I have friends and family around the world and we travel a lot, so inevitably we are near people we know but often don’t stop to see them. The pressure of other events or social unease make checking in difficult or impossible. In the past this was a perfect example of two ships passing in the night. We didn’t know so we couldn’t be upset. It isn’t upset as much as a feeling of mildly left out. But in this age of email, social media and especially Facebook people know where you are. We need some new rules for casual contact in other towns.
Having said the above some of the best travel days we have spent have been when we looked up people we knew casually. We had a great afternoon in Amsterdam this spring last fall we looked up the relatives of some good friends in Texas and felt connected. A few years ago we spent time with very old friends in Haifa, Israel who we hadn’t seen in 15 years. But you can’t see everybody every time. And you can’t organize all of your trips around visiting.
This is going to take more thinking about. Should you announce where you are going to be on Facebook and risk stiffing some people?