I was in Ireland with my parents in 93. My parents had been out to the pub and met another Dutch couple that stayed at the same hostel.
At morning we joined them at the breakfast table and introduced me: ‘this is our son, x’. Now you must know that my name is quite uncommon, as it is the only way I’m in the 1%.
The guy said, I once met a boy with that name in Yugoslavia, in 84. He had helped that boy get back his swimming shoes from the bottom of the bay. That boy was me. If my name was more common we’d never have known that we met before almost a decade ago.
That’s one. The other one was in Africa. Somewhere in the middle of Benin I met a couple from my country. We chatted a bit an the guy was an architect who studied African architecture.
As my home town has a museum in African architecture I asked him if he knew that. He said, of course, we live in the same town. Turns out they lived just around the corner from where I lived. We were practically neighbours.