What’s the best way to meet new people while traveling?
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My kids often meet people online before they meet them in cities around the world. When I travelled with my family, I might have met some new people, but it wasn’t a priority. Neither was it a priority when I travelled on my own, but I’d often meet and chat to people at youth hostels. I can’t remember speaking to people on trains much. If I took walking tours, maybe then I’d meet people. I remember meeting an older English man in a walking tour of York back in the summer of 1985. When he heard that I was Irish, he assumed that I was anti-british. He was friendly, but he seemed to think that I was sympathetic to Irish terrorists 😀. I rarely met anyone from Ireland who was sympathetic to Irish terrorists. Their IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, got very little support in the Republic of Ireland. Now that they’ve stopped the violence, they do get some of the left-wing vote – maybe because their seen as being far left. They did want to bring the pension age back from 66 to 65. I wouldn’t vote for them – but if they did get in, that might be a silver lining on the cloud. 😀
I remember meeting an Indian airline pilot in a youth hostel in Holland. I’m always in awe of airline pilots. I fly planes myself on my computer (Microsoft Flight Simulator) but that doesn’t really count I suppose 😀.
Anyway, can I weave any spiritual message into this? Well, you could meet people at church while travelling. I remember meeting a nice girl in a Baptist Church in Salzburg. Like myself, she was from a Roman Catholic background. I only spoke to her for about 10 minutes, but it was a lovely chat. In fact, I foundly remember all the people I met on holiday. And in Irish churches, it’s always a delight to meet people on holiday. Even in my little fellowship in Tipperary, we got people from all corners of the world attending while on holiday. I suppose they found our website and just happened to be in the area. I attend a much larger church now in Limerick, and we have so many immigrants in Ireland these days, it’s hard to spot who’s on holiday, but sometimes when I chat to people, I discover that they are on holiday. I always try to point them to Killarney and Kerry – which I think are the nicest places in Ireland.
So, here are some hymns about the wider world:
