Serendipitous Meetings a Long Way From Home

“It’s a small world” is a large cliche. Yet like other words grown trite, it was born of truth.

Returning travelers tell tales of mind-boggling coincidences and confrontations: They were waiting for a light to change on a Paris corner when they saw an office pal waving from across the boulevard. They went to the theater in London and who should they see at intermission but . . . .

Two women in my aerobics class just came back from Europe; one was visiting her mother in Germany and the other was touring Bulgaria. They ran into each other in a mall in Munich on the only day that both were in that city.

I know the syndrome well. As I signed a leather-bound register at a country inn in Denmark I saw that friends from my city and street had been guests the week before.

As I walked up the cobbled streets of Sveti Stefan, the Yugoslav fishing village turned resort, my companion was hailed by a college classmate from Carmel.

And once, when I was bargaining badly in Bangkok, a merchant interrupted the proceedings to inquire about the health of an antiques dealer in my hometown.

Predictable Paths

In some harder-to-reach destinations, crossed paths are even more predictable. Roads may be few. Train seats are limited. Riverboats always dock at the same villages. And Western travelers have little choice but to head for the same clutch of hostelries. For me, this does not lessen the magic; it adds to the wonder.

On a long flight to Egypt a few Novembers ago I reread a newspaper account that my aunt had written about her week on the Nile. It was accompanied by photographs of children playing on the river bank at Idfu.

When our boat stopped there, youngsters came racing from their homes. Two girls wore matching dresses of a bold floral print. I recognized the fabric; it was in my aunt’s picture.

I returned to my cabin to dig out the clipping, and gave it to the girls. I knew from their squeals that the identification was right.

And what, if any, is the moral of all this far-flung happenstance? According to some travelers, it’s “beware.”

A fellow I know was in Moscow for the first time, standing at dusk in Red Square, feeling alone at the end of the world. Suddenly he was hailed by a raspy voice that he thought he’d left behind in California, a gadfly who had been fighting him in city hall over a public parking issue.

“And another thing! . . .,” she cried, waving her umbrella as she raced toward him from the shadows of the Kremlin.

“At that moment I decided that no place on earth offers anonymity,” he told me. “Thank goodness I wasn’t buying black-market rubles or chasing Russian girls.”

Surprise encounters can have exuberant charm, but not always. I heard of a couple who checked into a European hideaway and were greeted warmly.

“Wonderful to see you,” gushed the proprietor. “The same room as last year?” The woman, for whom it was a first visit, was aghast. The man, ever fast on his feet, said solemnly: “It’s not what you think, my dear.”

Familiar Face

Recently, I was climbing the stairs in the labyrinth of Jimmy’s Harborside restaurant in Boston when a voice called: “Judith?”

I turned and saw a familiar face in an unfamiliar setting. It was a businessman from Oklahoma, there with his wife and daughter, a student at Boston University.

“We thought we’d see you,” he said, laughing. “Your mother’s a witch, you know. She said you were in Boston and we’d probably run into you.”

Serendipity reached out and touched me in Norway one July evening. My husband and I arrived in Oslo by train and had no hotel reservation. We took a cab to the Bristol because the name was familiar and the location central. Yes, they had a room.

I had kicked off my shoes and was eyeing the down comforter when a call came from the front desk. Some San Diego friends were downstairs and wanted to toast my birthday with champagne. I had forgotten that our trips might overlap. They had assumed that we would stay at the same hotel.

After hugs in the lobby they led me around the corner to a club named Zebra or Zodiac or Jaguar. It was almost midnight. All I remember for certain is that the maitre d’ greeted me with, “Telephone call for Judith Morgan.” I knew it was a joke. No one knew where I was, including myself.

When I picked up the receiver, my parents broke into a long-distance chorus of “Happy Birthday.”

“How did you find me?” I asked in amazement.

“You were staying at the Bristol in Bergen,” said my father, the reporter. “So I thought we’d try the same name in Oslo.”

And the alert desk clerk who had welcomed us had given him the phone number of the club.