To ask Strangest Place you have bumped into someone you know?

[TomLee475]

I was in Germany recently and bumped into someone I used to work with in India.

I went to check in at a hotel near Alice Springs and gave them my unusual surname, they asked which I was, it turned out my uncle who I hadn't seen for over 10 years was staying at the same hotel, both of us for just one night. Neither of us lived in Australia.

I ran into my brother in an airport in Miami when they opened the airspace after September 11th.

Neither of us had mentioned to my mum that we were in the US at the time.

As a teenager met a man in South of France who had dumped me to "concentrate on his work". He was in SoF because he'd been made redundant. (I laughed.)

Not met for the first time - bumped into...

Haha Mint we have a history of bumping into BIL in random places, but more along the lines of Brighton.

We went on holiday to Menorca and DD made a friend that she played with all week. A year later DD starts school and she is in her class! We'd never spoken to the parents and didn't know they lived around the corner.

Crossing the road in Paris. Someone I was at university with was crossing in the opposite direction.

Bumped into an old work colleague at Nebworth 1996. Bumped into her again at a Rome airport (can’t remember name of it) 20 years later. I also bumped into my manager in a restaurant loo on holiday in Greece many years ago now. Bumped into my window cleaner on a beach in the south of France.

I bumped into my cousin at the top of Helvellyn. He offered to take a photo of me and DH, I was like ‘wait, what’ he’d not realised it was me either. Our mothers are sisters and we’re very bemused when we sent them a pic when we had signal

Bumped into my cousin in Disneyland Paris (we didn't know the other was there).

In transit at Amsterdam Airport, I bumped into a friend from my apartment complex when I was at uni in the USA! So bizarre!

I live in Paris and have a lot of expat friends. Didn't expect to have one of them get on the same train carriage as me in Walton-on-Thames one random Sunday morning while I had a raging hangover

A girl I worked with met someone on holiday from my hometown so she meant me and they knew me but she can’t remember their name!

My sister met one of my best friends from school, whom I’d lost touch with some years prior, after she emigrated to NZ, at the top of a water slide in Lanzarote.

In De Eemhof CenterparcsNetherlands bumped into one of the TAs from dc school.

Bumped into my sister in Leicester Square, actually recognised her BF before i saw her. Had no idea she was in London for the day, we live a couple of hours drive away from each other.

Bumped into a friend we hadnt seen in over 10 years in the Imperial War Museum
and DH and DS bumped into my other sister in Kensington gardens

It has happened quite a lot!
Met my dentist in Barcelona, a friend in Corfu, and my old Geography teacher in Morocco.

I used to run a travel agency and always bumped into customers when travelling, they always asked for directions to somewhere

Teaching in Japan and another teacher of English recognised my name from university admissions where he used to work.

Geography teacher on holiday in Spain when I was a teenager.

Husbands work mate at the airport on a Greek island

Veering slightly off topic but I saw the actress Juliet Stevenson (Truly Madly Deeply) 3 days on the trot. Once in a newsagent in Central London, the second time at Paddington Station and the third time on Hampstead Heath. And I’ve never seen her since.

a girls who i went to school and wasn't friends with but hadn't seen in 15 years. this was in the airport of Singapore. we did say hello and it was pleasant but haven't seen her since as we live in different countries in UK.

We bumped into DH's SIL in the middle of Chester Zoo once. Normally we'd chat about days out, but both had woke up, discovered it was to be a lovely day and went on an impromptu day trip.

Most bizarre was going back to my childhood home village in the Scottish Highlands for the funeral of my Great Aunt and bumping into a colleague from a school I'd worked in. I'd worked with him for two years without realising he was married to Great Aunt's estranged daughter. They'd decided to go to the funeral last minute.

When I was 15 we bumped into my yr 2 teacher at the pyramids

At a dinner in West Africa ended up sat next to a woman who had been to the same university as me... not too Small World-ish until we discover that she’d dated somebody, that I’d then gone on to date and live with for a couple of years.

On a tiny Greek island, think no airport, not a single hotel with a pool. Man walks up to me and asks if I was so and so’s girlfriend. I say that we’d broken up a few months previously. Turns out he’d met me when I’d lived in W.Africa and we’d played volleyball together a few times.

People from my home town at Calais train station and Euro Disney (different people and trips). Must be a French thing 🤣

Last August we were sat on a plane and my sons form tutor sat down next to him. We were at the same hotel too and saw her several times. Felt sorry for her in a way as she was on her honeymoon. I did offer to move DS away from her on the flight and she said not to. He has ASD and after the initial hello he ignored her the whole flight. She said it was the quietest flight she has been on.

Reading some of the previous posts makes me wonder how often we must miss bumping into people we know, perhaps just by a couple of minutes or a few hundred feet.

Me too and it reminds me of something that happened to me a couple of summers ago. I'd flown up to Scotland with my two DSs to stay with some friends for a long weekend in Tayside. My DF and DSM were staying over on the Fife coast that same week, but it's not close. Anyway, one day we went to Dunkeld for a wander round and as I was walking over the bridge I had this really strong feeling that my DF could drive past us any moment. He didn't, but when I called him the following week to see how their holiday had been it turned out that he had driven over that bridge, probably within minutes of us walking across it. I literally sensed his presence nearby.

In 1940 or 1941 my df was a chief purser on a M Navy troopship in Hong Kong. A steward came to him, excused himself and asked if he had a relative in the Royal Navy.

It was his cousin, they went out for a beer together and never saw each other again. Both survived the war.