These College Students Found Their Doppelgängers While Studying Abroad in Germany
According to German folklore, encountering your doppelgänger, or someone that looks exactly like you, is bad luck; in fact, it's thought to be an omen of your death. But college students and lookalikes Cordelia Roberts and Ciara Murphy have had the exact opposite experience: They became the best of friends.
The two women, who met while studying on a college exchange in Germany, shared their story in a new video for Twin Strangers, an online doppelgänger matchmaking service where people upload photos of themselves in hopes of tracking down their very own lookalikes.
In the clip, they say they both traveled to Bremen, Germany, without knowing anyone else in their program. Murphy visited from Ireland, and Roberts had come from the United Kingdom.
"I was truly just alone in a different country for the first time in my life," Roberts said.
Meanwhile, Murphy was also navigating her study abroad journey totally solo.
But they wouldn't be alone for long.
"When I was going on nights out, people were starting to ask me, 'Did [you] come here with a sister, or a twin,' and I didn't know what they were talking about in the beginning," Murphy says in the video. But then, during one such night out, Murphy met Roberts and the two realized that they were #TotallyTwinsies!
The women state in the video that they aren't related, so their physical similarity is a rather remarkable coincidence. The uncanny resemblance between the two perhaps evidences that there are only so many unique faces the world's 7 billion humans can have before nature is just like, "Meh, duplicates are fine."
The phenomenon of finding an unexpected doppelgänger in a faraway land is a bit of a mystifying subject of human interest. Some believe that it's a totally paranormal thing that can be a spooky omen of bad luck (Happy Halloween!), while others just think it's a fun little coincidence that mostly happens to celebrities.
Other doppelgängers have also gone viral. In fact, Niamh Geaney, the creator of Twin Strangers, found her very own lookalike earlier this year after embarking on a quest to find one on Facebook. After a few weeks, she found two — a woman in Italy and a woman who lived just down the road from her in Ireland. Geaney's experience inspired her to launch Twin Strangers with the goal of helping others find their own doppelgängers.
Whether you find the phenomenon of non-twin twins cool or creepy, the Ciara and Cordelia situation is a feel-good tale with a happy ending. After their chance meeting, the two became very close friends. They also have a hell of a story to tell the grandchildren down the road.
As Roberts says, "It's quite a good conversation-starter to say that I have someone who looks the exact same as me but isn't related."
h/t Telegraph