[Misc] Where is the strangest place you have ever bumped into someone you know?

[Ⓩ-Ⓐ-Ⓜ-Ⓞ-Ⓡ-Ⓐ]

Living in CR at the time my wife and I went to visit some friends in New York for the weekend at short notice. The morning after we arrived we went for a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and bumped in to one of my best mates and his wife right at the centre of the bridge (who lived in London and had just arrived in NY the day before). Neither of us knew the other were going to be in New York. Absolutely surreal to accidentally bump into each other in such a busy place. It lead to a wonderful weekend in New York together.

 

[Cian]

KFC on the Damrak in Amsterdam, group of about 10 I was in secondary school with.

 

[maffew]

Not quite the same but this was a coincidence

When I moved down to Brighton, around 2000, used to drink at the Horse and Groom in Hanover, lived a coupla doors down in fact. Anyway proper friendly locals pub it was, didn't take us long to settle in there and most weekends after closing we'd and up back at someone's house to carry on the shenanigans

Everyone piled back to my flat one night and I got talking to a lad of the same name I had met a few times before, about the clubs and free party scene we into in the early to late 90s. Turns out we were both at a Reclaim The Streets party shutting down the roads in the centre of Brum some years before (carnage it was, G7 summit going on, sound system smuggled in, cars and flags on fire, TV reporters having their mics and cams nicked, people nicking the old bills helmets and dancing naked in them, you know the normal stuff. Oh and the best food fight every, the whole of the contents left at the market, cabbages, tomatoes, apples launched at the copious riot police)

I digress!

So this guy goes home to get his photos of the party (many thousands there) and me and my mates were in practically every single one of them, next to his mates dancing on a wall, looking a tad worse for wear

(Oh and I bumped into a good mate while travelling in central America, didn't know each were other there but bumped into him in Mexico (Merida), then again in Guatemala (Sheyla), and thrice in Honduras (Copan))

 

[papajaff]

Fair enough that my Sister lives there but I bumped in to her in Manhattan once. She lives in the Bronx and I had only just arrived. She walked past me and I just said hello. Her face!

Biggest jaw dropper was that I bumped in to my niece and brother in law in Orlando about 20 years ago. He didn't know I was there and vice versa. They live in Atlanta.

 

[mattislost]

This has happened to me a few times...
At a waterpark in Tenerife I turned around at the top of a waterslide and the person behind was in my class at school.
In a shopping mall in Florida I saw a girl who I was friends with in primary school.
In a bar in Vietnam I bumped into 3 guys (who I'd met once before) who were housemates with my best mate at Uni. I then bumped into them again in an alleyway in Beijing a month later.

 

[daveinprague]

Under a road in the Quaismah desert in Saudi Arabia laying cables.
Some new operator arrived, and when they asked him his background, they realised he been on the same ship as me (old Ark). They drove him out to me, and I hear my navy nickname shouted at me down the tunnel. Sur fecking real.
The last person I expected to see.

 

[DavidRyder]

Last October, we went to a rock gig in Hastings, and I bumped into someone that I worked with in Tonbridge 15 years earlier. We had a chat, and he said another ex colleague back in the day was arranging a reunion. I said I thought I still had her number, so I'd contact her.

The very next day, having just moved home, we went to register at our new local doctors - and the woman on reception was the person we'd chatted about the night before who was arranging the reunion!

 

[Lyndhurst 14]

Working on a construction site in the Bronx about 2 years ago and bumped into an architect I used to work with when I worked in Hove. Small world.

 

[Birdie Boy]

I hope she had booked time off and not taking a sicky.. Also, do they not talk to each other at work. "Boss, I want to take two weeks of in August" "I'm off then, going anywhere nice?"

I went to Vegas for a wedding and went on a different day to the bride and groom. We just said that we would meet up once there but made no specific arrangements. Walking through Miracle Mile my wife wanted to go into a Pandora shop.inside was a mate from my local who was drunk at 10am as he had just won £500! We had no idea each other were going to Vegas. Walked out of the shop and bumped into the bride and groom.

Another occasion was very strange. On holiday on the beach in Majorca and started talking to a couple next to us and they live in Coventry where my wife is from. Turns out when my wife was 3 and lived in Coventry this woman lived in the same street and used to play with my wife's older sisters 22 years earlier!

Oh and a mate and his wife as they were walking out of universal studios and we were walking in.

 

[OzMike]

Strange woman - always remember her going all fluttery every time Mr Orells walked in ! I'm 48 this week - if I remember correctly from previous posts you're a little older than me.

I'm 58 in a couple of weeks, so 10 years out.
She was odd, she frog marched me off the cricket pitch during an inter school game to sit a music 'O' level paper.
I passed it ok, but was retired at 46 not out to do it.
Never heard of Mr Orells, but I do remember her going all funny when Mr Morgan, the brass band master, used to enter the class.

 

[OzMike]

I bumped into Ronnie Corbett when doing a holiday job on the Palace Pier, literally.
I couldn't see him over the pile of stuff I was carrying and knocked him over.
He was quite abusive and threatened to get his minder to thump me, tiny ****.

 

[Morvangull]

Coming back from a French holiday on the Newhaven Dieppe Ferry we bumped into our youngest daughters school teacher. Also during another French holiday in the Dordogne we saw Ronnie Corbett and his wife while doing some shopping.

 

[desprateseagull]

Not exactly a strange place place, but didn't expect to meet my older, straight-laced sister there, 'chaperoning' her teenage kids.

 

[desprateseagull]

most random meet was on a late booked holiday in Lanzarote- In the room next to ours was the (now grown up, married with kids sadly) head girl from my school.

 

[theroyal]

This girl came up to me today and said she recognised me from Vegetarian Club.

I was confused, I’d never met herbivore.

 

[Petunia]

In a hotel bar in Antigua I bumped into a guy I used to work with in Shoreham.
In Lindos town square I bumped into a girl I used to drink with in a bar in Hove.
One of the holiday reps in the south of France told me I drove a mini and he had put tyres on it a few years before!
In La Palma I spent a whole week in the same hotel as a guy who worked across the corridor from me in Worthing. There were many laughs and innuendos when we both got back to the office!

 

[Taybha]

Newcastle 12th Jan 1983

 

[clapham_gull]

I have a random memory for faces that works quite er.. randomly.

To give you an example I was in a pub in Shepherds Bush at the bar and I recognised the man standing next to me.

I worked out that he was simply in front of me in a queue at a local coffee shop in another part of London weeks before.

Happens to me all the time, but about 3/4 of the time I can't recall where I spotted the face or more importantly why the hell I remembered it.

 

[Perfidious Albion]

The Kremlin.....
Tourists can, or could in the 90's, tour in parties. We were in the same organization but it is nationwide and still hell of coincidence.

 

[DJ NOBO]

A few years ago, I visited the local STD clinic to be tested as I’d started having sex with my new girlfriend.
It felt like a responsible thing to do as we weren’t using protection bar her taking the pill.
Guess who I bumped into? Yep.
Turns out she had chlamydia which she had passed onto me.