How do people win the lottery?

This is a story about coincidences. But if you want to be more rational, I can say it's about probabilities. It happened to me and some of my friends in the summers of '95 and '96 during our traveling across Europe.
Here is some data that is important to really appreciate the magnitude of this story:
European countries - 42
Europe's surface – 10.404.000 sq. Km (4.017.000 sq. mi.)
Number of Europeans – 702.300.000 (with the Russian Federation)

August 1995
Hot summer. We were at Tessaloniki in Northern Greece, and wanted to go to Istanbul, Turkey. The travelling conditions were not the best ones. The train was really old and full. When I say 'full', I want to mean the kind of 'full' where people can't move a muscle. Fortunately we had reserved our seats. The search began, after a while someone found them, but... they were occupied by some soldiers and two old persons! Now it will be difficult to explain, how difficult it was to explain them, that those seats were ours. We tried every language we knew and then we started what it seemed a mimic game. He had no luck! I think that after a while they were pretending they didn’t understood us. After the ticket collector appeared they left, and we finally had a little more space.

After some long hours of travel, we arrived at the 1st stop in Turkey. The station is called Uzunkopru. It was about 1AM. The necessary tourist visa had to be bought. The price was 10 USD, valid for 3 months. The way people had to pay, was very original. For example, persons from England had to pay in British Pounds, people from Germany had to pay in DM. To worst the story there wasn't any exchange office in the station. A couple (he was English, she was Spanish) was in trouble, because he didn't have Pounds at the moment. They asked us if we had Pounds to exchange, but unfortunately we didn't. After an exhausted search in the train, they had luck, and found someone who was able to exchange the money.

After this episode in the border, we faced some more long hours of travel, before arriving in Istanbul. The beautiful Bosporus separates the only city in the World that belongs to two Continents (Europe and Asia). We stayed in Istanbul for 2 days, enjoying the culture, the mosques, the people, the "Grand Basaar" and of course the tea!We had to do the same way back to Greece. I remember that the train was at the beginning of the night. Suddenly it starts to rain so strongly that in 10 min. the streets near the station (in downtown) were completely flooded. It was like a tropical rain, the weather was hot and humid. This time we had lots of space in the train, which has almost empty. The train was starting to move when the English/Spanish couple appears! We remembered each other's from the opposite journey so we stayed together. They had bought a wine bottle and they shared it with us. It tasted so good! Even from plastic glasses! When the train arrived to Tessalonik we said goodbye, and thanked them for the nice company. We then took a train to Athens and stayed there for one day, after we took another train to Patras in the Southwest.

Our objective has to catch the ferry in Patras that would take us to Corfu (or Kerkira), a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. After walking some minutes from the train station, we arrived to the harbor and there was a boat almost departing! We run the fast we could and we managed to catch it! (At this time you may be thinking, nice holidays... always running to catch trains, boats, ... Nice stress!! My experience tells me that it can be very fun!) When we where trying to find a place free (the ferry was crowded), guess who we found? That’s right the English/Spanish couple!! We started laughing!! We had dinner together and continued our talk braked in the Tessaloniki/Istanbul train.After the dinner we said goodbye and wished each other's luck. And where ends the 1995 part of the story. Let me tell you only one more thing. This ferry trip was one of the great trips I’ve made so far! I sleep outside and we catch a storm (no rain fortunately). It looked like I was in a roller coaster. 80% of the ferry’s "population" was vomiting! I’ll let with your imagination the work of picturing the bathroom’s in the day after...

August 1996
In that year’s InterRail, we focused more in Northern and Eastern Europe. One of the countries that we visited was Poland. We planned to go to Warsaw, Krakow and Auschwitz (near Krakow). We spent one day in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Auschwitz/Birkenau. It was exactly in that day that the unexpected happen.
At the end of the day we were taking the train from Auschwitz (Katowice in Polish) to Krakow. It was a day full of strange emotions. It’s difficult to imagine the awful things that happen in those places. The number of lives destroyed. The camps are surrounded by forests. Silence ruled. Well... but I was saying that at the end of the day we were taking the train to Krakow. I was absorbed in my thoughts when I saw a girl. I had the sensation I knew her from somewhere. But, who could I possible knew in Poland?? Some moments after, Bekas (a friend) called me, really excited. "Miguel, guess who is in the train!" – she said. "I have no idea". "The English/Spanish couple of last year in Greece!!" – she said really excited. In that moment my neurons made the missing connection! The "mysterious" girl was the Spanish!
"We must speak with them!" – I said. When we approached them, they started looking us with a strange-confused face. Suddenly they remembered us! It was a really strange moment. The Europe is so big, with so many persons, with so many trains,... When I think the probability of one thing like that happen I stay very confused! We were all so excited that we didn’t spoke big thing. All we could say was "It’s amazing!", "It’s incredible!",... And were ends this story. I never saw them again. But how knows the future?