Well, Fancy Seeing You Here!

[naomi24]

Have you ever bumped into someone you know in the most unlikely of places?  I met someone I know on a far flung tropical beach - and another in the loos at St Peter's in Rome.

[barry1010]

I have, and it is always embarrassing.  I simply don't recognise people if they are out of context 

[bhg481]

Yes, the first time we ever went camping on mainland Europe we were in the pool in a small village and found myself talking to a girl who lived backdoor to us when I was growing up. On another occasion we were looking round the Outlet in Fleetwood when we met the parents of a schoolfriend of our daughter from Berkshire.

[Khandro]

I once met 3 people from a English Buddhist Centre I belonged to, on a tiny island in the Maldives.

There are 3 marvelous films Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski ;

 Three Colours, Blue, White and Red. (Find it if you haven't seen them) & in one of them it covers, the thought I often have, of people you just missed ! The people who just went around the corner or left the shop as you appeared.

 

[bhg481]

I was brought up in the shadow of Pendle Hll and, living in Berkshire and on a trip to Lancashre, decided it was time I climbed to the summit, never having done it whilst I lived there. At the top I ran into the schoolfriend who I'd lost contact with over the years (and have again).

[nailedit]

Many years after leaving school I bumped into one of my old teachers....in Shrewsbury prison. He was doing a stretch for benefit fraud.

[Ellipsis]

>  I simply don't recognise people if they are out of context 

I sympathise, I have the exact same problem -  a mild case of prosopagnosia.  Luckily I can usually remember somebody's voice, which often saves my embarrassment.

[Ken4155]

A few years after leaving the army, i was at Catterick racecourse, standing at the bar between races, when i was tapped on the shoulder.

I turned to see the grinning faces of 2 of my ex-army buddies. Apparently, after 8 years stationed in crappy Hohne, West Germany, my old regiment had been moved to crappy Catterick. Glad i got out when i did.

I felt so sorry for my 2 old mates that i bought them both a drink. Honestly!

[Hazlinny]

A lady sat down beside me for breakfast in a Majorcan hotel - turned out she was the grandmother of a friend I knew at school.
At a very remote cafe in Mojacar, three ladies at next table started talking to me and I discovered they came from same village where I had lived as a child. 

[naomi24]

Barry/Ellipsis, I have that problem too.  If they didn't recognise me I'd walk straight past them.  And when they do recognise me I can't think who they are ... and have been known to actually ask. I'm ok if they're in the environment I know them from but outside of that it's hopeless.

[barry1010]

Sort of glad I'm not the only one,  Ellipsis

[mushroom25]

I met a casual acquaintance on a railway platform in Mosjoen, northern Norway in 1981, when we stepped off our respective trains (his northbound, mine southbound) to watch the railway company swap the locomotives from each train to the other......

[naomi24]

Nailedit, that really made me laugh.  😂

[Dagman]

I was on a lonely dirt track up a mountain in Crete, walking down was a schoolmate I hadn't seen in 30 years. Of all the billions of places in the world we could be without seeing each other ever again, yet there we were!

[nailedit]

Made me laugh at the time as well naomi. It was his first time in prison and he was scared witless 😁

[Canary42]

On my way back to Swindon from a holiday in Scotland I stopped off at a Motorway Service Station for a coffee.  As I was leaving the car park afterwards I paused to let a car pull in next to me - to my utter amazement it was my twin brother on his way from a residential school in Staffordshire to Birmingham for a night out. 

[vulcan42]

I was stationed at an RAF base in Warwickshire and knew the NAAFI manager there quite well. he told me he was being transferred but didn't know where to. Six months later I was sent on detachment to a Pacific island 1000 miles south of Hawaii and getting off the plane almost the first person I met was him.

[youngmafbog]

Happened in a Work situation, all now working for different companies

Apart from the UK which is not so unusual I met one in New York and two in Bruxelles.  Like many others I dont remember faces so well and being a contractor I have met so many people they just fade into one.

[youngmafbog]

Back around '83 my first wife and I went on holidy to Spain and bumped straight into a senior manager(my bosses boss) we both knew in the same hotel for the same two weeks, had no idea he was even off. 

We were a bit poor back then and he got us a fair few drinks so Bingo!

[Barmaid]

I met someone I knew from school on safari in Africa.

I met my neighbour from 2 doors down in a remote car park in Scotland.

Wherever I go with Mr BM abroad, we ALWAYS meet someone he knows. (Although very coincidentally, when Mr BM and I first got back together after 30 odd years, I called to see him after my great aunt's funeral.  During conversation, names of various people cropped up.  Turns out his father and my great Uncle were great mates and played professional football together in the 1950s).

[Buenchico]

I served on several committees in Sheffield alongside a fellow teacher from a neighbouring school, which was only about a quarter of a mile from the one I taught at.  However we never seemed to meet up because one of us would always have a prior commitment when there was a committee meeting taking place.  I walked past both her place of employment and her house on my way home every day but, once again, our paths never seemed to cross.

Eventually, after several years of not seeing her, we finally bumped into each other at the University of Adelaide!

 

One of my teaching colleagues was enjoying her summr holiday when a 12-year-old's voice piped up with, "Hello Miss, nice seeing you here!".  That was in Time Square, New York.