We'd been going through a rough patch so decided to both have separate holidays to reset and recharge, her with her mates and me with a cousin. We went to a tiny village on the south coast of Ireland as we planned to do some chilled out hiking and a few sailing trips (cousin is a keen sailor). The first week was great and we had the next week planned out. We went into the local pub we'd adopted on the Sunday night to see the girlfriend and all her friends at the bar! Turns out they'd been going there every lunchtime then going out while we had been out all day then going in for late drinks 😀
OP
Did you ask each other “well who’s feeding our cat”?
Staying with the travel theme: I changed my flight out of Mumbai years ago and got the last seat on the last plane out the city that night. The person in the seat next to me was from my small village and gave me a lift home from the airport.
My standard coin incidence story
Invited 2 women to my wedding and sat them together
Both had attended the same cambridge College for 3 years but never met (that is odd)
They both love horses
They both had rock climbing boy friends
They were both wearing dresses made from silk bought in the same shop in Kathmandu
(But I'm not actually sure that this was that unlikely)
I literally bumped into our old neighbour from Worcs one day. In Minehead. What are the chances!
I’m going for Stalking, the OPs neighbour is stalking them.
I covertly stalked an ex girlfriend for 20 years only for my cover to be blown in Peru. Luckily she thought bumping into each other was pure chance.
Have still got 20 years of photos, video, underwear, letters and above all happy memories.
An old GF of mine went to uni and moved in to a shared house with some other girls she'd not met before. After a while, one of the girls she shared house with announced she'd got a new boyfriend - he turned out to be someone I'd gone to junior school with and not seen since. She was from Whitehaven, uni was in Leicester and me and the then GF were from Halifax.
Mrs Dubs is a teacher and plays hockey at quite a big club.
Number of times we have been on holiday and not met some random she knows from one or other can be counted on one hand, and with her being a teacher, we go on holiday A LOT...
Was at a techno night in Belgium - 30,000 people in the venue and the only English folk we bumped into were my friend's old housemates.
Dad's wife was taken to a football match by my sister (at the mighty Owls) and found she was sitting next to her old uni lecturer (of some 30 years ago).
Just think of the number of people you pass every day and don't recognise...
Two holidays in the same year...
Cyprus in July. Met a family from Sunderland and our kids played together. We had a drink together one evening in the bar but never exchanged telephone numbers or anything.
After coming back we booked a trip to Aviemore for a few nights between Christmas and New year. As we were booking into reception the same family walked in. It was our kids who recognised them.
Good chance if you share a street with a travel agent doing an exceptionally good deal to a place 60 miles West of Nice.
Whilst trying to find a record shop in the back lanes of Ibiza town I bumped into an old school friend who had joined the navy, his ship had docked nearby for a couple of days.
A neighbour came round our house in Sheffield and asked who the wedding pic on the shelf was of, as the bride looked familiar.
Turns out he had been at school in India with my sister (the bride) a good few years earlier.
He said his parents were actually the new house parents at the school in India.
I asked who the smallest, oldest picture behind thier office desk in the school was of - Mr & Mrs Wright, house parents from the 1960's, and my grandparents......
I went on holiday to Thasos in 1979 with my then g/f, on an 18-30’s trip, before those sort of holidays became just a drink and sex fuelled party. Anyway, second week in, and the next group arrived, only about twenty to thirty people at a time, because accommodation was in people’s homes, and we were down on the little beach and I noticed a familiar face, it was a bloke I knew from my home town!
As someone once said, it’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.
Some mad ones up to now, but my best one is...
Went to Medicine Hat in Canada in 2000 & stayed with GF's friend originally from Durham but had been over there for years & was working in Medicine Hats branch of the Alberta Motor Association. She was called Moira & was from Witton Gilbert near Durham City.
Cue 3 months later & while visiting my Dad in hospital in Durham, noticed & guy in an Edmonton Oilers hockey shirt. Got chatting, turned out he'd been with the British Army based at Suffield near Med Hat & was married to a Canadian lass who that day had gone to the AMA to insure the car, & was served by Moira from Witton Gilbert.
I once banged into a very good school friend of mine the South of France 25 years ago too.
Didn't know she was going.
Fréjus.
Seems to be following the plot of Twin Peaks the return.
[My boss turned up on the second week of my honeymoon. Same hotel and everything. On the upside, it was the lions tour so had someone to watch it with :
On Sunday I went for a helicopter ride to tick off the bucket list. Who should I meet but neighbour across the road with the same idea.
Swingers?
I once [b]banged into[/b] a very good school friend of mine
A nod's as good as a wink and all that...
soft"ology"uni student, Lentil eating, gap year travelling french breaking skiers live in middle class bubble. Never would have guessed.
Pre-natal class meeting tale due next ?
On holiday in Sorrento and get taking to an retired couple whilst waiting for the bus. We mentioned we'd just moved from Bristol to Ely, that's a coincidence our daughter and family did that. Not a massive coincidence until we find out their daughter is neighbours with our friends, we text
our friends to find out they at a party with there neighbours right at that very moment
I went to school in Derby with a girl whos mum went to school in Lancaster with my mum. She now lives in San Fransisco with one of my university coursemates housemates.
A friend of mine did a gap yah before uni, spent six months living a village in Nepal teaching English as the school. Well off the tourist track, pretty much never saw another white person the whole six months apparently. Did a bit more travelling afterwards, back to Blighty to start uni. For the third year of the course she had to do a year in industry and got randomly allocated to work at Air France in Toulouse. I was also on a placement in Toulouse, and a crowd of us used to drink at a particular bar.
One evening a random Asian guy walks up to her in the bar and taps her on the shoulder. Turns out it was one of her former pupils in Nepal. He'd done well and won a scholarship to study in Europe, and had ended up at Toulouse Uni, which was just around the corner from our local.
WillH and that last post win the thread.
Terry Pratchett had an interesting theory about this:
There's only so many [i]real[/i] people in the world; the rest are essentially cardboard cut-outs. Which is why you bump into the same people over and over again, and in the most unlikely places.
Only last month I met the wife on holiday, not only the same resort, but the same chalet....
Footflaps, your wife sneaked into my chalet one night as well 😈
Did you do the usual give a false address and phone number thing in case they want to stay in touch?
Im guessing the OP has gone on holiday with his neighbours.
Was on a Greek island hoping holiday, 1993, with 5 friends and we has just moved from the north of Rhodes to Lindos, in the south. That night I fell off a first floor roof (sleepwalking). I don’t recall the night. Anyway, I was seen by both flats occupants in my bloodied/broken state whilst waiting for the ambulance the following morning. Fast forward 2+months and I move from South London to study at Leeds University and move into halls of residence. One of the chaps I’m now living with says he recognises me, we chat, he’s from Wales so we conclude that we’ve never met before – I just have one of ‘those’ faces. A week later he asks if I was in Lindos over the summer – he was one of the residents in the ground floor flat who saw me in the morning after the fall.
The coincidence still makes me shudder…
one of my best mates at school went to University in Edinburgh. I decided to go and visit him but didn't have his address or phone number. Figured I'd find him anyway. Within 10 minutes of getting off the bus, I saw hm walking down the other side of Princes St.
one of my best mates at school went to University in Edinburgh. I decided to go and visit him but didn't have his address or phone number. Figured I'd find him anyway. Within 10 minutes of getting off the bus, I saw hm walking down the other side of Princes St.
Sociology?
soft"ology"uni student, Lentil eating, gap year travelling french breaking skiers live in middle class bubble. Never would have guessed.Pre-natal class meeting tale due next ?
I’ve read this a few times but still have no idea what it means.
Backpacking round NZ got to a hostel and the girl behind the counter was an ex-gf's sister, did the lovely to see you thing, got checked in, turned round and walked straight into a chap I was at college with. Small world, love when it happens as the stats of likelihood and timing do my head in
Wife number two's BIL was best man for Wife number one's BIL.
Both families separated by 300 miles and several years, not aware of each other until I pooped up.