Fun thread! I've had quite a few also, seems like I'm always running into friends/colleagues on planes. Here are some of the more random/memorable stories about planes, trains & familiar names:

-Boarding a flight in ATL, after the BP scanner flashed my name the man behind me in line asks, "is <Weezer> your maiden name?" I wasn't married at the time & said, it's my only name (technically it still is). He's married to my cousin though I had never met him prior.

-During a college trip abroad, boarded the Tube in London & ran into a friend who lived 2 houses down from me in Savannah.

-Seated at the next table from a couple in a hotel restaurant in Ireland, from their conversation they were obviously from ATL. The tables were very close, I interjected that I also lived in ATL, then introductions were made. My parents were with me & she recognized our name. Turns out she grew up down the street from us in SAV & had gone to school w my brother.

-Visiting the Great Wall in China with a friend, I stopped to take pictures & she continued ahead. A couple asked her to take their picture & noting their Southern accent she asked where they were from. They were from the same town in Miss. & the husband's business partner was one of my friend's parents' best friends. Being good Southerners, the wife called my friend's parents when they got home to introduce herself, say she had met their lovely daughter & to pass along their thanks for the beautiful photo she had taken.

-Another 6-degrees encounter related to same friend from Miss. recently. Chatted w a man on an ATL-BZN flight, found out he's from the Miss. coast & good friends w same friend's brother. Take that, Kevin Bacon!

If you asked my husband, he'd say we can't go anywhere without me running into a relative, friend, or someone w mutual friends. I just remind him my heritage is Irish, we've never met a stranger.

At the Prague train station the summer after I graduated, I saw my neighbor from the apartment where I had lived my senior year. We didn't really know each other that well, just said hi when we saw each other in the hall. I saw her and said wow, small world. She was there with her sister. Started talking to her and she had just graduated as well, from a difference college. Same major as me. Wow, small world. Talked some more and the world got to be the size of a square block. In the fall I was moving to New York City and had a job lined up with a small IB. Turns out she was moving to NY as well and had a job lined up with a small IB. And her office was literally across the street from my office.

The natural end of this story would have been we met up in NY, dated, married and had 2.2 kids, a Volvo station wagon with a dog. But didn't quite go that way. She ended up not going after all, got a better offer from a tech company in California and went out there instead. Kept in touch for a year or so but haven't heard from her since.

Saw our pediatrician coming back from Maui on the same flight..

OGG-YYC..

Saw him at church a few weeks later.. got to know his wife and kids..

When I was in high school I volunteered as a Student Office Aid for the Principal's Secretary. I had close relations with the Principal. As it turns out my Cousin worked on my Principal's Brother's campaign. Facebook is quite amazing for working this out.

As for my travels I have run into my friend checking in for a flight at SFO International Terminal.

I was seated next to the previous owner of my house as the name sounded familiar and confirmed that he was from the same city. We talked about how my house was before we remodeled and how our neighborhood was etc.

I ran into a Cousin at Dallas Fort-Worth Airport Customs.

I pretty much grew up overseas and I still travel frequently and on almost every trip I bump into someone I know while transiting DXB or LHR. Small world indeed.

Not quite as many as some people, but Ireland is full of these events. Everybody knows everybody, somehow. Most of mine involve bumping into people in London in various places, but the greatest one of late:
Brother-in-law recently moved to MEL and was telling me about his friend there who grew up at the same time, in the same small-ish town in Poland (~50,000 people), yet the two of them had never met until they moved to MEL. Apparently there were two high schools in town and they went to different ones, yet they had common friends.

Nahhhh....

Mike

I've had 3 in the past decade that really caught me off guard and made me wonder: how many people have I walked right past because one little detail didn't line up...

1. On the Big Island, Hawaii on a random summer day in the town of Puako which is essentially a one way street of about 200 homes that ends no where [only divers come visit]. Car driving down stops to ask for directions and it's a great friend from middle school

2. Couple years later and I'm in Maui [so I like hawaii...] with my parents. We're staying in Kihei but head to Lahaina for the day. Waves are too choppy to snorkel @ the beach we picked so we wander to a random restaurant. Next table over is my best friend from high school and her fiance. ^

3. Walking the streets of Campos do Jordao in Brazil which, while certainly a tourist destination, was just about entirely Brazilians that week as it was off-season, and pass right by a women who I shared many classes with in college [I had just graduated at the time].

There's been dozens of other times where I've wandered into coworkers and friends at airports, baseball games and other places that were close but not close enough to have expected it.

Small world indeed.

1) In NY back 2002 with my wife for the weekend. We were shopping at Macy's Herald Square. Turned the corner and there was my mom with two of her friends. All five of us live in Baltimore. Neither my mom nor I knew either of us would be in NY. Very funny.

2) Feb 2001--New Orleans--met a guy playing Pai Gow Poker and Craps at Harrah's. Over the next 18mos I ran into him at the Rio Las Vegas and Showboat AC--guess that says I was gambling too much

I run into people in strange places all the time.

The most unusual occurrence of this was a few years back, in the parking lot at Del Taco on Manchester near LAX. I hear someone yelling my name as I'm walking back to my rental car, about to catch a flight. Turns out it was a middle school classmate of mine from Connecticut, who went to college in SoCal and stayed. I hadn't seen him since 8th grade, about 12 years earlier.

Then shortly after that, I saw a college friend from Virginia and his wife on a MKE-LGA AirTran flight. They lived in Europe at the time but were in the states visiting family.

And when on Maui in 2009, I was wearing my UVA cap and someone yells "Go Hokies!" in the parking lot at a beach. Not someone I knew, but cool to have a Virginia sports rivalry 5000 miles from home.

Another story,

Back in 2004 I was moving to Germany. I can never sleep on a East bound TATL and at some point during the night I got up just to stretch my legs.

I was peeking out of the window on an exit door and another fellow joined me. We made some small talk and returned to our seats. A week later we ran into each other, we were assigned to the same Army unit in Kaiserslautern, Germany.

Funny.. My 5 year old asks me today..

Remember the boat ride at Disney World dad? Its called A Small World..

Back in 1996, my best friend who happened to be a female, and my self went backpacking all over Europe. We went all over Germany, Italy,France, Amsterdam, Denmark, and then Sweden. We were having a coffee at an outdoor cafe in Nice, France when she looked up and saw an old boyfriend she had dated in like 1992. They were both from a small town in Arkansas. I thought that was quite a random small world story.

So did she say hi?

Its good to have best friends.. and not get to hung up about relationships..

Six years ago when I was still living at home in New York I took a trip to Cleveland. As I was leaving CLE I ran into my brother's best friend (whom I couldn't stand). He was there seeing NCAA basketball games I think and bizarrely, he wanted to talk to me when I just wanted to leave.