It IS a small world after all

Sorry I haven't written about Krakow or Berlin, two cities I really loved and just didn't find the time to write about. I'm in Gdansk, Poland now and found a great internet cafe, thanks to Dan Gant, a former Echo Bridge colleague, who sent advice about Gdansk.

I've been really lucky to meet some great people in my travels thus far and have only had rare moments of being actually lonely. Since Carolyn and I split up in Barcelona, I was nervous about meeting people, but it's been quite good so far and I hope I will continue to be able to meet fellow travelers even as the summer ends and there are fewer people staying in hostels. Who knows, perhaps that will be even better?

I met an Australian chick, Sheena, in Milan who I got along with well and we talked about meeting in Berlin. I decided to go there before she and her boyfriend had a chance to make it there and met another Australian woman, Lara, who was staying in my hostel room. Lara and I hit it off immediately and I plan to meet her tomorrow in Krakow for dinner. I just went to add Lara as my facebook friend and it turns out that we have a mutual friend in common...Sheena! How crazy is that, that I met two friends in two different cities who know each other?

But, that's not all. One of the people I became friends with last year is Morocco is now teaching English in Brest, France. We recently had a chance to meet up in Prague to catch up. It was already strange enough to me that we were in Prague at the same time, but when I met another of his friends randomly a few weeks later, I really started to wonder about this whole six degrees of separation thing. There was a girl from New Zealand staying in my hostel room in Berlin and she and I hung out one day. When she told me that she too was teaching English in Brest, I asked if she knew Xac. It turns out that he's one of her best friends. Crazy, huh? I just wonder how many other travelers I've met who are also separated by one degree to someone I know. It really makes the world seem like such a small place when these things happen.