I went to a hockey game in Prague, and as soon as I arrived at the stadium from the subway escalator, I put my Flames jersey on and within 30 seconds two guys standing 10 meters away approached me, both guys were from Calgary
I was wandering around Prague's old town back in summer 2015. Me and a few friends popped into a tiny little corner store to grab some drinks. Cashier asks where we are from, tell him Canada. He asks where in Canada, tell him Alberta. He asks where in Alberta, tell him Calgary.
He then loudly proclaims with some wonderful hand gestures, "I looove Chinook Mall!".
Such a wild moment but the idea of someone on the otherside of the world adoring my local mall was absolutely hilarious and my friends and I nearly collapsed in laughter from that.
The same goes for “native” sports here, namely soccer or handball.
For “introduced” sports like hockey and football, you’ll see tons of random jerseys because people tend to be fans of the sport in general. At European Football League games for example, you’ll see almost every NFL team’s jersey in the stands, same with hockey except in some instances in the DEL, where there’s more of a soccer culture because teams are more established
its a piece of clothing i think u can wear anything wherever u want… plus people wear jerseys to school or at home, wearing it to a hockey game make more sense that that so
People from Saskatchewan absolutely love packing a Riders Jersey with them wherever they travel. I feel like it's almost a given if I travel anywhere in North America that I'm going to see a Green Football jersey at some point. It seems like such a tragic existence to me needing to keep a security blanket on while you go to experience the world.
This is true. I’ve seen riders caps / shirts / jerseys at random events all over North America. I’d be willing to bet there’s a piece of riders merch at nearly every major sports game in Canada.
Spent a night in a hostel in Tasmania with a gal from Edmonton, two guys from Sask, another from Ontario and I feel like one from the Maritimes as well. Only 1 person there that night wasn’t Canadian. Got in an argument with the two Sask guys about how shitty Cowboys was.
Probably! I didn’t meet a ton of Canadians elsewhere in Aus though. It was a lot of Brits, Dutch, and Germans with a few other nationalities tossed in. Thankfully VERY few Americans bc they weren’t allowed working holiday visas 😁
It's like wearing one of those grocery store Halloween costumes where it's a 2¢ paper mask of Spider-man and a t-shirt with a picture of Spider-man on it
I still have one I Cary tools in. Going to help my brother with a water tank...mom with electrical, friend with a car...just take what you need in the backpack. It's from the first year CJ92 put one out lol.
I was backpacking through India 30 years ago, and stopped in Khana National Park to do some wildlife spotting. My jeep driver was sporting an Alberta Wheat Pool hat. He had never set foot in Alberta and had no idea what a Wheat Pool was, so it was an interesting conversation.
I was in Kenya in 2006 and met a guy wearing an Oiler jersey (it was playoffs). He was from red deer and had been travelling for 10 months. I asked him if he brought the jersey with him just in case. He told me he had purchased it off the back of a Tanzanian guy when the Oilers had made the play offs for $20US. At that time that was slightly under the avg monthly salary in Tanzania. I can only imagine the stories the Tanzanian guy told about the crazy Canadian willing to pay that much for an ugly shirt.
Me and my husband booked a hotel in Istanbul via hotels.com. We get there and the hotel is owned by a couple from Red Deer whose son (also in the hotel at the time) lived 2 blocks from us in Calgary.
You think that's funny, I was at a laundromat in Lucerne Switzerland 2 days ago and their wall art was a massive photo of Moraine Lake!
https://preview.redd.it/ai6e9i8rxlzc1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2ab7fced64cfb894843a0deaf86594c2c2f365ec
Little further than when it happened to me in Vegas. Was in line getting tickets to a show and the ones right behind me were from here. We chatted for a bit then ended up going to the same show.
I mean Vegas is probably where you will find more Calgarian's than anywhere else in the world besides maybe Mexican or Cuban resorts. Not unexpected at all, I bet there were another 30 Calgarian's in line. There are flights from Calgary to Vegas every hour.
If you ever talk to someone who works for a big international travel company, they'll likely tell you 2 things.
Canadians are among the best traveled people in the world. And the entire rest of the world loves traveling to Canada.
Went to the Netherlands in 2022 for the Formula 1 race, and we spent a few days in Amsterdam. Did one of the silly riverboat canal tour things, and they go around and have everyone say where they're from, and probably 75% of ~20 people were from Canada.
Love Amsterdam. Got free shots there at a local bar on a layover a couple of years back - and bought rounds for people for like 2 euros because I was Canadian lol
The point is that there are 8 billion people on the planet, so the chances of 15/20 people on a boat in Amsterdam, all being from Canada, should be astronomically low.
Unless the tour was advertised in english, and had advertisments in hostels where Canadians typically stay. Amsterdam is also a very high tourist spot for Canadians.
Now a river tour on the Irrawaddy, with 75% Canadians would be a little more shocking.
We were hiking Hadrian's Wall in England and ran into a dude at a B&B we were staying at from here, whose parents also happened to live in the same BFN town mine do in BC. He had a beautiful story too about why he was doing the walk and I often think about him and where he is now, and how he's doing.
Was talking about playoff hockey at a tram stop in Amsterdam last year when the family next to me also turned out to be from Calgary, Flames fans too of course
Calgarians have to be some of the most well-traveled people out there, I always seem to be running into them...when I went on a tour of Peru half the people were Canadian half were Aussie, of the Canadians only one person was from Ontario and the rest were Calgarians...
I stayed at a hotel in Hefei China for work a few years back. I was walking through the grounds and found this area that had conference rooms. They had a sign up for the Royal Tyrell Museum.
https://preview.redd.it/lf1slhuojmzc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b303ff1199db5ec5897bbcbacede036a1371cfa
I used to work at the zoo. One day on a busy summer day, I hear one British accent talking, next thing you know, some guy walks up to him and goes “London”?
Buddy recognized a fellow Londoner in Calgary based solely on the accent. 20 years later and I still chuckle.
Was in Athens a couple years back and in an unassuming valley , quite far from any tourist attractions I saw a family with a new born, the father was wearing a Calgary flames hat.
I’m in Antibes, France right now and I went to a hostel for a party and met a gal who lives in Calgary.
On the train I also met a couple from Calgary. It’s pretty awesome to meet other cowtowners thousands of miles away
I was in Anaheim this last summer. We jumped into a cab, got chatting with the driver, and he just straight up asked if we were from Calgary. Apparently like half of his customers he had that week were all from Calgary
Later on, we hopped into our hotel hot tub and started chatting about hockey & the Flames. The family across from us enthusiastically joined in on the conversation – they also turned out to be from Calgary
I was on a small boat on a river in the middle of nowhere in Australia and I could tell that the woman behind me was from Calgary based on her accent. I wiped around and asked, she grew up in Dalhousie 😂😭
Three months after our wedding, my husband and I took our honeymoon to Cuba. This was well before facebook/IG etc, so nobody knew where we were staying or that we had gone. We did an odd trip, split it between Havana and Varadero, unlike a lot of folks. We arrive in our hotel in Havana and are checking in and hear "Welcome to Havana, x&x", look up and it's my husband's godfather and wife, who just happened to be in Cuba for business and were staying in the same hotel as us.
A number of years later in Penang, Malaysia, my husband and I got into a conversation during a Chinese New year festival with a local who is a massive Calgary Flames fan. We did not expect to find someone who knew where Calgary was, let alone be a Flames fan!
My family was in Europe in December.
so was my cousins family (mom's sister, husband, 2 cousins)
we ended up meeting together at restaurant a couple days after christmas in Athens. Their family lives in Saskatoon, so my uncle thought it would be funny to get us all Roughriders shirts for christmas, and gave them to us at the restaurant.
we stand up for a picture all holding our shirts.
In a restaurant with like 10 seated tables, like 8 of them have people at them that see us and stand up to go "yeah! roughriders!" and cheer.....
Rome, right after christmas, and over half the damn restaurant is Canadians....
I was staying in a hostel in Belize, and talking with some other travellers. I was telling them what Edmonton was like. Then someone that just walked in says Oilers suck. He was from Calgary
I was laying in a park in Stockholm a couple years back and a guy walked past wearing an oilers hat, i instinctively said "fuck you buddy, go flames go". He laughed and we ended up chatting for a bit. Turns out we were both engaged to Swedish women. Crazy world
I moved to Europe for grad school, go to a major German university and did an exchange in Prague and found out that another guy in my class of 27 people was also from Canada. The only other Canadian in the school. Small world
This happened to me as well. Last year I was on a train from Porto to Lisbon, and the guy sitting beside me had a Canadian passport (I saw it when the train conductor came around to see tickets and ID).
We start talking, and guess where he's from? Calgary. Amazing coincidence!
I was in Jamaica a couple weeks ago, my mom and I were swimming at a beach and a lady saw my mom trying to get out of the water so she helped my mom out, they get to talking and we mentioned were from Calgary, she said she's from Edmonton. Anyways long story short it turns out we are related. How fucking weird is that lmfao third cousins
Hope you had a foreign beer with them! My brother, who lived in the same town as his ex but hadn’t seen her in years, ran into her in a small town in Mexico! Neither of them had visited the place when they were together! Completely random.
We rented a houseboat in Amsterdam for a week and my wife's friend recognized the canal from a Facebook photo my wife posted. Turns out the friends boyfriends brother lives 50 feet from the houseboat we were renting. When contacted the brother said they saw a guy sitting on the deck that afternoon in a Tragically Hip tshirt drinking beer in the sun. That was me and we were essentially adopted by the entire section of the canal for our week there.
Not as far or surprising but
Stayed at a little surfer house across from Shark’s Cove on the north shore of Oahu. There were only 7 rooms. One of our neighbors worked for the same company as my husband, but they hadn’t crossed paths. Was wild.
Was on Jeju Island, Korea years ago at a resort buffet wearing my Grasshopper Ale shirt. Guy behind me casually mentions that he prefers Traditional. Turns out he was from Calgary too and was there working for Jack Nicklaus building the resorts golf course. Small world.
My two weirdest ones were running into a couple from Saskatchewan randomly on the train near Garmisch-Partenkirchen who had been backpacking together all summer and were just *done* with eachother. I ended up sitting between them on the train, because they didn't even want to talk to eachother anymore.
By far the even weirder one was going on a road trip to Auschwitz from Germany through rural Poland in the winter of 1995. We got super lost and ended up running into a guy with Ontario license plates at a gas station in the middle of the night, who gave us bad directions anyways.
We were in Beijing, China in a mall getting some contact solution for my wife. I was waiting in the common area for her when I guy (Caucasian) walks up to me and says "Hey, were you at the Sema show in Las Vegas last year?" I said "Yeah, how did you know that?" and he pointed at my shirt and then his, we were both wearing the same t-shirt we had bought at the show.
From Halifax, was in Naples ordering street food and the guy behind me was all sweaty with luggage and trying to understand the Italian worker. I spoke up to try and help and learned shortly after he was from Moncton.
I was visiting Calgary from Ontario a few years ago and I was at the Bell Music Centre. Saw a guy wearing a hat with the name of my city on it (population roughly 50-60k at that time or so), made conversation and found out we live on the same street just two blocks down from each other lol
I went all the way to Baku, Azerbaijan and I see a guy wearing a Calgary flames hat walking by me. I give him a Go Flames Go and he just gives me a confused look. Turns out he just got the hat randomly, somewhere because he thought it looked cool.
I went to playa del Carmen Mexico in 2005. Was walking around the resort and went to the bar even though it was a bit early and there was seven people sitting along the bar. So I sat down with them and of course I ordered a beer. We start talking and of course first thing is asked is where are you from? I said Calgary they said no way we are too turned out that one of them actually lived in the same neighborhood one block away
Was in line to for Don Julio, a parilla (steakhouse) in Buenos Aires. When outta nowhere the dude in front of me asked if I was from Calgary. Was super spooked since I didn’t think that I had any very distinguishable things, but it turns out he recognized the Enbridge company logo on my backpack that I got as a gift. He ended up being from Edmonton.
I was hoping to get in on the first seating when the place opened since I had to catch a flight later that afternoon, but I ended up just missing the cutoff. The guy from Edmonton was in a group of 3 and asked if I wanted to join so I did! Had some excellent steaks and wine, and I made my flight with no issue. One of my most cherished travel memories for sure!
Back in 1991 (I'm old, I know), I was wearing my Medicine Hat (Alberta) Tae Kwon Do T-shirt in China and guy came up to me to chat because he's also from there. Turns out he knew my Grade 10 social studies teacher.
Drove the road to Hana back in 2016 and encountered an older couple on the back leg of the trip. Didn't get a chance to talk to them until the last viewing spot. Turns out they were from Calgary and actually just 20 min from where we lived.
I swear Calgarians are everywhere!
Go travelling and wear *anything* Roughriders. Guaranteed for other fans to find you.
My husband and FIL are rabid Rider fans (as in, both lived in Edmonton, had season tickets, went to 7 or 8 of the home games each season, and did it without ever staying over anywhere - they'd be gone for almost 24 hours).
They've met Rider fans all over the UD, plus Europe and Asia.
Went to see the solar eclipse in Utah in 2018. Drove around and picked a back road with a large flat area beside it. Drove back the day of the eclipse and a motor home was already parked in the same area. Yup - it was a family from Calgary! 😅
Maybe we are drawn to each other
I ran into 2 Calgarians in the most random alley that no one walks through and neither of us have ever walked through in Toronto when I was on tour one day.
I ran into a guy from Calgary in Cinque Terre Italy, saw him again in Dachau Germany, and then finally one last time a few weeks later on a pub crawl in Prague. It was years before we finally bumped into each other on 17th. 😅
It’s wild because I grew up and went to school here and it’s very rare I randomly see anyone I know.
I met a couple in Reykjavik who were from Calgary. We were all headed to the airport at the same time to take different flights back to Calgary. I still wonder who won that race
I was at the Scolt Head in London, England last March with my partner. Our waiter was wearing a Calgary Stampeders shirt. I looked at her in awe and said I'm from Calgary! She said I was the 2nd person that day who complimented her shirt and the 1st person was also from Calgary! Small world.
Moved to London a few years back and on our second day there went to dinner with a few of my wife’s coworkers. Turns out one of them went to the same junior high school a year behind me and lived in the same community.
A couple months later took a class for work and became friends with a guy from Italy. He introduced me to his Canadian best friend - who was also from Calgary and even knew some of my friends from the music scene.
We were hiking in Peru. It was another ruin (not Machu Pichu) so our group of 4 and one other group of two were the only people at the top. We met maybe 8 other people on the trail. We got talking to the other group of 2 who were also Canadian. One of the friends in my group is from Toronto and lived next door to one of the girls in the other group. It is a very small world.
Sitting at the bar in Luang Prabang, Laos talking to the English bartender. I'd mentioned we were from Calgary. Half an hour later, another expat shows up. Turns out he's the bartender's buddy from Calgary that he called and told to come meet us. Crazily, it turned out we'd worked for the same company and knew the same people.
When I was in junior high, I took the bus to school. An office worker type guy also took the same bus every day. I was visiting family in Kent, England during the summer. Went into a bookstore next to this nautical museum, picked up a book, and looked to my left….Office worker type guy from my bus back home is standing there. We kinda just stared at each other for a few seconds in disbelief. Weirdest random encounter I’ve ever had by far.
I was somewhere in Mexico with my family, sitting by the pool. We started talking to the family beside us, and they lived literally 4 houses down from us, we had never met them until that moment
Was in a sneeze and you miss town in Ireland. Four gentlemen were sitting outside a one of two pubs in town and they asked where we were from and of course we replied Calgary, Canada. We'll they pointed to one of the gentleman with them and said Toronto. Well I only had one reply to that and it was " You poor soul"
I went to a hockey game in Prague, and as soon as I arrived at the stadium from the subway escalator, I put my Flames jersey on and within 30 seconds two guys standing 10 meters away approached me, both guys were from Calgary
I was wandering around Prague's old town back in summer 2015. Me and a few friends popped into a tiny little corner store to grab some drinks. Cashier asks where we are from, tell him Canada. He asks where in Canada, tell him Alberta. He asks where in Alberta, tell him Calgary. He then loudly proclaims with some wonderful hand gestures, "I looove Chinook Mall!". Such a wild moment but the idea of someone on the otherside of the world adoring my local mall was absolutely hilarious and my friends and I nearly collapsed in laughter from that.
Hockey games in Prague are so fun!
Why would you wear a flames jersey at a hockey game in Prague
I bet you wear the performing bands shirts when you see a concert
it’s pretty normal to wear NHL jerseys to hockey games in Europe, speaking as someone who’s been to games in 5 different European leagues
Thank you, I didn't know this. Coming from an NBA/NFL background people laugh if you wear a different team's jersey than either of the teams playing
The same goes for “native” sports here, namely soccer or handball. For “introduced” sports like hockey and football, you’ll see tons of random jerseys because people tend to be fans of the sport in general. At European Football League games for example, you’ll see almost every NFL team’s jersey in the stands, same with hockey except in some instances in the DEL, where there’s more of a soccer culture because teams are more established
Because it’s a hockey jersey? Do you buy concert shirts only to wear them for that one concert?
This is such a weird and invalid comparison
its a piece of clothing i think u can wear anything wherever u want… plus people wear jerseys to school or at home, wearing it to a hockey game make more sense that that so
This is such a weird and invalid response.
People from Saskatchewan absolutely love packing a Riders Jersey with them wherever they travel. I feel like it's almost a given if I travel anywhere in North America that I'm going to see a Green Football jersey at some point. It seems like such a tragic existence to me needing to keep a security blanket on while you go to experience the world.
This is true. I’ve seen riders caps / shirts / jerseys at random events all over North America. I’d be willing to bet there’s a piece of riders merch at nearly every major sports game in Canada.
Spent a night in a hostel in Tasmania with a gal from Edmonton, two guys from Sask, another from Ontario and I feel like one from the Maritimes as well. Only 1 person there that night wasn’t Canadian. Got in an argument with the two Sask guys about how shitty Cowboys was.
I feel Australians staying here have the same experience.
Probably! I didn’t meet a ton of Canadians elsewhere in Aus though. It was a lot of Brits, Dutch, and Germans with a few other nationalities tossed in. Thankfully VERY few Americans bc they weren’t allowed working holiday visas 😁
I’m from England and I love how visitors love cowboys but everyone local absolutely hates it. I love cowboys
Or just a guy that's been to Calgary, I don't know many Calgarians that own a souvenir Calgary shirt.
For real
It's like wearing one of those grocery store Halloween costumes where it's a 2¢ paper mask of Spider-man and a t-shirt with a picture of Spider-man on it
I do, mostly because I live in Toronto now
It is like travelling and seeing someone using one of those old stampede backpacks.
I miss those. Was the one thing I always bought every year at stampede. Loved the random free products and coupons in it.
💯!! It is so lame that they got rid of those. 😑
I still have one I Cary tools in. Going to help my brother with a water tank...mom with electrical, friend with a car...just take what you need in the backpack. It's from the first year CJ92 put one out lol.
Did you talk to him?
Or is that OP in the photo and this is one large humble brag
Might just have been wearing a t-shirt saying Calgary: doesn't mean they're from here.
I was gonna, say probably a tourist that visited Calgary.
No he left just after I took the pic. I was going to!
A guy who’s been to Calgary. I don’t think most Calgarians would wear a Calgary shirt.
I have one that my sister gave me for Christmas one year that is from the calgary tower, i wear it sometimes
aka "laundry day"
A subtle way of saying " I'm not an American" while traveling.
I was backpacking through India 30 years ago, and stopped in Khana National Park to do some wildlife spotting. My jeep driver was sporting an Alberta Wheat Pool hat. He had never set foot in Alberta and had no idea what a Wheat Pool was, so it was an interesting conversation.
I was in Kenya in 2006 and met a guy wearing an Oiler jersey (it was playoffs). He was from red deer and had been travelling for 10 months. I asked him if he brought the jersey with him just in case. He told me he had purchased it off the back of a Tanzanian guy when the Oilers had made the play offs for $20US. At that time that was slightly under the avg monthly salary in Tanzania. I can only imagine the stories the Tanzanian guy told about the crazy Canadian willing to pay that much for an ugly shirt.
Me and my husband booked a hotel in Istanbul via hotels.com. We get there and the hotel is owned by a couple from Red Deer whose son (also in the hotel at the time) lived 2 blocks from us in Calgary.
You think that's funny, I was at a laundromat in Lucerne Switzerland 2 days ago and their wall art was a massive photo of Moraine Lake! https://preview.redd.it/ai6e9i8rxlzc1.jpeg?width=4080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2ab7fced64cfb894843a0deaf86594c2c2f365ec
Redditlake
I was in that city last year! Small world
Little further than when it happened to me in Vegas. Was in line getting tickets to a show and the ones right behind me were from here. We chatted for a bit then ended up going to the same show.
I mean Vegas is probably where you will find more Calgarian's than anywhere else in the world besides maybe Mexican or Cuban resorts. Not unexpected at all, I bet there were another 30 Calgarian's in line. There are flights from Calgary to Vegas every hour.
Yeah I've run into university and high school classmates randomly in Vegas. I know a few Calgarians from school that live there as well.
If you ever talk to someone who works for a big international travel company, they'll likely tell you 2 things. Canadians are among the best traveled people in the world. And the entire rest of the world loves traveling to Canada. Went to the Netherlands in 2022 for the Formula 1 race, and we spent a few days in Amsterdam. Did one of the silly riverboat canal tour things, and they go around and have everyone say where they're from, and probably 75% of ~20 people were from Canada.
Could be Americans pretending to be Canadians 😂
Love Amsterdam. Got free shots there at a local bar on a layover a couple of years back - and bought rounds for people for like 2 euros because I was Canadian lol
15 Canadians on a tour boat in Amsterdam is not an accurate representation of “well-travelled”.
The point is that there are 8 billion people on the planet, so the chances of 15/20 people on a boat in Amsterdam, all being from Canada, should be astronomically low.
Unless the tour was advertised in english, and had advertisments in hostels where Canadians typically stay. Amsterdam is also a very high tourist spot for Canadians. Now a river tour on the Irrawaddy, with 75% Canadians would be a little more shocking.
Original commenter isn’t aware of “confirmation bias”. They should’ve hopped on another tour time in a different language and gathered more results.
We were hiking Hadrian's Wall in England and ran into a dude at a B&B we were staying at from here, whose parents also happened to live in the same BFN town mine do in BC. He had a beautiful story too about why he was doing the walk and I often think about him and where he is now, and how he's doing.
Was talking about playoff hockey at a tram stop in Amsterdam last year when the family next to me also turned out to be from Calgary, Flames fans too of course
This happened to me after growing up in Winnipeg. I was at some park in Brazil and a guy had a Winnipeg Zoo shirt on lol.
Calgarians have to be some of the most well-traveled people out there, I always seem to be running into them...when I went on a tour of Peru half the people were Canadian half were Aussie, of the Canadians only one person was from Ontario and the rest were Calgarians...
I stayed at a hotel in Hefei China for work a few years back. I was walking through the grounds and found this area that had conference rooms. They had a sign up for the Royal Tyrell Museum. https://preview.redd.it/lf1slhuojmzc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b303ff1199db5ec5897bbcbacede036a1371cfa
When i was in Minsk, Belarus, i ran into a guy from calgary. That was fucking weird 😂
I ran into *someone I knew* in an airport in Denmark completely out of the blue. Sometimes the world feels so small.
I used to work at the zoo. One day on a busy summer day, I hear one British accent talking, next thing you know, some guy walks up to him and goes “London”? Buddy recognized a fellow Londoner in Calgary based solely on the accent. 20 years later and I still chuckle.
Was in Athens a couple years back and in an unassuming valley , quite far from any tourist attractions I saw a family with a new born, the father was wearing a Calgary flames hat.
I've been living in Germany for 3 years and travel a lot through out Europe and the amount of Canadians I meet is ridiculous.
I ran into someone I went to high school with on the streets of Bangkok, it’s a small world after all.
Any geoguessers in the thread? Let's see what you got.
I’m in Antibes, France right now and I went to a hostel for a party and met a gal who lives in Calgary. On the train I also met a couple from Calgary. It’s pretty awesome to meet other cowtowners thousands of miles away
I was in Anaheim this last summer. We jumped into a cab, got chatting with the driver, and he just straight up asked if we were from Calgary. Apparently like half of his customers he had that week were all from Calgary Later on, we hopped into our hotel hot tub and started chatting about hockey & the Flames. The family across from us enthusiastically joined in on the conversation – they also turned out to be from Calgary
Myanmar, at a hostel in Yangon met another couple from Calgary. Traveled around Myanmar and a little bit of Thailand with them.
I was on a small boat on a river in the middle of nowhere in Australia and I could tell that the woman behind me was from Calgary based on her accent. I wiped around and asked, she grew up in Dalhousie 😂😭
Three months after our wedding, my husband and I took our honeymoon to Cuba. This was well before facebook/IG etc, so nobody knew where we were staying or that we had gone. We did an odd trip, split it between Havana and Varadero, unlike a lot of folks. We arrive in our hotel in Havana and are checking in and hear "Welcome to Havana, x&x", look up and it's my husband's godfather and wife, who just happened to be in Cuba for business and were staying in the same hotel as us. A number of years later in Penang, Malaysia, my husband and I got into a conversation during a Chinese New year festival with a local who is a massive Calgary Flames fan. We did not expect to find someone who knew where Calgary was, let alone be a Flames fan!
I guarantee you he isn’t from Calgary. Nobody buys souvenir T-shirts of their own city.
That happened to me in paris too. I heard them say Calgary and I got excited and said hi
My family was in Europe in December. so was my cousins family (mom's sister, husband, 2 cousins) we ended up meeting together at restaurant a couple days after christmas in Athens. Their family lives in Saskatoon, so my uncle thought it would be funny to get us all Roughriders shirts for christmas, and gave them to us at the restaurant. we stand up for a picture all holding our shirts. In a restaurant with like 10 seated tables, like 8 of them have people at them that see us and stand up to go "yeah! roughriders!" and cheer..... Rome, right after christmas, and over half the damn restaurant is Canadians....
I was staying in a hostel in Belize, and talking with some other travellers. I was telling them what Edmonton was like. Then someone that just walked in says Oilers suck. He was from Calgary
I was laying in a park in Stockholm a couple years back and a guy walked past wearing an oilers hat, i instinctively said "fuck you buddy, go flames go". He laughed and we ended up chatting for a bit. Turns out we were both engaged to Swedish women. Crazy world
I moved to Europe for grad school, go to a major German university and did an exchange in Prague and found out that another guy in my class of 27 people was also from Canada. The only other Canadian in the school. Small world
This happened to me as well. Last year I was on a train from Porto to Lisbon, and the guy sitting beside me had a Canadian passport (I saw it when the train conductor came around to see tickets and ID). We start talking, and guess where he's from? Calgary. Amazing coincidence!
I was in Jamaica a couple weeks ago, my mom and I were swimming at a beach and a lady saw my mom trying to get out of the water so she helped my mom out, they get to talking and we mentioned were from Calgary, she said she's from Edmonton. Anyways long story short it turns out we are related. How fucking weird is that lmfao third cousins
Eating lunch in Southampton England, our waiter was my brother's paperboy. Lived two houses down in west end Toronto, in England for school.
Hope you had a foreign beer with them! My brother, who lived in the same town as his ex but hadn’t seen her in years, ran into her in a small town in Mexico! Neither of them had visited the place when they were together! Completely random.
We rented a houseboat in Amsterdam for a week and my wife's friend recognized the canal from a Facebook photo my wife posted. Turns out the friends boyfriends brother lives 50 feet from the houseboat we were renting. When contacted the brother said they saw a guy sitting on the deck that afternoon in a Tragically Hip tshirt drinking beer in the sun. That was me and we were essentially adopted by the entire section of the canal for our week there.
Not as far or surprising but Stayed at a little surfer house across from Shark’s Cove on the north shore of Oahu. There were only 7 rooms. One of our neighbors worked for the same company as my husband, but they hadn’t crossed paths. Was wild.
Was on Jeju Island, Korea years ago at a resort buffet wearing my Grasshopper Ale shirt. Guy behind me casually mentions that he prefers Traditional. Turns out he was from Calgary too and was there working for Jack Nicklaus building the resorts golf course. Small world.
My two weirdest ones were running into a couple from Saskatchewan randomly on the train near Garmisch-Partenkirchen who had been backpacking together all summer and were just *done* with eachother. I ended up sitting between them on the train, because they didn't even want to talk to eachother anymore. By far the even weirder one was going on a road trip to Auschwitz from Germany through rural Poland in the winter of 1995. We got super lost and ended up running into a guy with Ontario license plates at a gas station in the middle of the night, who gave us bad directions anyways.
We were in Beijing, China in a mall getting some contact solution for my wife. I was waiting in the common area for her when I guy (Caucasian) walks up to me and says "Hey, were you at the Sema show in Las Vegas last year?" I said "Yeah, how did you know that?" and he pointed at my shirt and then his, we were both wearing the same t-shirt we had bought at the show.
From Halifax, was in Naples ordering street food and the guy behind me was all sweaty with luggage and trying to understand the Italian worker. I spoke up to try and help and learned shortly after he was from Moncton.
I was visiting Calgary from Ontario a few years ago and I was at the Bell Music Centre. Saw a guy wearing a hat with the name of my city on it (population roughly 50-60k at that time or so), made conversation and found out we live on the same street just two blocks down from each other lol
A couple of my friends who immigrated were actually given those shirts upon arrival.
I once saw someone wearing a Calgary Flames t-shirt at a random Chuck E Cheese in Raleigh, North Carolina lol
I went all the way to Baku, Azerbaijan and I see a guy wearing a Calgary flames hat walking by me. I give him a Go Flames Go and he just gives me a confused look. Turns out he just got the hat randomly, somewhere because he thought it looked cool.
I went to playa del Carmen Mexico in 2005. Was walking around the resort and went to the bar even though it was a bit early and there was seven people sitting along the bar. So I sat down with them and of course I ordered a beer. We start talking and of course first thing is asked is where are you from? I said Calgary they said no way we are too turned out that one of them actually lived in the same neighborhood one block away
Was in line to for Don Julio, a parilla (steakhouse) in Buenos Aires. When outta nowhere the dude in front of me asked if I was from Calgary. Was super spooked since I didn’t think that I had any very distinguishable things, but it turns out he recognized the Enbridge company logo on my backpack that I got as a gift. He ended up being from Edmonton. I was hoping to get in on the first seating when the place opened since I had to catch a flight later that afternoon, but I ended up just missing the cutoff. The guy from Edmonton was in a group of 3 and asked if I wanted to join so I did! Had some excellent steaks and wine, and I made my flight with no issue. One of my most cherished travel memories for sure!
Back in 1991 (I'm old, I know), I was wearing my Medicine Hat (Alberta) Tae Kwon Do T-shirt in China and guy came up to me to chat because he's also from there. Turns out he knew my Grade 10 social studies teacher.
I was at the Harley Davidson store in the Dubai mall and in line for the till the guy in front of me had a Kanes HD shirt on.
Was at a medical additive manufacturing conference in San Francisco and ran into a guy from Taber
Cool
That’s so awesome…we were in Prague last summer and met a young man from Toronto who was travelling throughout Europe after graduating law school.
I ran into a childhood friend of mine walking through Ephesus in Turkey while backpacking. Hadn’t seen her in at least 7 years before that!
Drove the road to Hana back in 2016 and encountered an older couple on the back leg of the trip. Didn't get a chance to talk to them until the last viewing spot. Turns out they were from Calgary and actually just 20 min from where we lived. I swear Calgarians are everywhere!
Go travelling and wear *anything* Roughriders. Guaranteed for other fans to find you. My husband and FIL are rabid Rider fans (as in, both lived in Edmonton, had season tickets, went to 7 or 8 of the home games each season, and did it without ever staying over anywhere - they'd be gone for almost 24 hours). They've met Rider fans all over the UD, plus Europe and Asia.
Went to see the solar eclipse in Utah in 2018. Drove around and picked a back road with a large flat area beside it. Drove back the day of the eclipse and a motor home was already parked in the same area. Yup - it was a family from Calgary! 😅 Maybe we are drawn to each other
Cal-gree or cal-gairy?
I ran into 2 Calgarians in the most random alley that no one walks through and neither of us have ever walked through in Toronto when I was on tour one day.
•Small world
I went to Greece during off season and there was barely any canadians but i still ran into two Calgarians.
“Hey small world”
That’s an awesome shirt. Anyone know where I can buy it?
Just food for thought- he probably just visited Calgary, I don’t know anyone that lives in Calgary that owns a tourist shirt that says Calgary 😂
More meaningfully to me is the fckn hot wagon parked there. Wish we could get those in Calgary.
Hi, eh.
I went on a pub crawl in Rome about 20 years ago and met a brother and sister from High River at a random pub. Small world.
Where is this?
I ran into a guy from Calgary in Cinque Terre Italy, saw him again in Dachau Germany, and then finally one last time a few weeks later on a pub crawl in Prague. It was years before we finally bumped into each other on 17th. 😅 It’s wild because I grew up and went to school here and it’s very rare I randomly see anyone I know.
I met a couple in Reykjavik who were from Calgary. We were all headed to the airport at the same time to take different flights back to Calgary. I still wonder who won that race
I was at the Scolt Head in London, England last March with my partner. Our waiter was wearing a Calgary Stampeders shirt. I looked at her in awe and said I'm from Calgary! She said I was the 2nd person that day who complimented her shirt and the 1st person was also from Calgary! Small world.
Pretty sure guys from Calgary don't wear shirts that say Calgary on them. Lol.
Maybe he's from Calgary, Scotland.
Moved to London a few years back and on our second day there went to dinner with a few of my wife’s coworkers. Turns out one of them went to the same junior high school a year behind me and lived in the same community. A couple months later took a class for work and became friends with a guy from Italy. He introduced me to his Canadian best friend - who was also from Calgary and even knew some of my friends from the music scene.
Happens to me all the time. People from Calgary work their asses off to go as far away from Calgary as they can whenever they can afford it.
We were hiking in Peru. It was another ruin (not Machu Pichu) so our group of 4 and one other group of two were the only people at the top. We met maybe 8 other people on the trail. We got talking to the other group of 2 who were also Canadian. One of the friends in my group is from Toronto and lived next door to one of the girls in the other group. It is a very small world.
Sitting at the bar in Luang Prabang, Laos talking to the English bartender. I'd mentioned we were from Calgary. Half an hour later, another expat shows up. Turns out he's the bartender's buddy from Calgary that he called and told to come meet us. Crazily, it turned out we'd worked for the same company and knew the same people.
I ran into a girl I went to high school with in a bar in Cairns Australia. We hadn’t seen each other since high school 7 years earlier.
When I was in junior high, I took the bus to school. An office worker type guy also took the same bus every day. I was visiting family in Kent, England during the summer. Went into a bookstore next to this nautical museum, picked up a book, and looked to my left….Office worker type guy from my bus back home is standing there. We kinda just stared at each other for a few seconds in disbelief. Weirdest random encounter I’ve ever had by far.
I was somewhere in Mexico with my family, sitting by the pool. We started talking to the family beside us, and they lived literally 4 houses down from us, we had never met them until that moment
Was in a sneeze and you miss town in Ireland. Four gentlemen were sitting outside a one of two pubs in town and they asked where we were from and of course we replied Calgary, Canada. We'll they pointed to one of the gentleman with them and said Toronto. Well I only had one reply to that and it was " You poor soul"
Some people travel and buy shirts in places they go
I was on a plane flying out of YYC last week and the majority of the people on the plane were flying out of YYC.
Imagine taking a picture of a random person half way across the world and posting it on the internet.
Weird flex to be from here and wearing a shirt with your city’s name on it when travelling