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 busked in London in my early 20’s. At the top of the High Street opposite the Duke of York pub, I was set down playing and had just finished “Copacabana” and just about to start “Dreadlock Holiday” when who should pull up in a little red sporty BMW?

Barry Manilow. I kid you not.

Smaller than I imagined and with the most amazing shock of blond highlighted hair.

At Johns Wood.

DH's work colleague sitting in the row behind us on a flight home from Australia.

In a restaurant in Sri Lanka 2017, only 8 other people in, my husband said he recognised the man on the next table. I didn't! It transpires that they had worked together in 1999 prior to me knowing my husband. We all went for a drink after our meals and they now lived 20 miles from us.......200 miles from where they'd originally worked together!

Years and years ago but we went to Spain and ended up being on the same flight & transfers there and back with my teacher.

We once bumped into our next dire neighbours in a departure lounge in The Netherlands.

It's a small world!

I bumped into an old school friend in Disneyland Paris and also saw DS's maths teacher when we transited in Singapore Airport!

I was standing in a hole in the ground in a field just outside Swindon and I heard my name being called.

It was a uni mate who had dropped out and gone on to train as a surveyor. I was doing the ground investigation.

I also literally bumped into Peter Crouch in Euston station, queueing to buy a ticket. My head was about on the same level as his penis.

Again, I kid you not.

Airports are good places to bump into people. My friend flew DH from HK to Aus last year.

My student days landlord - with me topless on a beach in Lanzarote

Schipol airport: I was marching to catch my flight (If you don’t travel with KLM you get stranded out on the D gates and it’s miles! and I’d left the office a bit late) and literally walked into my friend from primary school’s husband, they live in Ireland now so don’t see them often - was very random

I used to live in a cul-de-sac and every morning a young woman used to leave for work the same time as me. We used to wave at each other but never spoke.
A year later I moved out into another cul-de-sac and going to work one morning I saw the same woman leaving for work from a different house. It was really strange because our houses were almost in an identical position in the street. It was in a different town altogether too! Anyway we got talking and it turns out her old address was her ex partner and she had moved back in with her folks.
Before she explained it was like a strange version of the truman show.

I bumped into a girl I was at secondary school with at the check in desk at JFK.
We hadn’t seen each other for about ten years and haven’t met again since. Completely random.

A gay cafe,

I was in there with a couple of friends having lunch and a guy who I had worked with came in and without thinking I waved hello as it had been a while since I'd seen him but he looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights. I was quite young at the time and I didn't really understand why he looked like I'd "caught" him so thought it must have been because he didn't want to speak to me or embarrassed to be seen with me in a social setting but I didn't say anything to him about it and we never acknowledged it again.

I realised much later it was because he wasn't out and was worried about me spreading it and his work or others finding out.

It's quite sad when I think about it now as that must have been a hard way to live and he was a lovely guy, I was lucky I grew up in a family with gay relatives and someone being gay was natural and no big deal to me (because it is obviously) so it never even entered my head that it wasn't because he saw me it was because we had been in a gay cafe.

Oh and I was at a korn gig years ago in a huge venue and had popped out in the middle to get a beer (which I never did at gigs) and ran into a friend in the queue I'd gone to school with at least 5 years before but who I'd lost touch with.

A lot of these stories are also people you only know tangentially- so if you know of 10,000 people and there's a hundred popular hotspots for your cultural background/ class you're bound to bump into someone

Mine: Saw my ex husband in Israel - we both ignored each other

On holiday in Tenerife I saw a man at our resort with his family, he kept staring at me and he kind of looked familiar but didn’t say anything to each other. 2 weeks later we were Home and going for a walk in our local woods and we passed him and his family, our daughters still had the braids in their hair so it was definitely the same family. Our jaws hit the ground as we couldn’t believe it. I still regret not talking to him but I was really shy in those days. But what are the odds.

Aged 19 and starting my first job as an admin in a prison. Given a tour of the wings and bumped into a prisoner in the YOI wing who had been my secondary school bully! Was a bit of a smug moment but I managed to handle it professionally (how, I have no idea, in my head I was jumping up and down and laughing hysterically) and as per protocol I reported I knew him.

Met some former work colleagues while on honeymoon in Paris. DH bumped into a former student of his in a lift in Kuala Lumpur.

I was in hospital for a colposcopy and the nurse doing it was a neighbour from my mums road - tbf she said she could get someone else to do it if I felt awkward. I didn't mind though.

Also when DH and I were in NY we were dining out one night and on the next table was a couple we had met the previous year on holiday. Bizarre!

A uni friend was sat at another table in a random restaurant in a small town in Australia. Another time I walked into our youth hostel in San Francisco and a friend from sixth form was in the same dorm as us.
All a bit spooky.

We were sat in a hot tub in our San Diego hotel late one night and got chatting to the English family also in it. Turns out they were from the same village as us - didn't know them but we had mutual friends.

In queue for first scan of our DS, in Dublin we were living in at the time bumped into my old college bf & his wife! Had not heard of him in years and last I heard they were living abroad - they had just moved bk. Then the same day the Dr scanning me saw my name said that's unusual where u from etc turns out he from my home village in west of Ireland & knew my father. my dh is from UK n says Ireland is a mad place for always bumping into people in random places.