On Synchronicity

And the consoling mysteries of travel

On my first night in Bratislava, I went to dinner at a fin-de-siècle-looking café near my hotel. It was a warm September evening, and all the outdoor tables were filled. The interior, however, was nearly empty, and so I took a seat far from the door, ordered a beer and some chicken paprikash, and pulled out my book.

About halfway through dinner, a man walked in. He was lanky, and probably in his 40s. There was something about him that made me think he was an academic, but he wore hiking boots, and that pointed to the natural sciences: maybe a geologist in town for a conference on Central European vulcanology or something like that. Anyway, when out of all the empty tables in the restaurant he chose the one directly next to mine, I figured he wanted to chat. And since we here at The Unplugged Traveler are all about spontaneous connection, I put down my book, and smiled at him in a way that I hoped was encouraging.

He didn’t notice, however, because he was looking at his phone.

The waiter came to take his order, and the man spoke to him in English with an accent that sounded Spanish, or maybe Catalan. I tried again to make eye contact, but he turned back to his phone immediately after ordering, and did not, as far as I could tell, raise his gaze from it again. So I finished my dinner, thanked the waiter, and walked out into the Bratislavan night.

Two days later (and inspired by Chris Arnade), I set out on a 10-mile walk that would, according to my map, follow the Danube to a castle destroyed by Napoleon’s troops. The walk started as a broad promenade in the city center, then became a fitness trail of sorts, until finally narrowing to a path that led through woods and past small wooden houses. And then, after about four miles, it abruptly emptied onto an extremely busy road. There were no sidewalks, and not much of a shoulder either. What there were were enough cars speeding around tight curves to make walking seem reckless, even to me.

Just as I was contemplating turning back, I noticed a bus stand directly across the way. I sprinted across the road, and looked at the schedule taped to its side: a bus would be arriving in eight minutes. I felt bad to abandon my walk, but dead on the side of a Slovakian road would probably have felt worse, and this way, I would at least get to see the castle.

The bus arrived exactly as scheduled, and I boarded. There, seated in the front row, was the man from the restaurant.

Now, I am wilIing to entertain the idea that I had misjudged: that this man was not a geologist attending a conference on Carpathian sediment transport and was instead an ordinary tourist like me. I can also allow that visiting a ruined castle some 10 miles outside of Bratislava might be the kind of thing that tourists to Slovakia routinely do. But even if both those things were true—and here, please note the subjunctive– I think we can agree that running into the exact man from dinner halfway through the journey on the exact bus that I had not at all planned on taking was a rather remarkable coincidence.

This kind of shit happens to me all the time when I travel.

Jung called it synchronicity. He coined the word to refer to unconnected events that have no causal relationship but occur together in time and have emotional resonance for the receiver. Coincidences, in other words, that feel meaningful.

Synchronicity is what happened to me on that week-long hike through the Cotswolds that I wrote about last year. I had intended the trip as a birthday present to myself, and had invited a friend to join me. But that friend had to cancel at the last moment, and the friend who had stepped in as a replacement to meet me for a celebratory dinner in Bath when I was done with the walk pulled out at the even later last minute. Throw in some missed turns, a lot of rain, and boots that literally disintegrated beneath my feet, and by the day of my actual birthday, I was feeling pretty sorry for myself.

So when a series of tiny, random events—some retraced steps; a woman stepping into her garden; a shouted greeting—combined with perfect timing to deliver me to a stranger whose birthday it also was, and then together we ended up in a café in an English village where a dozen or so other strangers sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to us, it felt like magic. Actually, beyond magic; it felt cosmically intentional somehow, as if the universe itself had decided to take my hand and give it an encouraging squeeze.

That was the most profound instance, but it’s happened to me other times as well. A few years ago, for example, I flew to Paris for a story that would have me taking the overnight train from there to Vienna. To get to the station, I took the RER into the city from the airport, and ended up sitting across from a gay American couple who spent the ride sniping at each other in a way I suspect they would not have done had they thought another English-speaker was in earshot.

In any case, I got into Paris, boarded the train that evening, woke up the next morning in Austria, and then spent another day in Vienna to report on a different story (about sponge cities, if you must know). There were no direct flights for my return to Copenhagen, so on the way home, I had to change planes in Helsinki. And there, on the second leg of the flight, and seated directly in front of me, was the same couple I had last seen in Paris bickering over who had booked the crappy Airbnb.

I was so gobsmacked by the coincidence of running into my seatmates in Paris on a flight from Helsinki to Copenhagen that I actually asked them if they had a message for me from, like, the universe. (They did not. But I did learn that they had only been booked on the Helsinki connection at the last minute when their regular flight back to the US was cancelled. Make of that what you will.)

When I ran into the man on the bus in Bratislava, I again got that goosebumpy feel that it had to mean something. We disembarked together, and even chatted a bit about how we were both headed to the castle. I wanted to invite him to walk with me there, but he had already opened his Google maps. Holding his phone in front of him, he let it lead him down the street.

I don’t know what any of these encounters mean. I know the logicians out there will label what I see as unusual coincidence as simple probability: every now and then you’re bound to overlap randomly with someone you’ve already seen. Or maybe it’s not unusual at all, and we are constantly crossing paths with the same strangers without recognizing it. Maybe it’s only during travel, when we are especially alert to our surroundings, that we notice them.

Yet that still doesn’t explain the way that these encounters make me feel. According to Jung, synchronicity hits powerfully because it provides a moment’s connection –a portal, even– to the collective unconscious. That might not be exactly how I’d describe it. But I know I’ve stopped believing these encounters are about the specific individuals with whom I coincide (turns out I’m not meant to be lifelong friends with the man in Bratislava, or the couple on that flight from Helsinki, or the birthday boy in Painswick). Instead, they feel like a reminder that there is something out there larger than ourselves. Some mysterious and consoling connection, if only we stay open to it.

Maybe that sounds hopelessly woo-woo. But when I was leaving the Ars Electronica center in Linz that I wrote about last time, I found myself on the stairs behind a young couple with whom I had crossed paths in the museum. They were talking about what had happened to their third friend who, last time any of us had seen her, was stretched out on a bench taking a nap in the AI and Music exhibition. The boy assured the girl that their missing third would figure out how to find them, as she was an adult after all. “I’m glad someone is,” his companion replied. “Although I guess that will be me soon; I turn 21 in eleven days.”

I did a quick calculation in my head: she meant September 24. Which, of course, is my birthday too.

Happy holidays, everyone. I hope yours are full of magic.