We all have our stories, I'm sure.
Meeting someone in a foreign country and they are from your hometown.
Meeting someone and learning you are somehow related.
Meeting someone away from home and finding out you have the same friends.
Stories like that.
Just recently, my sister and I added a new one to our repertoire.
Of course, our town has changed quite a bit since we were kids and keeps changing. Old houses get torn down, new ones built, there's construction, shops close down, new ones open up, a shop building gets transformed into flats, etc.
Sometimes I will walk somewhere and try to remember what a shop was called that used to be here or what the building looked like that used to be where there's a big hole all of a sudden.
Even as a child I have been a fan of old photos, and in these moments I think it's a pity we don't have more photos from around town.
There have always been people taking pictures, though, and there have been postcards, and some of these turn up on social media, on websites selling postcards for collectors, and on eBay.
Every, now and then we go through them and in very rare cases, we even get one - like the one I'm going to tell you about now.
My sister called to say I should have a look at that one postcard of our "Stadthalle" (which literally translates to "town hall", but your "town hall/city hall" is called "Rathaus" here, it's a place for plays, concerts, talks, antique fairs, balls, which can also be rented for big weddings) and its park.
As kids we were in the park a lot because we lived almost next to it, playing, reading, looking for tadpoles.
It was interesting to see how small the trees to the right still were back then, how different the paths looked, the flowers around the little springs were missing, the building still had the clock and the old logo ...
The seller also had a picture of the back. I edited private information out even though the card is from 1976.
In translation, the text reads:
"Dear Mrs. ...!
Thank you very much for your kind Christmas and New Year wishes which I warmly return. I live right next to the Stadthalle xx now. It's really nice! How are you? Are you all well? Kind regards! ..."
I read out the signature to my sister and still wondered why that name sounded so familiar to me when she said "What??".
The name had been familiar because she had had a neighbor with the same name ... living next to the Stadthalle ... in the same house as her ...
That's when I noticed. The card had been written in red, but there were those two black x next to the word Stadthalle, and there was a black x on the vertical line with the postcard printer's name and what we both had missed before, there was ... no kidding ... my sister's address!
Her neighbor had sent this card!
That means the postcard went to Austria in January 1976 and almost 50 years later it came back to Göppingen via a postcard dealer in Berlin, back to the same house where it was probably written ... in the flat where another family member of mine is living now!
I have to admit I got goosebumps a little and yes, of course we bought it.
Seriously now, what are the odds?
Do you have a story about the "small world"?
If so, I'd love to hear it!
P.S. See the number I circled in? Our zip code, you would think ... wrong, it's a typo, our zip code was 732 then!