Small World Moments

I have been traveling quite a bit in the last few years and it seems as if the world has been getting “smaller”. I find myself constantly having “small world moments”. You know that moment when you are sitting in a hostel with a fellow Canadian and you realize you have the same friend? It has been happening to me so much so lately that I have decided to start making a list and writing it all down. Each time it happens (or when I remember one I forgot) I’ll add it to the list. Feel free to comment below to tell me about yours! :)

• In August 2009 I was fairly new to the twitter scene and had been following @nomadicmatt. We had written back and forth to each other a few times but that was about it. At the end of the month I was heading to Spain for La Tomatina and I knew he was too but that was all.

I arrived in Valencia on a Monday afternoon and that night I was in the hostel partying at the bar when I turned around and thought I saw a familiar face. I looked at the guy and said “Matt?” and he looked at me and said “Cailin O’Neil!” In all the hostels and hotels in all of Valencia during one of their busiest weeks of the year where 40,000+ people visit for La Tomatina Festival not only had I ran into this traveling American I randomly met online but he was staying at the same hostel as me! Then again 2 days later in the middle of the largest food fight in the world amongst the 40,000+ people squeezed in the small town of Buñol streets we saw each other again.

• In February 2010 I traveled to Fiji where I met Hanna from Sweden who was also traveling around. Later that March Hanna traveled through Australia and finally returned home to Sweden in April. In May I visited her in Sweden and while visiting her she said to me “You said you were from Halifax right? I think I met a girl from there when I was in Australia.” I didn’t know her but we pulled her up on facebook and I had 10 friends in common with her.

• This one isn’t “as far” of a long shot but for it all to happen within a 10 hour period makes it crazy. In May I went to Newfoundland for the first time ever to party and hang out with @candicewalsh. Within my first hour there we were walking down the street in St. John’s headed to Signal Hill and we passed a guy sitting on the on the sidewalk with his head down reading a book. I did a double take as he looked familiar, I told Candice I thought I knew him but thought it couldn’t be him and kept walking.

As Candice and I hung on for dear life walking along the pathway on the side of Signal Hill at the narrows a group of people walked passed us going the other direction. As I saw them coming one of the guys again looked familiar and I said to him “Are you Drew?” and it turns out it was this guy I went to University with and had traveled on a University trip to France with before. It was his first time ever in Newfoundland as well, just doing the touristy thing like me. I realized he knew the guy I thought I had just seen and asked if he was living in Newfoundland and Drew told me that he was and that was probably him. So that is two people I knew within 1 hour in a city I’ve never been.

Later that night Candice and her roommates held a keg party. One of Candice’s roommates had a friend who showed up with 11 guys from Halifax. I had actually met one of them before in Halifax and I had friends in common with at least 3 or 4 others.

• When I flew to Australia in February 2010 there was a guy I went to high school with on my flight from Toronto to Vancouver. Another time I was flying to London and a different guy that I went to high school with was on my flight.


• Whenever I visit Toronto I always run into someone from home, without fail. Every. Single. Time.

• July 2010 through twitter I met Celeste Brash of Lonely Planet and saw that she was visiting Halifax, Nova Scotia updating a guide book so we met up for dinner. While chatting I noticed she was wearing a pearl necklace and I asked if it was Tahitian as she lives in Tahiti. It reminded me of a Tahitian pearl necklace that I had bought an ex-boyfriend many years before. We got to talking about it and it turns out that I had bought the necklace from her husbands pearl farm in Tahiti in January of 2007.

Please share your stories of small world encounters too!