Photo: Maddy Young
In May of 2024, I went on the 11-day Contiki European Horizon trip. We started in Amsterdam and traveled through multiple countries ultimately ending in Paris. After Amsterdam, we visited two cities in Germany – Sankt Goar in the Rhine Valley and Munich.
While I was in Sankt Goar, I was scrolling through Instagram stories and saw that my friend Kayla, one of my friends from college (University) was posting photos that looked a lot like Europe. Since we both live in New England, I figured she couldn’t be posting from home. So, I reached out to her and she just so happened to be in Austria at the time, but she said she would be in Munich the following day, and crazy enough, I would be too!
Traveling with Contiki you learn to expect the unexpected, especially when you’re given free time to go off and explore the cities. I also learned that coincidences like this happen more often than you’d think; At least five other people in my group of 40 had met up with friends throughout Europe while on the trip.
Kayla had graduated a few years ahead of me and because of COVID, I hadn’t seen her in five years so, of course, we made a plan to meet up after our planned day activities. She was traveling with a different tour company and had visited Dachau that day while I had a bike tour of the English Gardens with Mike’s Bikes. By the time she went to visit the English Gardens, I was already at the Beer Hall so we planned to meet up at her hostel a little later instead.
I left the rest of my Contiki group and took a Bolt, a European ride-share service, to meet her at her hostel near Olympiapark. When I got there, she came down the elevator and as soon as we saw each other, she screamed and ran to me and we hugged for at least five minutes – the rest of the people in the lobby probably thought we were crazy as they were staring at us while we freaked out a bit.
We hung out in the lounge of her hostel and caught up with each other on life and relationships, laughing at the wild coincidence of us finding each other half-way across the globe!
It was quite fitting for us since we had originally become friends because of our passion for travel. The first time I met Kayla, within five minutes of talking to her, she was telling me stories about her time studying abroad in Australia at Bond University and travelling New Zealand, and we instantly decided that we were going to be friends and would travel together!
Seeing a friend after a long stretch of time is always a happy moment, but the chances of being in the same city in Europe at the same time was unbelievable and it definitely made my Contiki trip and overall time in Munich that much more special!
