The story, which did unfold today was very strange but nice.
While I was in the middle of a guided tour – almost at the end of which actually – in the Dome at Bamberg, I strolled around the altar of the Dome and was just about to catch up with the group. A young woman in company with her friend sayed hello and then asked: “Could it be that you have visited the USA four weeks ago?”.
I must have looked a bit surprised, I guess at first. But she quickly added some locations, such as “Dinosaur National Monument” and “Arches National Park”, so my answer was of course “yes, indeed”, as this really was where I was four weeks ago. The seem to have noticed me on that bus at Dinosaur and then later recognized at Arches. That alone is not, that surprising as I learned myself on my USA trip, when I recognized the car of a couple I first saw at Yellowstone and then 3 weeks later a Yosemite again. But it is quite remarkable that we met again after the holidays. We exchanged a few words and all three of us were kind of really surprised. But then I joined my group again for the last explanations.
Well if you can meet tree times by pure coincident, I guess, you can also meet four times. Half an hour later or so, when I was in the middle of my lunch (Blut- und Leberwurst by the way), the two passed by me again. This time it was me who said hello. So they joined my at my table and had some more time figure out how we did end up to be in both the places.
Although the young couple lives in Germany, Bamberg is not their hometown. They just did spent a long weekend together, which they received as a gift earlier on. So not only did we do a similar tour in the USA (Yellowstone, where we did NOT meet, Dinosaur NP, Arches NP etc), but back home we also ended up to visit the same town at the same time, and even join the same tour (though in different groups).
I knew that the world is small and you always have to behave as you might meet someone you know. But I was not aware that it is that small, that you even get recognized by people you stumble upon on holidays.
All by all, that was a really nice meeting and even though its unlikely, I see the two again, I would not be surprised if I ever will.
